The performances are superbly judged, as are the period trappings, but it's the mordant tone of Olnek's dialogue that makes this such an intellectual treat and a comic delight.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 20, 2021

Molly Shannon is perfectly suited in this role finding depth and clarity in portraying a woman we only previously vaguely knew.

| Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Nov 18, 2020

Wild Nights with Emily is crude and amateurish for the most part, and not amusing.

| Aug 6, 2020

[T]here are just as many points when [Olnek's] script tries to cauterize its sadder moments with dry humor that, while successful on the page, feel sloppy.

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

Wild Nights With Emily is the film that Emily Dickinson deserves, true to her lively spirit and to her historically proven, but long denied, queerness. Like Dickinson's writing, Olnek's filmmaking is inspired, creative, witty, and lyrical.

| Jul 23, 2020

A beautiful-looking movie that frames the story like its own epic love poem to its subject. This is one of the year's most enjoyable films to date.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 21, 2020

It's one of those rare films where a director's perspective also feels like an insider's view of an invisible, almost parallel history as seen via a great love story, one that happened to be between two women.

| Apr 13, 2020

This Dickinson is savvy, joyful, loving and, perhaps most surprisingly, portrayed to perfection by Shannon.

| Mar 12, 2020

The supporting cast excels, with Amy Seimetz, Brett Gelman, Jackie Monahan, and Kevin Seal making the most of the well-tuned dialogue.

| Mar 11, 2020

Even with the revelations about Dickinson's affairs, of course, it's hard to say whether her private life was truly this jolly. But the movie makes you hope it was.

| Jan 7, 2020

There is a lot of truth to what we are seeing, but it is presented in a sly, deadpan way that is always amusing.

| Sep 27, 2019

There's a refreshing nature to how Olnek gives Dickinson a certain dignity while embracing her truths that were buried in her work.

| Jul 3, 2019

Shannon lowers the registers on her comic rawness to deliver a warm, funny, engaging, even sprightly performance as poet Emily Dickinson.

| Jun 11, 2019

Wild Nights With Emily is revisionist history played to the hilt. T

| Jun 10, 2019

While I learned a lot about Dickinson from A Quiet Passion, it took this film to teach me that "Because I could not stop for Death" can be sung to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas."

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 10, 2019

Olnek pens a story that is refreshing for the genre. It's not melancholy or narratively conflict-heavy as most queer stories are -- it's a comedy.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 8, 2019

It's a lot of fun in a ragtag, low budget sort of way, but there's also plenty of carefully considered food for thought in Olnek's latest that hopefully doesn't go unnoticed.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 7, 2019

Don't be alarmed by the first 10 minutes of this film. Stick with it, because the wobbly tone and some amateurish acting warm up into something lovely and memorable.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 6, 2019

Olnek executes moves with an antic, comic spirit. Her cast finds laughs in unexpected line readings and reactions that bolster the sense that we're watching fully developed human beings rather than literary stock figures.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 6, 2019

The legend that she rarely left her house and was a spinster and recluse is recast in this ribald production.

| Jun 6, 2019