Maggie Greenwald directs with a serene beauty and elegant pacing, bringing to mind such films as 'Brokeback Mountain.'

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 20, 2024

Feels like an expansion of the canvas...to show that our previous notions of the so-called frontier have been much too narrow.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 6, 2024

Its ethereal, penetrating tenacity as it strips Western mythology to shreds and reveals its blatantly misogynistic center is striking, and the tragically haunting truthfulness of its final images is impossible to forget.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 3, 2023

It's a rare and quietly impressive movie.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 18, 2021

The Ballad of Little Jo is a taut, unconventional adventure that takes aim at the glorious macho westerns of the past.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 18, 2021

The Ballad of Little Jo is an exemplary and often starkly beautiful tale -- a mix of adventure and romance which succeeds in reinstating female experience into a genre which has by definition sidelined it.

| Mar 18, 2021

This beautifully shot movie with the intriguing premise never really does get around to developing a full-fledged plot.

| Original Score: B- | Mar 18, 2021

Although Amis Isn't convincing as a man, the story still holds some power.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 18, 2021

The Western scenery is lovely to see, and The Ballad of Little Jo is a film with style' and grace.

| Mar 18, 2021

Little Jo is a richly amusing and satisfying movie that is attractive not because it Inverts the conventions of the genre but because it also honors them.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 18, 2021

[A] gimmick movie with a heart of gold.

| Mar 18, 2021

There's the potential for a grand movie buried in this mess, but The Ballad of Little Jo is so off-kilter that it destroys the singer and the song.

| Mar 18, 2021

Writer-director Maggie Greenwald doesn't come up with many ideas beyond the obvious ironies of the plot, which is said to be based on a true story.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Mar 18, 2021

Greenwald's strength as director lies in her enthusiasm for the spirit of the Western and the attention she lavishes on its daily life. Revisionist it may be, but it's long overdue.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 18, 2021

They don't make Westerns like this anymore. Come to think of it, they never did.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 18, 2021

Little Jo is resolutely unsensationalistic about its material... Yet the movie's earnestness is also its biggest flaw: Writer-director Maggie Greenwald's manner is more that of a bright sociologist than that of a creative storyteller.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 18, 2021

[Amis's] is a tough role under any circumstances, and she's given plenty of terrific support by the rest of this stellar cast, by Mansfield's shivery music, and by Kate and Anna McGarrigle's predictably thrilling vocals on the closing song.

| Mar 18, 2021

Aided by cinematographer Declan Quinn, [Greenwald] finds a vivid poignancy in the Western scenery that somehow seems to express the subtle shifts in mood of our brave young heroine's heart.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 18, 2021

Greenwald makes the most of her chance to reveal a side of the Old West that is typically ignored.

| Original Score: B+ | Mar 18, 2021

The film boasts a marvelously etched characterization by Amis, an underrated young actress. But it's nearly stolen by Bo Hopkins as one of her cantankerous neighbors, in a colorful performance.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 18, 2021