Wendy

[Wendy] sees the director double down on his style while finding little reason to justify it.

A new take on Peter Pan that actually works, delivering all the visual richness you'd hope for from the film-maker behind Beasts Of The Southern Wild.

While by no means perfect, Wendy ... has originality, folklore, and old-school Americana to recommend it.

I found myself pulled along, not only by Zeitlin's tugging showmanship, but the ache he manages to create around childhood as an enchanted space.

This isn't a modern spin on a classic tale of fantasy and wonder, it's an outright nightmare I never want to think about ever again.

The twee onslaught of Wendy reinforces that filmmaker Benh Zeitlin's view of childhood wonder remains superficial--and racially problematic.

Sometimes Zeitlin is too literal, sometimes he’s too vague. The occasional salty dialogue from the kids feels forced, and not all of the non-professional performances click. But those things never rob the movie of its imagination, emotion, and grit.

The metaphors are sprinkled liberally like fairy dust, as childish imagination and joy clashes with the reality and bitterness wrought by old age.

An astonishing riff on Peter Pan, this film is both earthy and dreamy at the same time.

This is ambitious, wild filmmaking that pushes with childlike recklessness against the rigid bounds of literary adaptation: it doesn't always succeed, but when it does, everything feels -- just for a moment -- extraordinary.