All Is True
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: December 21, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
59
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 32 Critic Reviews
Positive:
16
Mixed:
14
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerMay 11, 2019
Given the impossibility of crafting William Shakespeare into a believable human being, the film is an honorable try. Read full review
80
The TelegraphTim RobeyFeb 8, 2019
All is True is a tongue-in-cheek title all the same, for a script which fills in factual gaps with its own blatant leaps of imagination: they’re just far more respectful and illuminating leaps. Read full review
80
Film ThreatAlan NgJan 27, 2019
All is True does justice to the Bard, and devout fans of Shakespeare are sure to find a place for it, if not on the shelf alongside his classics, but in a small place in their hearts. Read full review
80
Screen DailyJonathan RomneyDec 26, 2018
A tender, intelligent imagining of the playwright in retirement. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawDec 25, 2018
All Is True is sentimental, theatrical, likable – and unfashionable. Read full review
75
Original-CinLiam LaceyMay 24, 2019
To some extent, the performances elevate the script. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayMay 14, 2019
An intriguing speculative drama. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyMay 14, 2019
Even if this handsome film runs a bit snoozy and dull at times, it’s wondefully acted and clearly made with no shortage of compassion and love. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comOdie HendersonMay 10, 2019
Say what you want about his onscreen vices, but Branagh has always been a charitable director and it really shows here. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloMay 7, 2019
Solid, creative melodrama is nothing to sneeze at, but it can’t compete with enduring genius. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineWes GreeneMay 6, 2019
It’s an unfussy, intimate chamber drama that’s fearless in confronting the attitudes of its exalted subject. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyDana SchwartzDec 21, 2018
There is a beautiful, surprising, and entirely engrossing film within this movie; it’s just almost impossible to find among the establishing shots of ponds and endless subplots of real-life characters introduced for seemingly no other reason than to help make this movie perfect for sophomore year high school classes. Read full review
70
The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisMay 9, 2019
While All Is True might not brim with excitement, it’s beautifully acted, richly photographed (by Zac Nicholson) and blessedly free of histrionics. Between them, Branagh and Elton have concocted a respectful story of loss, regret and wistful genius. Read full review
70
Rolling StonePeter TraversMay 9, 2019
Branagh’s performance is a triumph of ferocity and feeling that shuns Shakespeare the literary rock star to find the flawed, touchingly human man inside. Read full review
63
The Seattle TimesSoren AndersenJun 19, 2019
All Is True is handsomely mounted, filled with shadowed interiors underscoring the darkness of its story, the darkness artfully interrupted by candlelight and firelight. The movie’s impressive appearance notwithstanding, Shakespeare’s domestic problems do not a classic make. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreMay 30, 2019
As funereal as it all can feel, All is True manages the wistfulness that must have been Branagh’s design, the director of “Thor” and “Murder on the Orient Express” returning to his first love, his idol, for an affectionate if somewhat perfunctory portrait. Read full review
60
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottJun 8, 2019
Consequently, while it's stocked with moments of heartfelt appreciation for the craft, it plays more like a 17th century soap opera than anything else. Read full review
60
The New YorkerAnthony LaneMay 13, 2019
No, what’s dismaying about All Is True is that it plays so slow and loose. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Simran HansFeb 13, 2019
I like Branagh’s eye for landscapes too; space is used elegantly, while widescreen canvases glow green and orange. Read full review
60
EmpireHelen O'HaraFeb 6, 2019
A quiet and meditative portrait of the artist as a retiree, this lacks incident or high stakes but has an elegiac feeling of regret and reckoning that fits its subject’s twilight years. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyDec 21, 2018
A labor of love, to be sure, but a simple, small-scaled domestic drama with none of the broad appeal of the hugely popular "Shakespeare in Love" of 1998, this thoroughly respectable Sony Classics pickup will command the interest mostly of older-skewing art house habituees. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy BurrMay 22, 2019
All is True is expertly acted and handsomely filmed but suffers from an excess of sentimentality, a rash of revelations, and a surfeit of subtext, with characters blurting out the hidden motives for their behavior instead of simply behaving them. I imagine Shakespeare himself might be simultaneously tickled and appalled. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzMay 22, 2019
Unfortunately no amount of self-confidence can sustain All Is True, Branagh’s stab at filling in the blanks of Shakespeare’s retirement, about which there is little officially known. Read full review
50
Arizona RepublicBarbara VanDenburghMay 14, 2019
How do you make a legend as imposing as Shakespeare flesh? All Is True suggests you can't, if not even Branagh, Dench, McKellen, et al. can bring him down to earth. Maybe it's for the best that the real man is unknowable, that man is simply the work itself. Read full review
50
IndieWireDavid EhrlichDec 24, 2018
The result is a portrait that’s equally sullen and playful, clever and confused; for all its pleasures, All Is True never amounts to the sum of all the many parts that Shakespeare may have played in his time or thereafter. Read full review
50
TheWrapElizabeth WeitzmanDec 23, 2018
It’s hard to say whether Branagh is concerned about getting things wrong, or of being disrespectful. But he never finds the freedom he’s unlocked so often in Shakespeare’s own works. His ambition is honorable, but without substance, it becomes merely the shadow of a dream. Read full review
50
SlateIsaac ButlerDec 21, 2018
All Is True does not work as a film, but as a memorial to a writer whose shadow we are still working in today, and an expression of yearning to know who he really was, it has an odd vitality that cannot be completely dismissed. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleDec 19, 2018
A fitfully engaging, well-intentioned but disappointing original biographical drama. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenMay 29, 2019
Some of the interplay between Branagh and Dench as a refamiliarizing couple is also delightful. However, apart from fleeting pleasures, All Is True is mostly a goodie bag stuffed for Shakespeare completists. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternMay 9, 2019
Its inventions and speculations aren’t very interesting. Nowhere do they hint at the man who gave us the plays. Read full review
25
ObserverOliver JonesDec 21, 2018
Forget all of it being true; I would have settled for some of it being interesting. Read full review
20
VarietyPeter DebrugeDec 21, 2018
The result is a revisionist fiasco, too dense with Shakespeare allusions for casual moviegoers, and too fast and loose with the facts for those who know a thing or two about the man. In short, All Is True takes the English language’s most gifted dramatist and reduces his sunset years to a sloppy soap opera. Read full review
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