The end result can be a little messy and haphazard, but it is impossible not to be whisked away by the boundless energy and creativity on show throughout Leonor Will Never Die.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 3, 2024

Leonor Will Never Die wears its playful sweetness as a badge. It glistens with a lustrous sheen tinged by the colorful past of Filipino action films and pays homage to the emancipative wonders of storytelling.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 18, 2023

Leonora Will Never Die is an unclassifiable meta-mixture of a fantasy pastiche of the schlock ’70s action movies that Leonora used to write.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 27, 2023

Leonor Will Never Die is a movie pure in heart even when it falters.

| Apr 22, 2023

It’s all pleasantly eccentric, but its layers of self-awareness — with the film’s director, Martika Ramirez Escobar, briefly appearing as herself — squash its pathos.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 10, 2023

The film has heart... Plus the clever layering of movies within movies is exquisite — and a closing dance routine isn’t too shabby either.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 7, 2023

Leonor Will Never Die is a startlingly original and ambitious exercise in style and one that is unafraid to laugh at itself.

| Apr 7, 2023

[A] joyous concussion of madcap cinema.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 5, 2023

The fun-time larks wear a tad thin by the end, but this is a stellar calling card for Escobar.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 4, 2023

There’s an array of twists and turns as the film toggles back and forth between levels of reality, playing with film-making conventions with insouciant glee.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 4, 2023

Shows that escapist films can serve every bit as valid a purpose as anything else when it comes to uniting people.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 2, 2023

This comedy doesn’t miss its notes of pathos.

| Mar 13, 2023

The real hero of “Leonor Will Never Die” is an elderly woman who finds hope and salvation in the creative process — even if her creative process involves shootouts, fistfights and a scene where a bad guy gets a nail hammered into his eyeball.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 2, 2023

Don’t expect much irony. But this reviewer was happy to see a female Philippine director making the art house rounds with her feature debut, even one as homemade-looking as this.

| Dec 13, 2022

Playful yet philosophical, Escobar’s clever and touching feature sneaks up on you, revealing far deeper, more complex intentions than you’d suspect.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 8, 2022

…engaging world-building, impressive visual style...

| Original Score: 6/10 | Dec 5, 2022

that doesn’t mean Leonor’s script is very good and despite Francisco’s charm, the film is an exercise in tedium which devolves into a meaningless meta musical number as it completely runs out of gas.

| Original Score: C- | Dec 4, 2022

As “Leonor Will Never Die” parties to its close, Escobar reminds us that while life is unerringly finite, cinema is the complicated, messy, riotous love affair that never has to end.

| Dec 2, 2022

Although its ambitions often exceed its reach, the meta-mad Filipino film Leonor Will Never Die bursts with imaginative impulses, scoring slightly more hits than misses.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 1, 2022

[An] endlessly imaginative delight.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 29, 2022