Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

st-shot In the latest exhumation of tragic movie icon Marilyn Monroe we are given a sober rehashing of the erratic star's career with a cast of ever so sober and somber A listers quoting from her diary and playing the past. Long on pretense with nothing new to reveal it is strictly for Monroe fans who can do without the organ music.Dead half a century Monroe was basically a one note actress with an incredible charisma whose sex appeal packed them in the theatres. It had more to do with her curves than thespian turns however. In Love, Mariylyn Glenn Close, Marisa Tomei, Lindsay Lohan et all speak in hush, reverential, almost pained tone while doc director Liz Garbus serves up speculation with today's perspective resulting in the same metaphorical soup out of Monroe and her career that the print and celluloid media have been serving up since her death fifty years back. Same questions same answers.Between the testimonials and the crying out there are some rare archival moments that capture her remarkable appeal towards the end of her career driving George Cukor crazy as she deconstruct's on the set of her last film Something's Gotta Give. A stunning façade of bright eyed beauty and optimism imploding before your eyes, it says more in these brief moments than the entire doc and its heavy handed director posing and framing the patronizing prattle of it's actors delivered with spot on wake like melancholy inflection.

Liss (lvlss) Since Marilyn Monroe is one of my idols, I had to watch this documentary. I knew a lot about her already since she has been such a big part of my life but I was excited to see and hear Marilyn's own voice come to life in such a unique way. The movie takes you through the ups and downs of her life with commentary from great talents and other people in her life such as Milton Greene's widow, Amy Greene, friends and other actors/directors such as Jane Russell and Billy Wilder. I found myself crying throughout the whole documentary because we all know Marilyn's life was ended tragically but yet, everyone still sees her as just a sex symbol when really, that was the farthest from her real personality. Love, Marilyn takes you inside her mind by talents of this new era and it is thoroughly enjoyable.

NJeagle Writing a review is not usual for me, but after watching this film I felt compelled to offer an alternative take to what another reviewer has described as "fairly insufferable". That is a personal view, not particularly objective, or even fair, in my opinion. I believe anyone who has seen any to all of Marliyn's movies will appreciate the insights this movie provides into her private life. I found the readings from her journals particularly enlightening. The content of these journals was deeply personal and well articulated, and the dramatic readings by various actors only amplified this fact. I've seen other documentaries about MM, but in my opinion this film does the best job of demonstrating the dichotomy between her movie persona and her personal life. It reveals that behind the sex symbol was a thoughtful, intelligent woman who worked hard for everything she got, and who was plagued throughout her life by psychological demons. It is an evenhanded approach, neither castigating her for her faults, nor deifying her for what she accomplished. Highly recommended for all MM fans.

Frances Farmer I went to this movie knowing very little about Marilyn Monroe, and glad to have the opportunity to learn more about her. Unfortunately, the way the film was put together made it highly disappointing to me.We are told at the start that recently unearthed writings of the actress herself are to be incorporated in the film, and this sounded promising to me. However, the rediscovered writings are actually the biggest problem with this movie. While these notes, journal entries, etc. show Marilyn Monroe at her most honest and unguarded, they are included via dramatic readings by a long list of contemporary actors. The actors are shot superimposed on images of the original writings themselves, pages filled with a rather childish scrawl. The photography of the actors as they read is filled with hyperactive panning, zooming and cutting that quickly becomes highly distracting. Also, the actors' dramatic readings are generally stilted and end up being quite grating because as examples of acting they are very subpar. Unaccountably, the actors often do not read Marilyn's exact words, carelessly omitting or adding a word here or there. You know this because the actor is reading the line while the line is shown enlarged in the background at the same time in Marilyn's handwriting. Sometimes the version read by the actor is actually meaningfully different because of the omission or inclusion of a word or two. I couldn't understand why short phrases couldn't just be read accurately by the actors... or was this their "attempt" to add their own interpretation to historical documents that should have simply been left alone?Toward the end of the movie, I took to closing my eyes whenever an actor came on screen to declaim yet another excerpt from Marilyn Monroe's diaries. Not watching the hyperactive camera work made these frequent interludes more bearable but they were still painful enough.It seems obvious that the film maker decided that having a narrator simply read the excerpts from Marilyn's diaries as a voice over would be too boring or passe. The film maker apparently thought that dramatic readings by well-known actors would jazz up the journal writings and make the film more exciting for viewers. In my case this did not happen and I really hated this pointless approach to the written text.Simply put, the film maker's obsession with making historical material more exciting/lively was a complete turnoff for me. The dramatic readings were frequent, intrusive, uninteresting and often ridiculous. This is what happens when someone tries too hard to be liked.As you have no doubt guessed I do not recommend this movie. If there's another way to learn more about Marilyn Monroe through a movie, then do yourself a favor and go that other way.