Both writer and director set out in search of a heroine. They're so intent on crafting a legend, they leave out the uncomfortable bits. They do her and us a disservice in that respect.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 25, 2017

Maud's life was constricted, but her gaze was expansive. And so is her movie.

| Aug 17, 2017

Maudie is a sad film about poor people, but it could scarcely be more open to benevolence and quiet humanism.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 7, 2017

Walsh's film feels jarringly at odds with contemporary sensibilities. A bully is a bully, no matter how cheerfully he is painted.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 7, 2017

A difficult and highly mannered performance from Sally Hawkins coupled with a repugnant and profoundly unappealing character played by Ethan Hawke sink this curious, and curiously saccharine, biopic.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 4, 2017

[Maudie] fulfils all our narrative expectations and you'll almost certainly exit the cinema happy, so long as you can leave it there.

| Aug 3, 2017

The only fireworks here are of the indoor kind, but this sensitive, beautifully acted film lingers long after the final frame. And the Newfoundland locations are breathtaking.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 3, 2017

Maud Lewis left the world a brighter place than she found it. This drably earnest rendering of her life story doesn't follow suit.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 3, 2017

A big performance at the centre of rather a modest film.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 3, 2017

Aisling Walsh knows how to balance the comedy and the pathos as she takes us through her subject's life and chronicles her unlikely emergence as an artist.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 2, 2017

An oddly affecting love story about burying the hurt and trudging forward in the face of pain and finding your own version of happiness.

| Original Score: B | Jul 22, 2017

There's much to appreciate in Maudie, especially if you're a fan of odd-pair love stories, but don't expect to learn much about what drives folk artists to create or what makes a woman pelted by life's lemons squeeze them into lemonade.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 13, 2017

"Maudie" is a work of art.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 13, 2017

An unsentimental but emotional film for anyone who suspects in their heart of hearts that suffering really is the only thing that makes anyone worth a damn.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 7, 2017

What shines through is the beauty of Guy Godfree's cinematography - the light has a lovely, soft stillness to it, like a painting - and a remarkable performance by Hawkins, whose impossibly wide smile seems to bring the sun.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 6, 2017

Walsh shapes Hawkins and Hawke's interplay so that the film registers as a bizarre-couple love story... These actors conjure a deep nonverbal bond that defies explanation.

| Jun 30, 2017

Sally Hawkins is a delight in "Maudie," but then, when isn't she?

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 29, 2017

The story offers many opportunities for glibness and sentimentality. Walsh falls for none of them.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 29, 2017

In "Maudie," the infinitely gifted Sally Hawkins gives an incandescent performance as the woman whose indomitable spirit shines through her art.

| Original Score: B+ | Jun 23, 2017

This Irish-Canadian drama tells the true story of Maud Lewis (played beautifully by Sally Hawkins).

| Jun 22, 2017