Portman and Moore are excellent, but Melton is the revelation in a satire that targets method actors and cheesy true crime adaptations equally well. Haynes use of mirrors is immaculate, as is the utterly ridiculous melodramatic score.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Feb 11, 2025

The screenplay by Samy Burch is almost creepily polite, with Elizabeth saying thank you to Gracie and her family dozens of times; there's lots of papering over various deceits and self-delusions.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 8, 2025

A combination of rollicking, darkly delicious entertainment and brilliantly rendered character study, this has the making of a modern classic.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 18, 2024

All in all, May December proves to be a compelling film, one that invites the audience to look beneath the surface and sit with the uncomfortable truth we may find there.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 15, 2024

To the viewer, May December presents broken characters riddled with variations of pain and guilt, leaving it up to those watching what forgiveness or acceptance they deserve.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 2, 2024

Simmering and summering, Haynes’ take is as much implication as demonstration, a variation on tabloid material that makes bittersweet and sinister and aromatic flavors, like the great distillations in twentieth-century Atom Egoyan.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Jul 4, 2024

Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman are acting titans but Charles Melton becomes the film’s breakthrough performance.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 3, 2024

May December takes what we know about the trope of the blonde/brunette doppelgänger and uses it to tell a story about telling a story.

| Jun 11, 2024

This movie is serving THEMES. Why does Hollywood love to look for the humanity in bad people? Can a person truly live a life without regret?

| Jun 7, 2024

May December is wickedly funny on the subject of delusion and the lies we tell ourselves to get what we want, but always there is Joe, the painful reminder of the human cost of those lies and delusions.

| May 29, 2024

Delicate hothouse dramedy around a core of three fantastic actors.

| May 21, 2024

With May December, Haynes returns to the fully immersive horror of Safe while also braiding paradoxically dramatic and hilarious tones — I believe what I’m seeing even as I’m laughing at the outrageousness of the whole scenario.

| Original Score: A | Apr 29, 2024

Melton comes out of nowhere and hints that a better movie would have focused on Joe. Melton adds a complex pathos to Joe, who claims not to be a victim, but is alone at sea with no safe person to process his emotions over his predicament.

| Apr 12, 2024

Nothing in May December is what it seems. The film unravels in the high-strung beats of a melodrama (Marcelo Zarvos’ music amping up the stakes) but embedded within are revelations fit for a slow-burn horror story.

| Apr 8, 2024

May December is not just a skilful satire of suburban propriety; it’s a unique and uncanny affair about the nature of performance itself.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 18, 2024

Alarming film with a poisonous view of drama. An equally brilliant companion piece to Haynes's Safe, from 1995, May December identifies and measures the new surfaces of banality that have emerged in our lives in the intervening twenty-eight years.

| Mar 8, 2024

A fascinating interpretation of a true story, which uses an interesting balance of tones —altering between the absolutely serious and the trashy— and which makes the most of the talents of its spectacular main actors and actresses. Full review in Spanish.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 7, 2024

Haynes makes the most of Moore... but also of Melton who puts himself at the center of the story naturally and extraordinarily, embodying all the complexity of a character trapped in circumstances that have confused his identity. [Full review in Spanish]

| Mar 4, 2024

It takes a deft hand to blend the true crime–inspired elements of this subject with moments of twisted humor.

| Mar 2, 2024

May December is a film rich with intricate layers, occasionally posing challenges in unravelling its depth.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 2, 2024