If this is a ‘fable from a true tragedy’, the way Larrain harnesses that tragedy ends up being just another way to define Diana as a victim.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 23, 2024

In a breathless, headlong way, Stewart does a credible job, but she’s perched on the edge of hysteria throughout and the upbeat ending fails to alter the impression that she and Larraín have delivered a one-dimensional portrait of a victim.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 19, 2022

Stewart was an unlikely but, it's now clear, ingenious choice for the role; she's going through such a period of pronounced anguish that the wrong kind of actor would have played the whole thing as overwrought, and ruined it.

| Dec 28, 2021

By exhuming Dynasty Di from her saintly casket, Larraín and Stewart have done the world a great favor.

| Dec 23, 2021

Leave it to actor Stewart to save the day. Ninety percent of the time she brings the spirit and look of Princess Di back to earth in an eerily real performance that captures the spirit of Buckingham Palace's most rebellious daughter-in-law.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 23, 2021

What must it be like for an actor to play a famous person, let alone one this impossibly famous? The challenge starts with resemblance, and Stewart gets Diana's wounded-deer manner, the sulky eyes, the slight tilt of the head.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 14, 2021

A film that spends nearly two hours advancing already axiomatic notions-obscene opulence does not equal freedom; protocol is a prison-with easy ironies, weighty symbols, and portentous phrases.

| Nov 12, 2021

There is an adult's bitterness and knowingness that gives her Diana more gravitas than Stewart's previous characters. What's more, especially in some of Diana's more iconic outfits (she had many), she really does look like her.

| Nov 12, 2021

You mostly can't look away from Stewart, or help yourself rooting for Di to live happily ever after. Personally, I hope Oscar takes the bait.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 11, 2021

We're in a time period where Diana has only about six more years on this Earth, but at least she was able to break free and hopefully experience a measure of happiness in the years after the imagined events of Spencer..

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 6, 2021

It's beautifully shot, really well-acted by Kristen Stewart, and has a fantastic score by Jonny Greenwood that I've already decided is my favorite of the year.

| Nov 6, 2021

Spencer allows viewers to become the support system Diana so sorely lacked at the time...

| Nov 6, 2021

Brilliant central performance. Sally Hawkins does a great job of taking this role, and turning it into a symbol of heartfelt love.

| Nov 6, 2021

At times, the film is excruciating, albeit deliberately, and that works it its favor.

| Nov 5, 2021

I once wrote that Stewart had a narrow range and I have never been happier to eat my words.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 5, 2021

In Pablo Larraín's dreamlike movie, Diana is not the people's princess but a woman in search of herself.

| Nov 5, 2021

I never felt that the filmmakers were posthumously trying to cash in on Diana's celebrity. The fable-making, at least, is done with genuine commitment. Most of all, Stewart's fierce performance roots it all in reality.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 5, 2021

The casting, with Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana, is brilliant, and the ending, in a top-down convertible, is sublime. So why is the rest of Pablo Larraín's Spencer such a hollow exercise in high camp?

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 5, 2021

Spencer feels in every way like a companion piece to Larraín's Jackie, both mesmeric suites about women trapped in a gilded cage of politics, privilege, and intense media scrutiny.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 5, 2021

Kristen Stewart is so good as Princes Diana-it's the performance of her life-that the Academy should start engraving her name on the Best Actress Oscar.

| Nov 5, 2021