Elsinore

The pallid grayness of Mike Eley’s cinematography is probably supposed to mimic the finality of HIV/AIDS taking hold, but there’s no passion aesthetically to counterbalance what becomes absolute misery onscreen to watch.

Does Elsinore get melodramatic along the way? Sure, but only in the sense that Shakespeare gets melodramatic – which is to say, gloriously so.

Steve Pond

TheWrap

Scott’s searing dual performance — as Charleson and as Hamlet in a National Theatre production that became both the ultimate challenge and fulfillment of his professional career — makes Simon Stone’s film an emotional powerhouse even if it doesn’t avoid inspirational cliché. But it’s a vivid picture of London at the height of the AIDS crisis and a stirring gesture of gratitude to art, specifically theater, as a lifeline even when death looms large.

David Rooney

The Hollywood Reporter