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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
7
Mixed:
13
Negative:
6
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Critic Reviews
Jun 4, 2021
Season 1 Review:
The outright fantastical elements of “Lisey’s Story,” some being of the monster-in-the woods variety, feel at some point to be in conflict with the more palpable drama at hand. ... All the performances are first-rate. Mr. Owen is in rare form. ... Ms. Allen and Ms. Moore are extraordinary and, though she plays to type, Jennifer Jason Leigh is a treat as Darla, the third Debusher sister.
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Jul 20, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Lisey’s Story is a great case study for the strengths and weaknesses of King’s writing — beautiful themes occasionally clashing against self-indulgence. Lucky for us, the good outweighs the bad, and like Lisey, we can find a glimmer of closure among the fog of confusion and despair.
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Jun 4, 2021
Season 1 Review:
“Lisey’s Story” feels overstuffed at times and might have been even sharper and more terrifying if it had clocked in with five or six total episodes, but this is still an elegantly haunting journey with memorably raw and real performances from three of the best actresses in the world — Julianne Moore, Joan Allen and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
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IndieWireJun 4, 2021
Season 1 Review:
As the show progresses and the logistics of her journey come into sharper relief, it’s natural to wonder if all of this is worth it. It’s never an easy “yes,” but when the obfuscation starts to melt away and the show isn’t bent on delivering the extremes of human behavior, the punishing ride leads to a destination with some unexpected rewards.
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Jun 7, 2021
Season 1 Review:
It swings for something big and cinematic and artistic and deep, which you may take as a good plan or a bad one. It is the sort of work that some will find ineffably beautiful and others unbearably tiresome. Acknowledging its prettiness and production values, and some excellent performances, I found it better than unbearable but something less than beautiful.
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May 25, 2021
Season 1 Review:
There’s much here that works well: What is meant to be scary is scary, what is meant to touch the heart will. And Moore, always good at playing women trying to project calm, is in fine form. But viewers may wonder what it all adds up to, why this unblinking look at one woman’s hard time also had so much extra, often outlandish stuff that didn’t quite pay off.
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Jun 4, 2021
Season 1 Review:
What's on screen can be bloated, rambling and exasperating. But Stephen King’s eight-hour streaming version of his favorite among his own scary novels can—thanks to a great cast led by Julianne Moore and Clive Owen—pull you up short with the beauty and terror of marriage.
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May 25, 2021
Season 1 Review:
The overall problem in Lisey’s Story generally doesn’t concern the actors — or the director, since Larrain gives every frame intimacy, however much you sense his desire to buck the increased linearity of the story. No, the problem is the all-too-palpable battle between fidelity to a text and compatibility to a medium.
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Jun 4, 2021
May 31, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Adapted exclusively by King from his own 2006 novel, Lisey's Story is a mess in almost every conceivable way. It's drawn from a leaden and forgettable novel, and King's ponderous attempt at a screenplay has done nothing to improve it. Neither has Chilean director Pablo Larrain's painfully arty translation of the written word into video. And while Lisey's Story is loaded with female star power—Julianne Moore, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Joan Allen play sisters—King and Larrain have given them little to do except look head-bangingly anguished or (in Allen's case) catatonic.
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Jun 4, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Performances can only do so much to mitigate King's exhaustive scripts and the stylized but spiritually chilled approach Larraín takes to directing pieces like this. Writing for readers has a cadence distinct from writing for the screen that eludes King here. ... In the finale King stacks enough endpoints on top of each other and keeps on going that after a point it starts to feel like the cinematic equivalent of medieval punishment.
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Jun 2, 2021
Season 1 Review:
The cast is superb, especially among the three sisters, and the storytelling takes structural risks. But there’s something deeply unpleasant about “Lisey’s Story,” a stubborn elusiveness and fierce humorlessness that cut off whatever observations it might make about love and human nature. ... “Lisey’s Story” also indulges in a sadistic streak that goes above and beyond the call of duty.
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Jun 4, 2021
Season 1 Review:
The many extended, atmospheric stretches that rely on these visuals and performances get tedious fast. The show is too long; it wrings eight molasses-paced episodes out of a story that provides sufficient narrative for four at most. And technical competence can’t save a skeletal plot held together by pseudo-psychology or a script pocked with bad lines.
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