Vox Lux
Neon | Release Date: December 7, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
67
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 39 Critic Reviews
Positive:
22
Mixed:
14
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 7, 2018
There are great movies every year, but every so often there’s a movie that’s not only great but new, that advances the form a little, that pushes movies to a different place. Such movies get remembered as the thing that happened in cinema that year. The thing that happened in 2018 is Vox Lux. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangDec 6, 2018
The movie doesn’t just feel coldly analytical; it’s raw and enveloping, darkly funny and terribly alive. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinSep 4, 2018
All-pervasive millennial unease – the sense the world no longer works as it used to, or should – is Vox Lux’s plangent root-position chord, and the film offers no easy cure – beyond Celeste’s genuinely great, and Gaga-like, music. Read full review
100
CineVueJohn BleasdaleSep 4, 2018
With Vox Lux, Corbet has delivered a towering film, a unique uncompromising vision that reveals the darkness on the edge of town that lurks in the depths of the spotlight. It’s funny, thrilling, deadly serious and achieves genuine depth. Read full review
91
The Film StageRory O'ConnorSep 15, 2018
Corbet’s second feature owes a debt or two to filmmakers reveling in provocation, but it is no doubt the work of a daring original. Read full review
90
The New York TimesManohla DargisDec 6, 2018
Vox Lux is an audacious story about a survivor who becomes a star, and a deeply satisfying, narratively ambitious jolt of a movie. Read full review
90
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 5, 2018
You should prepare to be wowed by Natalie Portman, who delivers a take-no-prisoners performance as Celeste, a swaggering rock diva who tends to burn down everything in her path, especially when she’s crossed. Read full review
90
Screen DailyJonathan RomneySep 4, 2018
Vox Lux is intellectually charged spectacle, with one foot in the Euro-art tradition and the other ankle-deep in the pop zeitgeist. Read full review
90
VarietyGuy LodgeSep 4, 2018
Powered in its second half by a riveting performance of fiercely mannered bravado by Natalie Portman, as a kamikaze electropop diva running her Faustian fame off and under the rails, Vox Lux paints a sharp, shellacked portrait of a ghost in the celebrity machine. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterStephen DaltonSep 4, 2018
Corbet's high-caliber melodrama combines food for thought with sense-blitzing spectacle. Between screaming tantrums and booming anthems, it leaves us with a nagging sense that history never quite repeats itself, but sometimes rhymes. Usually to a thumping disco beat. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyDec 7, 2018
The film is an onslaught, sometimes silly, sometimes profound, but always riveting and emotional, and dazzlingly sure of itself. Read full review
83
The PlaylistJessica KiangSep 4, 2018
Wrapped up in Portman’s like-it-or-loathe-it-you-cannot-ignore-it performance (I love it, for the record) and Corbet’s astonishingly confident filmmaking chutzpah — all fast-motion montages, off-kilter framing, and bravura soundtrack collisions between Walker’s score and Sia/Celeste’s pop tracks — it somehow becomes a jagged, messy but endlessly intriguing whole. Read full review
83
IndieWireMichael NordineSep 4, 2018
Vox Lux is a powerful, haunting film in part because Portman is a powerful, haunting presence — you can’t turn away from her, even if you occasionally want to. Read full review
80
EmpireIan FreerMay 1, 2019
Even if it doesn’t quite go beyond the bubblegum, Corbet’s fusion of A Star Is Born melodramatics with art-house stylings is cold, raw, dark filmmaking. And Portman, like her quiff, is an acquired taste but immense. Read full review
80
The GuardianDamon WiseSep 5, 2018
It’s part satire, part social comment, all fragmented and downright inconclusive. Read full review
75
Philadelphia Daily NewsDan DeLucaDec 20, 2018
It’s not an easy watch: It might be the darkest pop music movie ever made. But it largely succeeds at its main goal, which it not to entertain, but make you think. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 12, 2018
Vox Lux is the sardonic yang to the sincere, heart-yanking yin of this season’s big awards fave, “A Star is Born.” Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 7, 2018
One possible misstep along the way is Willem Dafoe’s narration – it’s too wordy for the material and doesn’t quite work. Still, that’s a minor quibble about an otherwise dead-on portrait of a lost soul who may never quite find herself but who makes an uneasy peace with what the world has made of her. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzSep 8, 2018
Corbet’s work is a big, sloppy wet kiss to all manner of rise-and-fall clichés. Yet it mostly works, with Corbet as eager to display his influences...as he is to prove he can handle his own gonzo-spectacle set-pieces. Read full review
