If you're interested in watching a really solid film with a lesbian couple smack dab at the center of a small story with national implications, I cannot recommend a better place to do so than in a movie theater screening Freeheld.

| Aug 17, 2021

It really is just a tiny sliver, a few years of two people's lives that ended up setting a precedent for their small town. Those stories need to be told, too.

| Feb 9, 2021

Flat, and lacking the archly deadened attributes of Todd Haynes' Carol, a quartet of World's Greatest Actors work hard to animate a timid movie.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 23, 2016

Moore gets to wear a striking wig but has no dialogue that makes you look twice. And the more Stacie cries over her saintly lover, the more guiltily conscious you become that your own eyes are water-free.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 21, 2016

Why does Michael Shannon get the best written part in a lesbian drama?

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 19, 2016

You've got to feel sorry for the makers of Freeheld. They must have thought they had it in the bag.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 18, 2016

One to avoid.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 18, 2016

Even if the script and direction don't deserve of them, you still can't go too far wrong giving the heavy lifting to Julianne Moore and Ellen Page.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 18, 2016

It does all the feeling on your behalf, and doesn't seem particularly bothered if you join in or not.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 18, 2016

Freeheld assigns its most dynamic arcs to the straight characters who align themselves, sooner or later, with Laurel and Stacie.

| Nov 10, 2015

Moore charts Hester's physical disintegration with brutal candour while, at the same time, conjuring up the indomitability of somebody determined to leave a worthwhile legacy -- to her partner and to other gay couples caught in the same bind.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 4, 2015

There is an important and moving story at its heart, and strong central performances from Moore, Page and Shannon, but they're undermined, in the final stages, by a strange kind of rote efficiency in the way it is told.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 4, 2015

Page and Julianne Moore, who plays Hester, have an easy if not electric chemistry, but they seem hamstrung by the movie-of-the-week tropes and Peter Sollett's plodding direction.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 16, 2015

[Freeheld] is sincere, to be sure, but unlikely to win any prizes. For starters, the most memorable character in this important story of a courageous woman is a man; that's a problem.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 15, 2015

Disappointing in the extreme, Freeheld is a well-meaning movie that never ignites.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 15, 2015

"Freeheld" is a snapshot of a notable American moment.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 15, 2015

It hits the right sentimental moments but doesn't truly touch hearts as it settles into courtroom drama mode.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 15, 2015

It's a stiff, overly calculated piece of awards bait that has all the elements of an Academy Awards triumph - except a beating heart.

| Original Score: C | Oct 9, 2015

As often happens in re-telling a recent true story, the movie trips over the proportions in trying to get the facts straight.

| Original Score: B | Oct 8, 2015

In the end credits, we see photos of the real Laurel and Stacie, in happier days, and you can see love glowing around them. Too bad that the movie, well-intentioned as it is, never quite catches that spark.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 8, 2015