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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (TV)

HBO Classics

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

2017

George C. Wolfe

Oprah Winfrey, Rose Byrne, Courtney B. Vance, Renee Goldsberry ...

5.4

101

Drama An African-American woman becomes an unwitting pioneer for medical breakthroughs when her cells are used to create the first immortal human cell line in the early 1950s.

	Author	Review
United States	Keith Uhlich The Hollywood Reporter	"Fair to call it 'lacking' (...) Tepid HBO melodrama"	NEG
United States	Maureen Ryan Variety	"The HBO movie about this trio makes only one of the women truly memorable, but it’s worth seeing in order to witness Oprah Winfrey give one of the best performances of her career."	NEU
United States	Ben Travers IndieWire	"Oprah Winfrey dominates an HBO film told from the wrong perspective (...) An upsetting true story gets a film treatment far too listless"	NEG
United States	Verne Gay Newsday	"A beautiful, moving film, and Oprah (as usual) brings it."	POS
United States	Kristi Turnquist Portland Oregonian	"Oprah Winfrey tries hard, but TV movie feels rushed (...) The story of Henrietta Lacks is too big to be compressed into 90 minutes"	NEG
Canada	Toronto Star	"Under the rigorous eye of executive producer Winfrey (...) the science story is pushed to the margins, and the focus is the family, their cultural, personal and racial legacies the heart of the matter."	POS
United States	Baltimore Sun	"Oprah soars (...) There is not an Emmy big enough to do justice to Winfrey's performance"	POS

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