| Original Score: 3/5 | May 14, 2004

Atmospheric, elegant and thoughtful.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 5, 2003

A prestige picture that doesn't have a lot going for it beyond its serious intentions.

| Nov 13, 2003

Paltrow does this role exceptionally well, but it is underwritten.

Full Review | Nov 6, 2003

So dark, somber, and lifeless is this well-intentioned biography.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 2, 2003

Cinema and poetry aren't merely disparate art forms but largely incompatible ones.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 1, 2003

Falls short of its goal.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 31, 2003

By choosing to make Hughes neither a monster nor sympathetic, the film likely will disappoint Plath acolytes while at the same time falling shy of being a revisionist interpretation of their relationship.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Oct 31, 2003

An often painful, surprisingly illuminating and emotionally complex portrait of a woman who is ultimately as mysterious as her art.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 31, 2003

It's Bleak Chic.

| Oct 27, 2003

Adds precisely nothing of breaking-news value to the Plath-Hughes annals.

Full Review | Oct 24, 2003

For all the actors' ability, Sylvia never develops a pulse.

Full Review | Oct 24, 2003

Likely to be equally displeasing to Plath enthusiasts as it will be to neophytes, Sylvia suffers from a strange timidity: It only gets close to its subject by rendering her as a kind of melodramatic archetype.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 24, 2003

[Lacks] psychological depth and emotional resonance.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 24, 2003

A coy, cautious film about a frank, fearless writer.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 24, 2003

The film does what poets so seldom do themselves -- pursue the middle road and leave the path of excess to the less level-headed.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 24, 2003

For those who have read the poets and are curious about their lives, Sylvia provides illustrations for the biographies we carry in our minds.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 24, 2003

The results are mixed, but noble.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 24, 2003

Odd that a story of two such hot-burning lives as Plath and Hughes could leave us so cold.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 24, 2003

Offers a wondrously illuminating artistic experience for its ideal audience -- people like me who know a little but not much about the explosive Plath-Hughes fusion of unbridled poetic temperaments in a tauntingly prosaic world.

| Oct 23, 2003