|
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
|
Positive:
18
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
|
Critic Reviews
May 14, 2015
Season 1 Review:
This trio of formidable women [Queen Latifah, Mo’Nique, and Khandi Alexander]--playing Smith, mentor Ma Rainey, and Smith’s hissable sister Viola, respectively--bring all of their firepower, often elevating the film from workmanlike to extraordinary with their collective ferocity.
Read full review
May 14, 2015
Season 1 Review:
What's missing, unfortunately, is any attempt to explain that music--to tell us what made Smith stand out, to examine her impact on other singers, and to give us a sense of the extent of her popularity. And yet, while those flaws are not unimportant, they're also unlikely to be what you'll remember most. No, that will be Latifah, glowing with pleasure after a song well sung, screaming with agony after another betrayal, risking and exposing everything as a performer. She's a star, born yet again.
Read full review
May 11, 2015
Season 1 Review:
Director Dee Rees lends the film grit, even when it's singing a familiar tune. But this is really a showcase for the actors. [15 May 2015, p.54]
May 18, 2015
Season 1 Review:
It does bear the compromises and conventions that routinely afflict biographical dramas.... But it's no worse in this respect than most such films and better than many — rarely cornball and, indeed, conceivably less melodramatic than the life it portrays. And it's always well played.
Read full review
May 11, 2015
Season 1 Review:
For such a volatile character, Latifah gives a refreshingly restrained performance, and her commanding stillness imbues gravitas into a number of key scenes. She conveys Smith's toughness and earthy sensuality, keeping the demons that drive her forward or nudge her toward self-destruction largely internalized.
Read full review
RogerEbert.comMay 15, 2015
Season 1 Review:
This sexually-charged, intense look at Blues icon Bessie Smith often feels defiantly episodic, as if co-writer/director Dee Rees is purposefully trying to sketch a portrait of a life in incomplete brush strokes, but Latifah, who is in nearly every scene, never falters in her portrayal of a woman who was too edgy, too real, and too tough to be famous before the world came crashing down around her.
Read full review
May 15, 2015
Season 1 Review:
Bessie, with a gorgeous soundtrack performed largely by Latifah, tells this story in far less simplistic fashion. Rees dramatizes Smith’s demons in powerful, sometimes chaotic fashion, jumping back in time to show her as an abused child and depicting her adult life in vignettes that don’t always flow together.
Read full review
May 11, 2015
Season 1 Review:
If the first half of the film seems slightly more engaging than the second, it’s because it has more music. Queen Latifah should be a slam dunk for an Emmy nomination for playing Bessie, but she deserves even more praise for helping contemporary audiences understand the power of Bessie’s blues.
Read full review
May 13, 2015
Season 1 Review:
The performances are splendid throughout, starting with Latifah.... Coupled with the plentiful music, those assets largely overcome the fact that the movie itself is somewhat scattered, narratively speaking, not so much ending as simply covering different aspects of Smith’s colorful life before running out of time.
Read full review
May 11, 2015
Season 1 Review:
The film's conception of Bessie is sentimental, but the visceral sensuality of Latifah's presence eclipses it, as she informs every gesture with body language that's subtly graceful in its bluntness, clouding where Bessie's sense of overcompensation for her early family life ends and where her biological hungers begin.
Read full review
May 14, 2015
Current TV Shows
By MetascoreBy User Score