67
Original-CinKim HughesDec 18, 2018
In the end, all the sorrow and horror and anger and angst just seem pointless despite Corbet’s stated intention to juxtapose the meaningless against the tragic. Read full review
63
New York PostSara StewartDec 7, 2018
Natalie Portman is captivating as a damaged electro-pop star known as Celeste in Vox Lux, a flawed, flashy drama from actor/director Brady Corbet (“The Childhood of a Leader”). Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreDec 4, 2018
Vox Lux is “A Star is Born” for the bubblegum babies of pop. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeMay 5, 2019
The film is at its most successful in the first half, which shows the genesis of a pop phenomenon...But once Portman takes over the role, as a jaded, jangled pop veteran, the picture becomes less persuasive. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 1, 2019
What a commanding performance from Cassidy. And Scott Walker’s orchestral score offers a sinister caress. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfDec 22, 2018
An uneven but fascinating spectacle. Read full review
60
TheWrapCandice FrederickDec 5, 2018
Vox Lux does at least try to confront an undiscussed truth about today’s pop culture within a sociopolitical context. Plus, Portman and Raffidy (as well as Stacy Martin, who plays Portman’s unappreciated sister Eleanor) deliver solid performances in this relentlessly, effectively miserable narrative. Read full review
60
The New YorkerAnthony LaneDec 3, 2018
Personally, I reckon that Portman tips Vox Lux off balance. The simple act of drinking through a straw is turned into an embarrassing megaslurp. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubKatie RifeDec 5, 2018
It’s a more cynical, and arguably more realistic, depiction of the unique malignancies of fame than this year’s other Oscar-baiting pop musical, "A Star Is Born." But ultimately, it’s no more insightful. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTom RussoDec 12, 2018
After a point, we’re left wondering whether we’re watching a character study or caricature. Either way, the portrait gradually morphs from intriguing to tedious. Read full review
50
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanDec 5, 2018
An ambitious but ultimately ungraceful meditation on pop superstardom that spans decades, awkwardly weaving themes of school shootings, terrorism, obsessive fandom and post-traumatic stress into the psychological portrait of a singer whose career was born of tragedy. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyNov 26, 2018
Corbet doesn’t seem as interested in the answers to the provocatively glib questions he raises as he is in creating a cynical riddle cloaked in style. No doubt some will find all of this to be a deep meditation on the pop-industrial complex, but from where I was sitting, it just felt like empty camp. Read full review
42
ConsequenceMichael RoffmanDec 6, 2018
Vox Lux wants to be everything and winds up being nothing. By the end, when the whole thing devolves into a dubious concert film, and we’re watching fake fans go crazy over fake songs, there’s this uncanny valley of universal bliss that’s just achingly hollow. Read full review
40
CineVueTom DugginsApr 30, 2019
An imagined biography of a fictional pop star, the film is ambitious in its structure but only occasionally flickers into life. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleDanielle WhiteDec 12, 2018
There’s nothing feel-good about this story – even moments that should be hopeful. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaDec 7, 2018
As a story of popular art born in the crucible of violent trauma, it’s a fantastic, wildly ambitious idea; as a filmed drama with human characters, it’s confoundingly executed at every turn. Vox Lux is a failure, but one I can’t stop thinking about. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 6, 2018
Beneath the glitzy surface of Vox Lux — the title of one of Celeste’s studio recordings — lie deeper superficialities, so many that I found myself admiring the movie’s wild ambition while grinding my teeth at its pretentiousness. Read full review
38
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenDec 5, 2018
Vox Lux has such snarky contempt for pop music—or at least the star-making machinery that governs it—that you wonder why writer-director Brady Corbet bothered to make an entire movie about the subject. Read full review
25
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperDec 26, 2018
A giant pile of shiny gift-wrapped garbage. Read full review
25
Slant MagazineJake ColeSep 16, 2018
Vox Lux sets up its main character as a beneficiary of tragedy, opening up a compellingly macabre narrative about how school shootings are becoming so commonplace that they can effectively serve as launchpads for stardom. But that idea goes nowhere, as Vox Lux proceeds to play Celeste's experience in the music industry mostly straight. Read full review
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