Lee
Roadside Attractions | Release Date: September 27, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
62
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
16
Mixed:
14
Negative:
0

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
ObserverRex ReedSep 30, 2024
Filmed in England, Hungary and Croatia, Lee is a vivid and unforgettable tribute to one of the bold women who devoted her life to the penetration of male dominance to change the way we see the world. Don’t even think about missing it. Read full review
90
Film ThreatAndy HowellSep 29, 2023
Lee is beautiful, daring, and elusive, as all great art should be. It’s a fitting tribute to a woman whose work exhibited the same qualities. Read full review
85
Paste MagazineNadira Begum Sep 24, 2024
Kuras avoids fashioning Lee as a generic war biopic by using Miller’s life story as a means through which to explore the myriad experiences of women during war. Read full review
83
Original-CinLiam LaceySep 26, 2024
These questionable narrative kinks aside, Lee still features one of the year-to-date’s best performances, honouring a woman who needs to be remembered, along with a sober consideration of the roles of women in wartime. Read full review
80
The New York TimesLisa KennedySep 27, 2024
“Lee” feeds the desire to seek out more of her images. Winslet’s performance demands that we consider the force behind the camera. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKatie WalshSep 26, 2024
This is a penetrating biopic, and while it may take a familiar shape, the pioneering woman at the center was anything but traditional. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeSep 16, 2024
Not surprisingly given Kuras’s background as a cinematographer, Lee is largely visually driven. Read full review
80
BBCCaryn JamesSep 10, 2023
The war scenes speak loudly on their own, with no need to add dramatic emphasis. Alexandre Desplat's score matches that style, with a subtle, piercing beauty. If the first half of Lee had been as dazzlingly effective as the second, it might have been a great film instead of a very good one. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperSep 26, 2024
As you can image, there are scenes that elicit shock and outrage, even after all these decades. However, it does make for a Familiar Viewing experience, as virtually every sequence in this impressively mounted and well-photographed docudrama is straight out of the standard-issue biopic playbook. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen JohnsonSep 24, 2024
Still, “Lee,” based on Antony Penrose’s biography of his mother, “The Lives of Lee Miller,” is an interesting look at an artist whose true importance, unfortunately, became apparent only many years after her death. Read full review
75
The Film StageChristopher SchobertSep 11, 2023
In many ways Lee is a perfect festival crowd-pleaser––handsomely made, well-acted, based on a true story, filled with recognizable stars. While it is not a great film, it is undoubtedly a good one, and that’s enough to warrant a recommendation. Read full review
70
VarietyCarlos AguilarNov 16, 2023
Even at her character’s most vulnerable, the Oscar-winning actor presents Lee with an edge of defensiveness, her guard never fully down, likely tied to a traumatic event in childhood. Read full review
70
Screen DailyWendy IdeSep 10, 2023
The first feature film from cinematographer Ellen Kuras is a satisfyingly textured portrait of a remarkable and unusual woman, who had an almost Zelig-like gift for bearing witness to key moments in history. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliSep 30, 2024
Despite a terrific performance by Kate Winslet and some powerful moments during the film’s final third, Lee falls into the bio-pic trap of trying to encapsulate too much of a famous person’s life into a two-hour chunk. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreSep 27, 2024
Winslet is convincingly flinty, uncompromising and American in the part, a feminist in the truest traditional sense of the word. Excellent supporting cast aside, she’s the reason to see “Lee,” a one woman argument for why what Lee Miller documented and how she documented it mattered in a movie that honors her memory, and the memories that haunted her to the end of her days. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comNell MinowSep 27, 2024
Kuras understands the unique position of the photographer as intrusive but unobtrusive, sensitive enough to see where the story is but removed enough to maintain observer status. However, as for more about who she was, Miller stays frustratingly out of focus. Read full review
60
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzSep 24, 2024
Kuras’s film, especially the paint-by-numbers script credited to a trio of writers, seems to oddly object to such a strong spirit, boxing the character into the most formulaic of narratives. Read full review
60
Total FilmKate StablesSep 11, 2024
Exploring how a one-time surrealist art muse fought to report atrocities, this handsome but rather conventional biopic showcases a tip-top Winslet performance, but at times meanders like a weighty Wikipedia entry. Read full review
60
EmpireSophie ButcherSep 9, 2024
Despite some tired storytelling devices, Lee is a handsomely made, moving biopic of a subject who deserves to be honoured — with stellar chemistry and performances from Kate Winslet and Andy Samberg. Read full review
60
Time OutAlex SimsSep 6, 2024
As an argument for how urgent and powerful photography can be, and the debt we owe Miller for the lengths she went to take those images, Lee wins hands down. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterLovia GyarkyeSep 11, 2023
Kuras’ film is competent, polished and awards-ready. And while that all makes for a fine viewing experience, the movie also feels at odds with its subject — a restless woman whose passion and hurt drove her to action. Read full review
60
The Daily BeastNick SchagerSep 10, 2023
Though stirringly headlined by Kate Winslet, it’s a by-the-books affair in almost every respect. Read full review
50
The Irish TimesTara BradySep 11, 2024
For a film that depicts the discovery of the Holocaust, Lee is curiously flat and uninvolving. Miller and the images she captured deserve better. Read full review
50
ColliderNate RichardSep 17, 2023
Unlike the real-life woman, Lee settles on being ordinary when it could have been extraordinary. Read full review
50
IndieWireNatalia WinkelmanSep 13, 2023
Though it is not an unpleasant experience, it is a limp one. Read full review
42
The PlaylistJason BaileySep 10, 2023
Lee knows exactly how it wants to look, yet it has little that’s new or interesting to say. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithSep 27, 2024
Neither the director, Ellen Kuras, a cinematographer and documentarian whose debut narrative feature this is, nor the film’s three screenwriters can solve its essential problem, which is that it amounts to a string of grisly anecdotes. Read full review
40
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiSep 27, 2024
Winslet’s got plenty of fire as the titular photographer, but the biopic’s spark quickly fades. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesSep 26, 2024
A model and artist’s muse turned photographer who shot unforgettable images of Europe at war, Miller was then largely forgotten by the establishment, until her son revived her work after her death in 1977. Underappreciated in her time, one wishes better for her than this underwhelming biopic. Read full review
40
The GuardianBenjamin LeeSep 10, 2023
The life it’s focused on, that of model turned second world war photographer Lee Miller, is an undeniably interesting one, but it’s only in the briefest of moments that the film justifies why it’s a narrative endeavour rather than a documentary and every one of those moments comes courtesy of its lead. Read full review
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