- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
100Michelle Williams doesn't just survive. Called upon to glow, she glows. Her performance doesn't solve all the riddles of that personality; none could, and it's for the best that Williams doesn't try.
-
100What an extraordinary thrill to leave a movie exhilarated instead of drained, sated instead of empty, rejuvenated instead of depressed. It's a magical experience.
-
88The performance is both an eerie imitation and a touching revelation. Oscar voters who overlooked Williams for her camouflage roles in "Brokeback Mountain," "Wendy and Lucy" and "Blue Valentine" should now throw diamonds at her feet.
-
88The movie seems to be a fairly accurate re-creation of the making of a film at Pinewood Studios at that time. It hardly matters. What happens during the famous week hardly matters. What matters is the performance by Michelle Williams.
-
83This is a slight movie, but it's Williams' all the way (possibly to an Oscar nod) while the rest of the cast supports her well.
-
80When Marilyn Monroe appears, things stop. She is, as portrayed by Michelle Williams, a strange and beautiful alien: Unpredictable, odd, magnetic.
-
80Her (Williams) performance is so engaging and complete, it's worth all the other shortcomings.
-
80It's an expertly made, intentionally minor movie, though when Monroe, doping herself with everything available, lies in bed, confused and hapless, there are depressing intimations of the end to come.
-
75The acting is superb, the settings are beautifully recreated, the dialogue crackles with occasional wit, but where's the juice? Although lovely to gaze upon, the whole thing feels a bit precious and porcelain, more teapot than sexpot.
-
75Brilliantly playing doomed '50s sex bomb Marilyn Monroe, Michelle Williams gets under the skin of the troubled yet vulnerable icon in a way no one else ever has.
-
75Branagh is marvelous at conveying his exasperation. His conceit is that Olivier offstage acted the same as Olivier onstage – as if all of life was a vast playlet. For someone as thoroughly actorly as Olivier, this is probably no exaggeration. I would like to think that the great man himself would have smiled at Branagh's rollicking rendition of tantrums.
-
75One thing My Week with Marilyn does get right is that women were as enchanted by her as the men were, if perhaps in a different way.
-
75Disappearing into the role of the troubled actress, Williams' portrayal captures the star's breathy voice and distinctive mannerisms, while delving a few notches deeper.
-
75Branagh and Williams are worth the price of admission, the former "wunderkind" of British stage and screen having a go at the pretentious, plummy Olivier.
-
75The unpretentious, easy-to-digest style and short running length (a shade over 90 minutes), when coupled with strong acting (especially on Williams' part), make My Week with Marilyn a pleasant end-of-the-year diversion.
-
75The luminous Michelle Williams goes bone-deep here. Monroe's beauty was one of a kind. No one, not even Williams, can act it. What Williams does, with fierce artistry and feeling, is illuminate Monroe's insights and insecurities about herself at the height of her fame.
-
75One of the chief pleasures of My Week with Marilyn - which should not be approached as anything other than fluffy entertainment - is watching Williams bring to life Monroe's inner demons and her movie-star allure with equal aplomb. By the time the film's book-ending closing musical number comes around (That Old Black Magic), the illusion is astounding and complete.
-
70My Week With Marilyn is the kind of shtick-laden movie in the British TV mode that delivers all its laughs, and all its grand, declamatory moments, right on schedule. I'm delighted to recommend it, as long as you know what you're in for: "The King's Speech" has the subtlety of Chekhov in comparison.
-
70It's lush and vibrant when Williams is onscreen, mostly fussy British discontent when she's not.
-
70Williams locates a central truth, the contradictory allure of this utterly impossible woman - mercurial, vain, foolish, but also intelligent in some very primal way and achingly vulnerable.
-
70The film rests firmly on the shoulders of its central icon, and Williams, though she doesn't really resemble Monroe in either voice or visage, is pretty splendid at conjuring her.
-
Oct 12, 201170Williams gets us on intimate terms with one of Hollywood's most enduring and tragic icons. If much of what surrounds her in Simon Curtis' biographical drama is less nuanced, her work alone keeps the movie entertaining.
-
70To the extent that Michelle Williams' multilayered interpretation of Marilyn Monroe serves as its raison d'etre, My Week With Marilyn succeeds stunningly.
-
67Michelle Williams plays Monroe, and she's a wonder. Working opposite a suitably florid Kenneth Branagh as that high thespian Sir Larry.
-
67How could someone so frail and terrified at the mere thought of acting in front of the camera become the biggest movie star in the world? And how could someone so unknowable become so familiar? Then the film makes the mistake of trying to answer these questions.
-
63Williams never defaults to mimicry. Her Monroe doesn't have the breathless whisper and quivering lips/quivering hips quality of the Marilyn impersonators. Her Monroe is a lightbulb on a dimmer, suddenly bright, and just as suddenly, indistinct.
-
Nov 22, 201163At one moment, Marilyn turns to Colin and asks, "Shall I be her?" And, instantly, she is - effortlessly bewitching a crowd with movie-queen poses. If only the movie could turn it on so reliably, My Week with Marilyn might be profound rather than simply pleasant.
-
63The point of "My Week'' appears to be that Colin is the one person in Monroe's life who isn't using her, but if squeezing two books and a movie out of one brief encounter isn't exploitation, I don't know what is.
-
63Such stalwarts as Judi Dench, Julia Ormond, Toby Jones and Dominic Cooper spice things up as characters of various degrees of familiarity.
-
60At moments hilarious and others touching, it's a sweet, slight affair, more pretty pageant than pithy biographical drama. Expect awards nominations to stack up for Williams and Branagh.
-
Nov 22, 201160You never forget that you're watching a talented living actress laboring to mimic a long-gone movie star who - on-screen, at least - never seemed to be acting at all.
-
50There's nothing here about Monroe that we haven't been told a thousand times already: she was sexy, she was troubled; she was warm, she was selfish; she took pills, she lit up the screen.
-
50Thus, this indifferently shot film winds up being another in a long line of creative works by men that exploit the legacy of Marilyn Monroe for their own satisfaction and little public good.
-
50Ms. Williams tries her best, and sometimes that's almost enough.
-
40Simon Curtis's watchably third-rate biopic doesn't try to sort out truth from fabrication; that would be like "teaching Urdu to a badger," as the short-tempered Olivier - played by a whole-hog-slicing Branagh - might say. Better to print the legend and be done with it.
-
Oct 12, 201140The results are perfunctory, lugubrious and historically questionable.
-
30When bad movies happen to good people, the first place to look for an explanation is the basic idea. That certainly applies to My Week With Marilyn, a dubious idea done in by Adrian Hodges's shallow script and Simon Curtis's clumsy direction.
-
Oct 12, 201125Only the star performances in My Week with Marilyn, cartoonish as they are, make seeing the film worth the effort.
prev
next
Page:
- 1
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 26 out of 29
-
Mixed: 1 out of 29
-
Negative: 2 out of 29
-
10
-
10