Day holds together a film which might otherwise have seemed inchoate in the extreme.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 16, 2025

Lee Daniels' inconsistent direction and Suzan-Lori Parks' extremely messy screenplay are just two of many issues that transform this film into an absolute letdown. It's Andra Day's phenomenal debut performance that saves a potential trainwreck.

| Original Score: D+ | Jul 24, 2023

The United States vs. Billie Holiday is messy yet wonderfully acted. Odd narrative choices and jumbled timelines disrupt what is otherwise an excellent platform for Andra Day...

| Original Score: 6.5/10 | Jan 22, 2023

Why didn’t the filmmakers here go into Strange Fruit with any aim at examining why the song was so personal to the famed singer? It’s practically an act of censorship.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 11, 2022

The United States vs Billie Holiday features a powerhouse performance from singer/songwriter Andra Day, but its story is sadly substandard.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 1, 2022

Unbalanced, at times it moves along well, and at others, it's cold... Narratively, we don't have a trailblazing movie. [Full review in Spanish]

| Aug 31, 2022

Most centrally, the film is about a country that dehumanized and diminished Holiday. The film’s cold detachment to her skews dangerously close to partaking in that diminishment.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Aug 17, 2022

The United States Vs Billie Holiday had a rich and fascinating story to adapt, so its disappointing that the end result should be so average. We can only hope that the excellent Day gets to play the legend again in her career.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 1, 2022

Whereas a more laser-focus account of the Anslinger-Holiday conflict might've been a unique approach, Daniel's film resolves to deliver a familiar package, conforming to the standard biographical structure.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 12, 2022

Explicit to the point of being lurid, there is something to admire about Lee Daniels' overwrought version of history.

| Sep 13, 2021

This loving portrait sheds little new light on the star, but is compelling nonetheless.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 17, 2021

[Day] captures Holiday on and off screen and holds us with each gaze, particularly through the full performance of 'Strange Fruit'.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 11, 2021

Even if Billie retains a linear and relatively conventional structure, and probably isn't as ambitious as it could be, one might still qualify its efforts as strangely fruitful.

| Jun 5, 2021

Andra Day outclasses and saves an otherwise humdrum movie.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 5, 2021

In spite of good intentions and a surprisingly great debut performance by Andra Day, the film is uninspiring, poorly written and so confused with itself that it never really wakes up.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | May 30, 2021

Splendid characterization by debutant Andra Day. [Full review in Spanish]

| May 17, 2021

The movie bearing her name settles for a bullet-pointed, sub-Wikipedia approach to Billie Holiday, a fascinating, complex and contradictory soul who was so far ahead of her time it truly boggles the mind.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 12, 2021

Andra Day's soulful performance is the lone reason to watch this otherwise middling biopic.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 5, 2021

Even when the feature itself becomes unfocused, including through Daniels' erratic stylistic flourishes, Day is simply mesmerising.

| May 3, 2021

Andra Day is spellbindingly good as the jazz legend whose anti-racist song "Strange Fruit" made her an enemy of the racist U.S. government, but the film built around her isn't worthy.

| May 2, 2021