Blonde (2022)

"Blonde is consistently inventive as it toys with both tone and form. By the end, though, this approach feels overwhelming and even a little dreary."

"(de Armas') performance is great; the film itself is self-satisfied and incurious."

"It’s easy to dismiss the movie as arty trash; undoubtedly it’s a missed opportunity. Monroe’s life was tough, but there was more to it than Dominik grasps..."

"It’s a towering achievement, just not a pleasant one..."

"Ana de Armas is inspired and flawless as Marilyn Monroe, and yet Blonde is a total bomb."

"Blonde, at its discomforting best, is a dizzying pas de deux between the sympathy engendered by de Armas and the bleaker instincts of her director."

"Where real-life ends and invention begins is worse than blurred here... It's a troubling approach; to go looking for the merely cinematic within all this actual human cruelty and tragedy."

"The movie is ridiculously vulgar—the story of Monroe as if it were channelled through Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ."

"(It) is both a daring and empathetic deconstruction of Monroe iconography anchored by a beautiful performance from de Armas, as well as a miserabilist wallow in exploitation."

"It’s not so much a biopic as an acidic, exploitative, vulgar nightmare..."

"A film so loaded with filmmaking flourish and so committed to subjectivity it is dazzling to behold."

"It's... a nearly three-hour endurance test that only fitfully gets at something primal and true. But when it hits you'll be knocked for a loop."

"If Dominik had thought as much about actually interpreting his character opposed to resurrecting her physically, Blonde could have (been) a tour de force."

"It’s hard to sense much feminist power in a story so reluctant to give Monroe the slightest agency."

"There’s no denying the brutal effectiveness of individual scenes, but taken within the context of such a one-note film, they feel gross, obvious and indulgent."