The White Crow winds up falling short as a respectable but not-quite-inspired portrait of an extraordinary talent.

| Oct 15, 2020

I am found myself fairly taken in with this just as a [straightforward], good, sensible drama.

| Sep 27, 2019

The White Crow offers up all these elements of Nureyev - his past, his heat, his vulnerabilities - but all those parts are dancing around each other incongruously rather than as a well-choreographed ensemble piece.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 6, 2019

The Nureyev story is a very good one, and Fiennes and Hare tell it well.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 19, 2019

The film gives the impression that much of Fiennes' attention went into working with Ivenko on shaping the details of this portrait -- and it is psychologically convincing, whether or not it has much to do with the real man.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 17, 2019

Fiennes' drab biopic of Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev drains the color from his life, and comes across as cold as a Soviet winter.

| Original Score: C | May 17, 2019

As a dance film-another genre that all too often disappoints-The White Crow gets many things right.

| May 10, 2019

Ultimately, "The White Crow" seems tailored to appeal to moviegoers who are already fans of Nureyev's idiosyncratic dancing and want to know more about how it got that way.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 9, 2019

The film may go to lengths to tell us that Nureyev was sensational to watch, but we don't experience much of this power or magnetism as viewers.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 9, 2019

It's a movie full of small pleasures, such as the Polaroid-ish softness of the cinematography, Fiennes' quietly noble performance as Nureyev's mentor Pushkin, and the glimpses of the ballet studios...

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 9, 2019

Unless you have a special interest in Nureyev, Russian ballet, or the Cold War's impact on the arts at mid-century, "The White Crow" might be something better heard about than experienced.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 8, 2019

It's astonishing that this is Ivenko's first movie role, because he projects Nureyev's drive, seductiveness, intellectual curiosity, imperiousness, vulnerability, and mercurial temper with a naturalism that seems effortless.

| May 3, 2019

Not exactly a warts-and-all artist biopic. It's more an account of the way that the artistic spirit is a wart, a strange affliction that besets certain people even as it fascinates others.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 3, 2019

It's a good movie, so smartly directed by Ralph Fiennes, who also appears as Nureyev's dance instructor, that at times it feels like an IQ test. But the story is intriguing and, ultimately, gripping enough to overcome all that.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 1, 2019

While the details of Nureyev's 1961 defection in Paris are thrilling, the film falls into the trap of many historical dramas, rendering the story as surprisingly clunky, especially considering the nimbleness of its subjects.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 30, 2019

The White Crow fitfully does justice to Nureyev's overwhelming desire to be an artist, and that's not a negligible achievement.

| Original Score: B | Apr 29, 2019

Director Ralph Fiennes makes this hypnotic look into the young life of controversial ballet icon Rudolph Nureyev (Oleg Ivenko) a thing of bruised beauty and an exhilarating gift.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 26, 2019

Some viewers will find the result too fussy by half; I liked its restlessness, and the sense of a chafed and driven spirit that refuses to be boxed in.

| Apr 26, 2019

Subject and style could not be more different than in "The White Crow," but that fusion of opposites has resulted in an involving biographical drama that rarely puts a foot wrong.

| Apr 26, 2019

If you didn't know why he was considered a transcendent dancer or a transformational figure, you still won't know after the final credits roll.

| Apr 25, 2019