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Australia, United States · 2022
1h 48m
Director George Miller
Starring Tilda Swinton, Idris Elba, Ece Yüksel, Zerrin Tekindor
Genre Drama, Fantasy, Romance
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Dr. Alithea Binnie is an academic and a creature of reason. While in Istanbul attending a conference, she encounters The Djinn, who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom. As a scholar of mythology, she is cautious. Eventually, The Dinjin convinces her, and she makes a wish that surprises them both.
The Playlist by Charles Bramesco
The cumulative merits on display in Miller’s museum of amazement, from the whiz-bang recreations of freakified old-world grandeur to the humbler miracles shared between two wayward souls, we hang on every word of the narration — as sure a sign of a well-spun yarn as any.
In fact, the two stars are so sweet and searching together — their characters’ respective power and mutual solitude pulling them together with practical magic — that some of the film’s more spectacular detours seem flimsy by contrast.
The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney
While there’s a liberal sprinkling of humor, the mysteries it conjures are windy and academic, though not the kind of academic that stands up to scrutiny.
George Miller combines myth, magic, and romance to mixed effect in a visually dazzling adult fairytale starring a committed Swinton and Elba.
If a screenplay is going to be fixated on the history and purpose of storytelling, the stories within it have to be better.
These days, audiences are so savvy about the tricks at a filmmaker’s disposal that the movie’s greatest achievement is that it seizes our imagination (or perhaps that’s our attention deficit disorder being so brusquely manhandled) and holds it for the better part of two hours, defying us to anticipate what comes next.
It’s a curious film, messy in all its ambition but consistently transfixing, an earnest labor of love—and one about love.
The Telegraph by Robbie Collin
While Swinton and Elba make smooth work of the fairy-tale-toned dialogue, they simply lack the chemistry to make their tryst convince as romance. And the fantasy flashbacks too often sink into chintz.
Hardly lacking ambition or verve, this amped-up fairy tale comes complete with social commentary and a grownup examination of the consequences of seeking connection, but the episodic, intermittently engaging saga frustrates more than it enchants.
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