Title: The Goldfinch
MPAA Rating: R
Director: John Crowley
Starring: Oakes Fegley, Ansel Elgort, Nicole Kidman
Runtime: 2 hrs 29 mins

What It Is: When Theo Decker (Fegley) was just a boy he went through a terrible incident at a museum. This trauma manifested itself constantly throughout his childhood. Even after a well off family takes him in. When his father Larry (Luke Wilson) comes back into the picture everything will change. He does, however, have a reminder of the trauma he suffers and even now as a man Theo (Elgort) is dealing with those scars…by any means necessary.

What We Think: John Crowley has made some beautiful films (see Brooklyn). While this one looks beautiful (thanks to cinematographer Roger Deakins) it is certainly lacking in areas namely storytelling. It seems like there are some areas in the story that were glossed over. An inconsistent feeling I get when the film is running. I can’t put my finger quite on when exactly the film lost me but sometimes around the events in Vegas. Ansel Elgort is really good but everything is just so lost. There’s no real bad acting per se. There is some dialogue that doesn’t feel like it came from a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Crowley has the whole thing just really flat. It’s all just a boring affair.

Our Grade: D+, I did not like nor enjoy the entire experience of this film. Sometimes you can have all the right elements and it just doesn’t work. Peter Straughan’s adaptation of the novel comes off badly. Crowley isn’t at his peak powers here. I can’t recommend this. There’s just nothing to like here. One of 2019’s biggest bore fests. I expected more out of this and instead what I got was something so filled with doubts you could smell it on the entirety of the project.