Whatever the film's structural failings and historical gaps, it's great to see such a distinctive directorial vision coming out of Hollywood.

| Apr 1, 2019

...an ambitious, affecting, truly distinctive piece of work, albeit one that will tell you more about 1780s footwear than about the causes and effects of the French Revolution.

| Apr 1, 2019

Drawn from Antonia Fraser's biography - or riffing on it - this slyly seditious comedy escorts sacred verities of French history and culture to the scaffold.

| Apr 1, 2019

Marie Antoinette is about confinement in a gilded cage, and, perversely or not, shows itself far more interested in the cage than in the prisoner.

| Apr 1, 2019

Sofia Coppola's giddy, girly and defiantly revisionist Marie Antoinette didn't deserve the reaction it got in Cannes earlier this year.

| Apr 1, 2019

It's a highly personal film, which takes us into the very limited universe of a very young woman forced to play a very public role, gorgeously laying forth the trappings of luxury,... until we,... realize that it's nothing more than a gilded cage.

| Aug 22, 2018

For all its visual sumptuousness, this film lacks any emotional muscle. There isn't even a twitch of emotional muscle.

| Aug 22, 2018

You almost have to laugh and go along on the wave of ridiculousness.

Full Review | Mar 24, 2007

The ultimate failing of Marie Antoinette, fun for all its emptiness, is Coppola's coy eschewal of the queen's public demise.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 3, 2007

Sadly, there's no wit here. Once Rip Torn's Louis XV has departed the scene, you can't find an actor able to deliver a line without sounding embarrassed about having to mean it.

| Dec 29, 2006

Some French critics at the Cannes film festival booed the film, presumably for being too sympathetic to the deposed queen. But Marie Antoinette is such a perfect jewel of irony, we say: let them eat crow.

| Original Score: A- | Nov 22, 2006

It's very pretty and occasionally amusing but also dreadfully dull for long, long stretches.

Full Review | Oct 25, 2006

Coppola's anthem for doomed youth has its own affecting cadence.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 21, 2006

It's history written with truffles.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Oct 20, 2006

The director squanders a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to film on the grounds and inside the Palace of Versailles. It's the trappings we get, in richly reproduced costumes and all-over gilt furniture, at the expense of any substance.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 20, 2006

Little happens for much of Marie Antoinette, but Coppola is a visual storyteller, and with her first big canvas she creates a giddy world at Versailles in color and light.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 20, 2006

Coppola's queen experiences no inner transformation or redemption because, in this telling, she's in no need of it. She's cool to begin with.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Oct 20, 2006

With lyrical intelligence and scrappy wit, Coppola creates a luscious world to get lost in. It's a pleasure.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 20, 2006

Dunst plays Marie Antoinette as if she's seen the future and it's Paris Hilton.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 20, 2006

There's not much meat at this banquet, only sweets.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 20, 2006