Despite strong visual appeal and a star performance from Emma Mackey this rendering of the Brontë family saga gets almost everything wrong.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 8, 2023

If one does not look to Emily to adhere too faithfully to historical truth or, indeed, to depict what actual writing is like, then it is a satisfying—or at least benign—story.

| Mar 3, 2023

“Emily” is a good, engrossing watch, and it avoids most (but not all) of the genre’s pitfalls.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 24, 2023

O'Connor and Mackey together bring their subject to new heights.

| Original Score: B | Feb 23, 2023

Purists are not going to be pleased... But for the rest of us this fantasy does offer the satisfaction of witnessing the short-lived triumph of a fascinating character.

| Feb 23, 2023

It feels more like an effort to make us curious about this woman, whether or not we know or care who she is. And from the moment we see her, we are indeed inclined to be curious. That’s how you know it works.

| Feb 23, 2023

Emma Mackey is utterly magnetic.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 23, 2023

A film that doesn’t want to be bound — much like its central character — to one genre or one overall conceit. And that lifts Emily far above other recent, more staid and comfortable biopics.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 22, 2023

Frances O’Connor makes a striking directorial debut with a provocatively revisionist biography of Emily Brontë.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 22, 2023

I’ll tell you who I’d love to have watched this movie with — Emily Bronte. But I doubt she’d have lasted 20 minutes. They say she had a temper. Her review would have been a lot harsher than mine.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 21, 2023

A film about the gifted, strange Brontë sister that mingles fact with imagination to depict Emily’s adult years.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 21, 2023

[An] imaginative leap.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 18, 2023

A bold and audacious retelling of Emily Brontë’s life starring an uncommonly compelling Emma Mackey.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 18, 2023

A portrait that feels in some sense true and also make viewers so engaged that they’re hungry to learn more about the subject.

| Feb 18, 2023

O’Connor is hardly bound by history, yet with “Emily” she’s clearly more interested in finding the emotional truth of Emily Brontë’s life than in merely reciting the facts.

| Feb 17, 2023

Paints a haunting and sympathetic portrait of the person she might have been.

| Feb 17, 2023

O​’Connor’s Emily overcomes her quirks, engages her desire, and fulfills her passions—and then some.

| Original Score: B | Feb 17, 2023

Without plunging into full anachronism, the film happily plays both fast and loose with history, its tone frequently wobbling between melodrama, magic realism, and the more traditional structures of classic period drama.

| Original Score: B- | Feb 17, 2023

[Brontë] deserves more than this biopic’s utter lack of interest in the very thing that made her immortal. Emily is a movie about “writing” that’s forgotten how to read.

| Feb 17, 2023

O’Connor’s liberties work for a story that, above all, is about art as an act of radical sovereignty.

| Feb 16, 2023