Director Martha Stephens skillfully evokes the pettiness and unspoken longing of small town life and gets wonderfully natural performances from her young actors.

| Nov 22, 2021

The period trappings - which must have cost a bomb - are lush and smartly deployed without being heavy-handed, and the two young leads are very watchable.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 27, 2020

There's a grit and urgency to "To the Stars," of something bigger and darker coming along with the changing times.

| Original Score: B | Apr 27, 2020

To the Stars seems downcast, at first glance, but it serves as a gentle, lovely reminder that one true friendship, even forged amid adversity, can be enough to keep you looking skyward.

| Original Score: B+ | Apr 27, 2020

There is ... an undeniable earnestness to this modest period effort that prioritizes misunderstood women and female friendships.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 24, 2020

In some hands, that would be intriguing. Here, however, it's just lukewarm.

| Original Score: C | Apr 24, 2020

The director Martha Stephens, working from a script by Shannon Bradley-Colleary, handles this material smoothly, creating a solid, tangible sense of place with landscapes, gusts of wind and a blue sky that feels more confining than sheltering.

| Apr 24, 2020

The filmmakers' purpose is clear -- to portray the implacable prejudice of the time. But the tenderness and humor of the two girls' friendship, and the poetry of Maggie's pretensions, can't compete with the grotesque grimness of later developments.

| Apr 24, 2020

[I]t is a movie that will reward your patience.

| Apr 23, 2020

An exceedingly lovely, quietly moving drama about characters who feel like they don't belong.

| Feb 8, 2019

To the Stars is a movie that is effectively classic in its presentation, but when it comes to story it lacks a vital freshness.

| Feb 5, 2019

Starts like a slightly cartoonish teenage version of lesbian date-night favorite "Desert Hearts," then gradually plods toward an excess of retro-potboiler melodrama.

| Jan 27, 2019

By turns pulpy and restrained, with a strong emotional undertow.

| Jan 26, 2019