"Watched by all, seen by none."
From her volatile childhood as Norma Jeane, through her rise to stardom and romantic entanglements, this reimagined fictional portrait of Hollywood legend Marilyn Monroe blurs the lines of fact and fiction to explore the widening split between her public and private selves.
Ana de Armas
Norma Jeane / Marilyn Monroe
Adrien Brody
The Playwright
Bobby Cannavale
The Ex-Athlete
Sara Paxton
Miss Flynn
Lucy DeVito
Ex-Athlete's Niece
Julianne Nicholson
Gladys
Scoot McNairy
Tommy Ewell / Richard Sherman
Xavier Samuel
Cass Chaplin
Caspar Phillipson
The President
From her volatile childhood as Norma Jeane, through her rise to stardom and romantic entanglements, this reimagined fictional portrait of Hollywood legend Marilyn Monroe blurs the lines of fact and fiction to explore the widening split between her public and private selves.
What a truly disappointing film this is. It offers us a really slow, sterile and disjointed - almost episodic - depiction of just how Marilyn Monroe's life might have panned out. For a start, I couldn't decide whether Ana de Armas was really Lady Gaga or Scarlett Johansson (both of whom would have acquitted themselves better, I'd say) as she offers an admittedly intense, but remarkably uninvolved performance. We move along from chapter to chapter in her life hindered by some fairly weak and uninspiring dialogue and seriously intrusive scoring in what becomes an increasingly shallow and lacklustre fashion. The photography does try hard - it does offer us a sense of intimacy, but the whole thing is presented in such a stylised and un-natural manner that it is frequently difficult to tell whether she is/was a "real" woman. Her marriages are treated in an almost scant manner - and her relationship with JFK is reduced to something rather implausibly one-sided and sordid showing nothing of how their relationship might have come to be. It has no soul, this film. Aside from her glamour - which was, even then, hardly unique we are not really introduced to any of the nuances of her character, we are left guessing a lot of the time as to just how she did become such a superstar, and how she spiralled so inevitably into a maelstrom of booze and pills. It relies to a considerable extent on the viewer's existing knowledge of, and affection for, this flawed lady. Adrien Brody and Bobby Cannavale don't really have much chance to add anything as her husbands and the highly speculative relationship between her and Charlie Chaplin Jnr (Xavier Samuel) and his sexually ambiguous partner-in-crime Edward G Robinson Jr (Scoot McNairy) does suggest something of the rather profligate and debauched existence that some lived in Hollywood, but again their characters are also largely undercooked and again, we are largely left to use our own imagination. It is far, far too long and in a packed cinema, I could see people looking at the ceiling just once too often. Watchable, certainly, but a real missed opportunity to offer us something scintillating and tantalising about this most of iconic of women.
In the middle of 2022, the movie I was looking forward to the most was '**Blonde**', but... I'm really disappointed. The film has nowhere to hold on, it's just a fictional compilation of the supposed life of **Marilyn Monroe**, where we don't get context and it's easy to get lost through the scenes and the large number of characters (_which if you didn't know the story, you wouldn't really know who they are_) of a feature film of almost three hours. The direction is good, although quite experimental where sometimes elements that seem to come out of nowhere are combined. Not to mention the constant switching between color and black/white that doesn't seem to represent anything concrete. **Ana de Armas's** performance is brilliant, by far the best of the film, despite how poor her character is. I'm really disappointed, in these times we live in, designing a movie about **Marilyn Monroe** could have contained a much more powerful message. The story of a woman who went through the sexualization of the industry in the 50's. Instead the film only seems to add fuel to the fire by showing nudity at any time and sometimes for no reason. Based on a story in parts fictitious, with a vision, in my opinion, poorly focused, they make 'Blonde' a great disappointment.
This is a movie that shows no other side of Marylin than her being miserable. While watching this movie, if you try to fact-check stuff, you realize that many parts of it are fictitious. Then as you continue watching the movie, you wonder what you're watching. This movie is neither a good representation of reality nor a good work of fiction...
'Blonde' is a strange one. There is nothing about it that I'd scream from the rooftops about, yet the heavy run time of around 2hrs 47mins went by in an absolute flash - not once was I bored with what I was watching; I tend to check how long is left of a movie when I'm finding it dull, but with this I didn't check at all - as clear a sign as any that I obviously enjoyed it. I'm not fully convinced why, admittedly. I think it's just really interesting to watch from start-to-finish, the acting is very good and the film is put together well. I wasn't sure about having Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe during the first few scenes, though I quickly lost those thoughts as she gives a great performance. I get the criticisms (though how many biopics truly stick to reality?) but I predominantly judge films as films, and this is a very watchable one in my books. I'm not saying it's anything special, though for a near 3hr flick to fly by it evidently gave me what I require.
No wonder Marilyn Monroe overdosed on sleeping pills, I was suicidal well before this movie finished!! This movie is so depressing that it is hard to watch. I had to jump through numerous parts desperately looking for something even slightly uplifting. I failed.
Laney is an attractive, intelligent suburban wife and devoted mother of two adorable children. She has the perfect husband who plays basketball with the kids in the driveway, a pristine house, and a shiny SUV for carting the children to their next activity. However, just beneath the façade lie depression and disillusionment that send her careening into a secret world of reckless compulsion. Only very real danger will force her to face the painful root of her destructiveness and its crumbling effect on those she loves.
Plagued by an abusive childhood, a woman finds escape in competitive swimming, sexual experimentation, toxic relationships, and addiction before ultimately finding her voice through writing.
A successful woman in New York City finds her life upended when she is forced to confront a dark truth that threatens to unravel her meticulously crafted life.
Teen skater Ken Park (nicknamed Krap Nek; his name spelled and pronounced backward) kills himself at a Visalia skate park; his death bookends the lives of four other young people who knew him: Shawn, the most conventional; Tate brims with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother; and Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim.
The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island residents are shattered when their addictions run deep.
A successful TV star during the 1960s, former "Hogan's Heroes" actor Bob Crane projects a wholesome family-man image, but this front masks his persona as a sex addict who records and photographs his many encounters with women, often with the help of his seedy friend, John Henry Carpenter. This biographical drama reveals how Crane's double life takes its toll on him and his family, and ultimately contributes to his death.
A teenage hustler and a young man obsessed with alien abductions cross paths, together discovering a horrible, liberating truth.
After the death of her husband, the mother of Julie, Jack, Sue and Tom begins to suffer from a mysterious illness. Aware that she is going to have to go into hospital she opens a bank account for the children, so that they can be financially self-sufficient and will be able to avoid being taken into care by the authorities. Unfortunately she also dies and Julie and Jack (the older, teenage children) decide to hide her body in the basement so that they can have free reign of their household. Soon Tom has taken to dressing as a girl whilst Sue has become increasingly reticent, confiding only to her diary, meanwhile Jack and Julie sense an attraction developing for each other. However Julie's new beau, Derek, threatens to unearth the many dark secrets within this family as he becomes increasingly suspicious of Jack.
The story of the famous and influential 1960s rock band and its lead singer and composer, Jim Morrison.
The story follows 19-year-old Renee who has always loved fairy tales: the idea of a princess, a hero and a happily ever after. But Renee’s life is that of a darker tale: she’s a young woman battling addiction, depression and self-injury. In a creative blend of artistic fantasy balanced with harsh reality, the movie follows Renee on her courageous journey towards recovery.