Lamarr was fascinating, brilliant, and, until recently, underappreciated. Bombshell, through a wealth of archival footage and crisp storytelling, gives her genius its due.

| Aug 1, 2024

If you came up with an idea for a fictional movie about a sex symbol movie star turned real-world inventor, every studio hack would laugh you out of their office. She changed the course of human history and never received her proper due in her lifetime.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 29, 2024

... covers all aspects of her life: actress, inventor, doting mother, independent producer, and toward the end her life a recluse addicted to drugs and plastic surgery who cut herself off from even her children.

| Sep 8, 2023

Episode 14: Doc Talk

| Original Score: 50/100 | Sep 1, 2021

Bombshell is a movie a million years in the making. Bombshell is a hand grenade tossed into our current gas-fire of a situation - it's the movie we need, the story we need, to tell right now

| Jul 2, 2021

Another story of a smart woman whose talent was unrecognized sufficiently during her lifetime [Full Review in Spanish]

| Nov 8, 2020

Athough a string of famous talking heads - from Mel Brooks to Diane Kruger - pop up here to celebrate Lamarr's remarkable achievements, the sense of wasted gifts gives director Alexandra Dean's film an underlying sadness.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 19, 2020

Bombshell suggests that Lamarr was largely wasted by the film industry, which could make little use of her personality and intellect. "

| Aug 7, 2020

Director Alexandra Dean gets the most out of a peculiar mix of on-camera interviews, archival footage and recently discovered audiotapes of Lamarr explaining herself posthumously.

| Jun 2, 2020

Not your usual silver-screen documentary.

| Mar 25, 2020

By coloring Lamarr's life story in with shades of gray rather than distilling it to the black and white of "film star" or "inventor" or the like, a full picture of the woman-inquisitive, talented, flawed-comes into focus.

| May 28, 2019

The documentary is informative and thoroughly engaging with its narrative fluidity.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 26, 2019

A fascinating documentary about Hedy Lamarr, an extraordinary woman who was so much more than the moviegoing public ever imagined.

| Feb 22, 2019

A witty, fascinating and sometimes melancholic biography of a clever, complex and beautiful woman. It rattles along at an impressive pace, with a drive and verve of which inventor and Hollywood actress Hedy would surely have approved.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 10, 2018

This is a terrific introduction to a fascinating life.

| Aug 31, 2018

The film succeeds in the more basic sense by surveying a complicated woman's existence. It also does so without diminishing the intimate details that help audiences relate to Lamarr's complexity not just as an icon, but as a human being.

| Aug 20, 2018

This documentary of actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr is engaging and poignant, expanding the view (and our understanding) of the famously beautiful Hollywood star.

| Jul 31, 2018

With a central thesis unable to fully grapple with her beauty and her intelligence, it ultimately fails to fully create a narrative of a woman who was more than her beauty, and more than brains-despite-her-beauty.

| Jul 20, 2018

A recently discovered set of 1990 interview tapes with this amazing woman fills out a detailed and revealing portrait.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 20, 2018

It's a reminder that, even for world-famous icons, it's pointless to reduce people to a single piece of notoriety.

| Original Score: B+ | May 21, 2018