The Goldfinch (2019)

Directed by John Crowley. Starring Oakes Fegley, Ansel Elgort, Finn Wolfhard, Jeffrey Wright, Aneurin Barnard, Sarah Paulson, Luke Wilson, Ashleigh Cummings, Willa Fitzgerald, Nicole Kidman, Aimee Laurence, Denis O’Hare, Nicky Torchia, Ryan Foust, Robert Joy. [R]

Stillborn film adaptation of Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer-winning novel tells the obscure story of a thirteen-year-old boy (Fegley) who loses his mother in an art museum bombing and steals a priceless painting, which leads to mounting, implausible problems when he’s a young adult (Elgort) selling art forgeries. Labored and almost oppressively uninvolving, the protagonist is neither interesting nor appealing enough to warrant the effort to push through the muddled chronology and connect all the dots of contrivance (e.g., people from the young man’s past pop up through outrageous coincidence, one encounter that results in gunfire feels imported from a completely different movie, etc.). As immobile as the titular painted bird, but rather than compare the film to a goldfinch, think of it as a lifeless canary in a coalmine—a dire warning to get while the gettin’s good. Not even some choice song cues (Radiohead, Animal Collective) can generate good will, but Roger Deakins’ photography at least makes everything look crisp and elegant as the eyes glaze over. Screenplay credited to Peter Straughan.

34/100