The Goldfinch

"If you’ve not read Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer-winning coming-of-age tale, then you’ll likely enjoy this big-screen version more than those who have. It’s a pretty faithful adaptation, but despite the 150-minute run-time, it’s hard to squeeze in, let alone justify, every narrative twist, turn and somersault through time. Not that Brooklyn director John Crowley, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy screenwriter, Peter Straughton, deliver a bad film, it just lacks the intimate immediacy and detailed depth of the source material."

"Put it in the box labelled "save your money and just read the book again", along with The Lovely Bones, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and a dozen others you can probably name off the top of your head."

"It's terrible when a beloved novel arrives onscreen with a self-important thud, and that's putting it diplomatically in the case of The Goldfinch."

"It looks and sounds like a movie without quite being one."

"The Goldfinch is better than I expected it would be. And yet in clearing that bar, it bares open all the possibility that it could have been even more."

"It's neither a rousing success nor an embarrassing failure, falling somewhere in between, closer to admirable attempt."

"Unlike the tiny painting that gave the book its name, the film deserves a more expansive canvas."

"Yet a morose and downbeat movie, too lost in the maze of its designer seriousness, is what "The Goldfinch" finally is."

"Frankly, you might have more fun watching a pigeon for 149 minutes."