Sienna Miller is lovely as Hedren, a fresh-faced beauty with a reserve that made her seem sculpted from marble.

| Aug 5, 2020

Toby Jones is pitch-perfect and eerily nuanced in revealing the self-loathing underbelly of the corpulent Hitch.

| Aug 5, 2020

The Girl could have been a great movie, but the screenplay turns Hedren into a paragon of female strength and morality... And then there's Sienna Miller. Halfway believable but missing what Hitchcock called "the volcano inside."

| Aug 5, 2020

For The Girl to work, the director's perversity needs to come up against the actress's desperate will to fight him off. Miller is believably blonde, and that's about it.

| Aug 5, 2020

There's ultimately not enough imagination, enough art, in The Girl to justify its having been made.

| Aug 5, 2020

To play her, a better choice could not have been made than Sienna Miller, who is even lovelier than Hedren was.

| Aug 5, 2020

Gwyneth Hughes's economical script delivers every descending step of Hedren's destructive relationship with the director, without ever tipping over into sensationalism.

| Aug 5, 2020

It started off in a gently mischievous vein, allowing the viewer to tune in to the brilliance of the impersonations. But then it turned dark.

| Aug 5, 2020

The movie sees the director in a more caustic aspect, and Alma as not his savior but his enabler, wearing the sly smile of a child complicitous in a nasty prank.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 5, 2020

A magnificent Toby Jones was all lizard eyes and hypnotic patter. Sienna Miller, perhaps channelling feelings provoked by voyeuristic paparazzi, was a revelation as the innocent far-from-marble fawn who totters blindly into a trap.

| Aug 5, 2020

If you knew nothing of the production of "The Birds" and "Marnie" or how totally demented Hitch was behind the camera, there's an interesting history lesson here. I just wish that lesson had more creative drive and personality.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 5, 2020

It is far more creepy than most of Hitchcock's work. That's not to say it's a good movie, but it is disturbing in a crude manner.

| Aug 5, 2020

It puts viewers in Hitchcock's seat. You'll flinch at some of the degradation.

| Aug 5, 2020

Once his motives and psychological weaknesses are laid bare, the intrigue dries up, and the rest is just a depressing, true-life Hollywood ending.

| Aug 5, 2020

There are juicy details and compelling central characters, but little texture around them. The attention to period recreation is too clean and fussy.

| Aug 5, 2020

The Girl, written by Gwyneth Hughes and directed by Julian Jarrold, is remarkable, disturbing and something Hitch would have understood. In addition, it insists quietly on a nagging question: why do we like Vertigo so much?

| Aug 4, 2020

Like a lot of biopics, it's thoughtful and well made but never quite brings its subjects to life -- more illustrative than truly engaging... The Girl would make a fabulous DVD extra on the next edition of The Birds.

| Aug 4, 2020

Despite warranting "a trigger warning" for anyone who has been the victim of sexual harassment, The Girl too often feels too small.

| Aug 4, 2020

The Girl fatally lacks a strong take on its story, though Hitchcock himself might have treasured the irony that a film about the ultimate auteur would be undone by the dearth of a strong authorial voice behind the camera.

| Aug 4, 2020

Toby Jones is astounding as Hitchcock, conjuring up the charm on the surface and unearthing Hitchcock's twisted center that would occasionally bubble to the top.

| Aug 4, 2020