Excerpted from Peter Debruge‘s 9.3 Variety review of Paul McGuigan‘s Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool: “[In this] lovingly crafted but tough-going biopic, one-time bombshell Gloria Grahame — a character Annette Bening dons like a pair of elegant opera gloves — disappears 40 minutes in, replaced by a slow-motion and rather standard-issue terminal illness victim, daintily coughing her way to her death bed for the rest of the movie. The first couple reels are golden [with] McGuigan truly giving us a gift, humanizing a figure whom most have only objectified. Though sniffles could be heard from every corner of the Telluride Film Festival screening where this drawn-out weepie premiered, you may well find yourself wishing the old gal would just go on and die in Liverpool already.”
