With the right amount of directorial mishandling, you can utterly waste the talent of two actresses who are otherwise first-class.

| Aug 31, 2018

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 24, 2012

The coda plays like one long and petulant foot stomp about sacrifice and due recognition of said sacrifice, and in that, too, it's impossible not to tease the thread back to its maker, striking a pose as misunderstood icon.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 22, 2012

It's hard to hate a movie that escorts us to such lovely locales, but instead of marking the territory as her own, Madonna has directed a potentially provocative story like a virgin.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 16, 2012

The film is stylishly shot. And, in weaving the stories of Wally and Wallis, Madonna trusts viewers to move from mood to mood, era to era without overexplanation, the way music-video editing long ago trained us to.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 2, 2012

The production is nice looking, and telling the Edward-and-Wallis story from her side is an interesting idea, but it's one that Madonna simply can't pull off here.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 16, 2012

Madonna's script, co-written with Alek Keshishian, is a mind-blowing mess, so sickly one-dimensional and filled with so much melodramatic pabulum one wonders why the Grammy-winning icon even bothered in the first place.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Feb 12, 2012

A movie that's less about people than the fetishistic obsession with style.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Feb 10, 2012

"W.E." is not awful. It looks quite nice at times, and Riseborough delivers an exquisite if overdrawn performance as Wallis.

| Original Score: C+ | Feb 10, 2012

As a director, Madonna has flair without ability, but she does have flair.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Feb 9, 2012

"W.E." is a mess, but it's certainly an attractive one; the characters are underdeveloped, yet so relentlessly art- directed that at least there's always something lovely to look at.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 9, 2012

Madonna the director deserves a script better than the one Madonna the screenwriter handed off to her.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 9, 2012

[It] tries awfully hard. In the end it tries our patience.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 9, 2012

Madonna as a director has no discernible idea of how to locate a tone, or a provocative blend of tones. Her camera makes circles around its subjects every chance it gets in ways that evoke - nothing.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Feb 9, 2012

"W.E." is an elegant, ambitious and relentlessly monotonous film.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 9, 2012

A beautifully-shot, disappointing mess. Riseborough is brilliant as Wallis Simpson, but Wally (Cornish) is as ludicrous a character as you'll see on screen this year.

| Feb 3, 2012

The question that needs to be asked about Madonna's "W.E." is why?

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Feb 3, 2012

For Madonna, what better symbol than a vanity mirror for her vanity project - both are stylish and both reflect nothing more than their own emptiness.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Feb 3, 2012

I found the movie fascinating. Except for the boring bits.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 3, 2012

The disparate strands of the two stories never make much sense the way they're braided together.

| Feb 2, 2012