My Week with Marilyn (Simon Curtis, 2011)

[lacritfan]

I don't know much about what Marilyn Monroe was like in real life but boy do I understand the effect she must've had of stopping you dead in your tracks after seeing Michelle Williams play her. I didn't think she looked much like her at first but once the movie got going I didn't care, MW totally captures the essence of MM. She's downright intoxicating. And pretty much the only reason to see this.

[domino harvey]

Michelle Williams is almost always intoxicating, and more often than not in films that are good. No need to bother with films that aren't

[tavernier]

Armond, not surprisingly, doesn't agree:

Condescension toward fame is all that’s reproduced here, like Bennett Miller’s celebrity exploitation in Capote. Curtis’ monotonous style ignores what made Monroe fascinating—instead, too many close-ups make for a tedious characterization. Close-ups don’t necessarily mean insight. Curtis affects a Playboy Magazine style of false, pornographic “intimacy,” but Williams lacks the personality and lush physicality for successful prurience; she’s more Renée Zellweger than Monroe.

[domino harvey]

Now Michelle Williams as Renée Zellweger, that'd I go see

[Jeff]

Michelle Williams is almost always intoxicating, and more often than not in films that are good. No need to bother with films that aren't

The movie is okay. Harmless TV-movie style stuff. Williams is just enchanting though, and even though the movie would probably struggle to make my top 30 this year, her performance is one of my favorites. Glad I saw it.

[domino harvey]

Williams was fine as Monroe but otherwise this movie was way worse than I expected— like, Trumbo-level. Some A+ talking out of one side of the mouth throughout though, as we get sympathetic pleas from Monroe to be considered as she was not as she was seen coupled with a complete and total necrotic obsession and bolstering of her as a deity by all aspects of the movie. The number of times Monroe is sincerely over-praised by other characters in the film could be a lucrative drinking game to play while watching with a rich relative you’re hoping to inherit from after they die of alcohol poisoning

[movielocke]

Williams was fine as Monroe but otherwise this movie was way worse than I expected— like, Trumbo-level. Some A+ talking out of one side of the mouth throughout though, as we get sympathetic pleas from Monroe to be considered as she was not as she was seen coupled with a complete and total necrotic obsession and bolstering of her as a deity by all aspects of the movie. The number of times Monroe is sincerely over-praised by other characters in the film could be a lucrative drinking game to play while watching with a rich relative you’re hoping to inherit from after they die of alcohol poisoning

The whole movie is like the over the top compliments in the opening dream sequence from “I love Melvin”