Critic Reviews

It’s a picture-perfect look at a highly imperfect show-biz-royalty relationship. ... Because of his [Ethan Hawke's] willingness to look at all of it, the good and the bad and as much of the truth of it all he can track down, Hawke’s efforts pay off in a spectacular fashion.

[Ethan Hawke's] geeked-out zeal for the details of these two lives, and the lifetime of work they produced, injects the whole project with a joie de vivre that its three subjects — Woodward, Newman, and their marriage — demand.

A new benchmark for in-depth looks at films and those who make them. For film lovers, “The Last Movie Stars” is unapologetically essential viewing, a gold standard fitting that rare on-screen power couple whose image together transcended even the often-spectacular work they did, with or without each other, on the big screen.

[Ethan Hawke] expertly weaves footage from their films that, when paired with the memoir audio, takes on autobiographical layers, unearthing them like an archaeologist finding these layers hidden in plain sight. ... While the doc’s exploration of Newman’s superstardom in the 1960s is strong, Hawke’s careful examination of how motherhood affected Woodward’s stardom is raw and powerful.

We learn an encyclopedia’s worth of detail about their careers, lives and struggles over the immersive, exhaustive six chapters of The Last Movie Stars. [25 Jul - 14 Aug 2022, p.4]

This series is way better than good. It's easy to imagine people who know nothing about Newman and Woodward being mesmerized by it.

The radical brilliance of Ethan Hawke’s penetrating look into the exceptional art and stormy marriage of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward is essential viewing for fans and newbies alike and an outpouring of movie love you’ll never forget.

This thoughtful exploration of the couple’s artistic collaborations and offscreen relationship offers surprises at every turn and, with no prefab treatise to prove, it gets under the skin. ... The series is haunting as well as celebratory, filled with reminders of unsung triumphs and forgotten corners of the filmographies and stage work. Fans both ardent and casual will find plenty to savor.

This documentary series may not convince you its subjects were the last movie stars; their mastery of showing what they wanted the world to see feels utterly contemporary. But they’re unusually gifted ones — as, after spending six hours in their company, you’ll leave “The Last Movie Stars” wanting more.

The series is a visual feast. But its heart is Stern’s interviews, and Hawke came up with a terrific way to present them. ... At first, this [Hawke's Zoom appearances] seems like an affectation — though at the time it must have been a pandemic-dictated necessity. It quickly comes to seem natural, lending an informality to the film that makes it seem even more engaging.