The Goldfinch

This adaptation of Donna Tartt's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel just goes to show that a great pedigree doesn't always make a great movie. Directed John Crowley (Brooklyn), the film charts the life of Theo, a young New Yorker who loses his mother in a museum bombing incident and is taken in by Nicole Kidman's wealthy family. He's then claimed by his estranged father (Luke Wilson), who promptly plunks the lad in the Nevada desert with a Russian ne'er-do-well (Stranger Things star Finn Wolfhard). It's lusciously shot by master lensman Roger Deakins, but the sparks of a great film soon sink into a slurry of slow exposition and random events. Theo's education in antique furniture restoration by a Greenwich Village dealer (the exquisite Jeffrey Wright) is a fascinating interlude, while Oakes Fegley and Ansel Elgort both shine in the leading role. However, there's no escaping the fact that there's something here. Genuine feeling, perhaps?