Starlet Reviews
Film School Rejects
It does not prove to be an ultimately rewarding experience.
Time Out Chicago
No amount of strong acting, however, can entirely compensate for the dramatic conveniences or every shrill appearance by Jane's cartoonishly despicable roommates.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Top CriticUnfortunately, the film signals its more serious aspirations aggressively, via "thoughtful" synth drones and an italicized parental subtext.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
"Starlet" is like a flower growing out of a septic tank.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Baker effectively juxtaposes two vastly different worlds, though he never makes the case that either is as significant as the gauzy visuals suggest.
Paste Magazine
Though the plot of Starlet may sound formulaic, the film is handled with a level of care and understatement that elevates it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 7.5/10
Willamette Week
Either avoids or transcends nearly every cliché we've come to associate with American independent film.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
This is confident, engrossing storytelling, and the actors are terrific.
Metro Times (Detroit, MI)
...consistently surprising in the way it mingles tender emotions with inherent tawdriness, casually incorporating graphic sex scenes with touching moments of innocent human interaction.
Full Review
| Original Score: A-
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
...has a sunny SoCal vibe that belies its tawdry milieu
Full Review
| Original Score: 88/100
The film itself deserves praise for its portraits of these two women and the different worlds they inhabit.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
You may have never heard of Sean Baker, but he's one of the most astute and least sentimental chroniclers of life on the fringes working in film today.
Where it counts, "Starlet" ... allows its characters room to maneuver within the potential cliches.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
East Bay Express
Sean Baker's amiably oblique Starlet finds fresh ways to tell a familiar story.
Film-Forward.com
Hemingway gives her naïf substance and Johnson turns her crone into a caring mother-figure. . .in surprising ways so their winning poignancy makes up for the fanciful [end].
Full Review
| Original Score: 7/10
Slant Magazine
The film works as a charming aesthetic exercise with its jerky camera and inadvertent cuts, as a contemplation on intergenerational female bonding.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
A thrillingly, unexpectedly good American movie about love and a moral awakening ...
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
ColeSmithey.com
"Starlet" is a transparent bellwether of American society. Innocence is a shattered illusion, and emotions are a useless devotion. All youth is wasted.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
[An] ethereal slice of life in the San Fernando Valley ...
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
