Corbijn is great at taking real-life flesh and blood people and alchemically rendering them in striking 2-dimensional images that transcend and mythologize the reality, but "Life" shows him fall some way short of achieving the reverse.

| Original Score: C+ | Dec 5, 2015

Both Pattinson and DeHaan could have used more to do, but both actors put in performances that elevate the proceedings.

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

A moody, leisurely and occasionally frustrating piece of work ...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 4, 2015

The actors and their exchanges ring true, and by the time the film reaches its lonesome conclusion, the resonances are eerie.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 4, 2015

Dig, if you will, the pictures, but you don't need "Life" as a stargazing aid.

| Dec 3, 2015

I loved Ben Kingsley's over-the-top work as studio head Jack Warner, who in one scene explains the lay of the land to Mr. Dean in a manner that would inspire envy from Don Corleone. This guy isn't messing around.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 3, 2015

It ends up demystifying Dean, perhaps by accident but no less regrettably.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 3, 2015

While the script is sometimes too heavy footed, on the whole Life has an unassuming quality that wears well over the course of its two hours.

| Original Score: B | Dec 3, 2015

It is very slow-moving and deliberately uneventful (there's no depiction of the car-racing that led to Dean's death) and self-consciously beautifully photographed, almost more than it is filmed, one might say, throughout.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 28, 2015

Plaudits to Pattinson for once again taking the tougher route, downplaying his own matinee-idol charms for something less attractive but more adventurous.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 27, 2015

Life is a listless biopic that doesn't even try to capture the neurotic intensity of James Dean as a young actor.

| Sep 25, 2015

It's a very professional piece of work, but it's terribly hard to love.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 25, 2015

Life is a paean to the lost days when matine idols were preserved in luminous black and white, in magazine spreads that allowed photojournalists to indulge in deep coverage for months.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 24, 2015

An interestingly personal picture about that moment when the shutter snaps, and how it changes the nature of any human interaction.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 24, 2015

Doesn't register emotionally in the way it strives for, but is diverting as a portrait of the nascent celebrity industry, with fine performances from Dane DeHaan and Robert Pattinson.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 16, 2015

Basically there isn't much of a story here.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 10, 2015

As Life proceeds the pace picks up and by the third act, it is a compelling dramatisation of an artistically fascinating alliance.

| Sep 10, 2015

Ultimately Luke Davies's script, for all its warm observations on the man behind the myth... feels like a footnote to a footnote in our cultural history.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 10, 2015

Life doesn't deliver on its considerable promise.

| Feb 9, 2015

"Life" identifies the key contradiction in Dean's star persona: A shy, genuinely gifted nonconformist, he was eventually (and posthumously) styled, marketed and managed to appear as untamed and undoctored an individual as possible.

| Feb 9, 2015