My heart was full watching the love pain Maria carried until the last days of her life, adding the faded fame and ability to sing which drove her insane!

Screenwriter Steven Knight has much to answer for in Callas being quite so shrill, but Ms. Jolie is unable to turn her storied character—one of opera’s most important and influential performers, a woman of polarizing voice, scandalous history and tempestuous personality—into something recognizably human.

John Anderson

Wall Street Journal

Maria is both winningly camp and a little too po-faced for its own good, apparently unsure if it’s meant to be tongue-in-cheek or deadly serious.

Practically every immaculate shot in Maria is framed as if it were the title character's own theater stage. This makes an apt runway for Angelina Jolie to do her thing and deliver easily her most dialed-in performance of the last decade (or more).