Whether it's attempting to stay too closely to its source material, or if nobody actually thought about writing a climax to it, the film sputters, stumbles and peters into nothingness.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 2, 2021

While the film certainly isn't a masterpiece, Kelly has created a film that dares to be different.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Dec 12, 2018

Michael is not without his weaknesses and despite declaring that he no longer identifies with being a homosexual, it does not necessary mean that he ceases relationships with the same sex.

| Original Score: 8 | Nov 3, 2018

Features silent bar brooding, sad piano-scored walking and absolutely no fun, anywhere, ever. The sex isn't fun, the politics isn't fun, the prayer is determined but never ecstatic or tender.

| Aug 6, 2018

Director Justin Kelly clearly presents the facts of the story, but the necessary psychological content is lacking.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 17, 2017

Well, that Franco is over; he's gone down a different road in movies that trifle with gay experience in not always positive ways like the new I Am Michael.

| Mar 3, 2017

... struggles to find a consistent tone and feels embellished in spots, yet it evolves into a provocative examination of the crossroads between religion and sexuality

| Feb 17, 2017

The performances are uniformly good and Kelly's effort to tell an unbiased story is admirable, but I Am Michael ultimately delivers more in the way of talking points than drama.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 2, 2017

Kelly chronicles this all this with the clear-headedness of a detective procedural -- a sense of detachment that makes the film even more unsettling.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Feb 1, 2017

Fortunately, I am Michael proves itself to be an uneven film in the best possible way.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Jan 27, 2017

Franco's fantastic here. He gives a fieriness to Michael as a gay advocate, then seamlessly slides into borderline madness as he starts accepting that the "voice" he hears is God's.

| Jan 27, 2017

Kelly is finding his sea-legs as a director.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 27, 2017

Despite some wooden line readings, Franco gives himself fully to the challenge of rendering Glatze with truth and resolve.

| Jan 26, 2017

Mr. Franco broods and puzzles and vacillates. But he often seems abandoned by a director whose approach is so noncommittal and dramatically limp that it strands the actor, and his character, in a bland purgatory of conflicting motivations.

| Jan 26, 2017

A soberly stylish, impressively non-judgmental portrait of a controversial real-life case of transformation.

| Jan 26, 2017

An intermittently affecting - but not entirely convincing - conversion story.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 26, 2017

James Franco is a stand-out in I Am Michael, but the film's specific story struggles to relate on a broader scale.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Jan 26, 2017

Kelly and his actors seem anxious not to judge Glatze, but they can't downplay the cutting nature of his betrayal.

| Jan 26, 2017

Franco's latest film, I Am Michael, is easily the most thought-provoking work he has done in this area yet as it deals with the true story of a formerly gay man who renounce his homosexuality.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 25, 2017

Franco gives a sensitive performance, and this is a film worth seeing, but it's not easy to see.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 25, 2017