As twisted a tale as you’ll encounter, right down to Ron Perlman performing in French phonetically, it’s a cornerstone of my youthful cinematic awakening.

| Mar 6, 2025

An extraordinary and twisted fairytale...

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 19, 2023

Best described as a hybrid of Terry Gilliam and the Coens, with dashes of Jules Verne, Charles Dickens, and Rube Goldberg added to the mix.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 5, 2022

A marvel manufactured with handmade, painstaking craft rather than manufactured wonder. A champion for continued imagination that demonstrates the comparative power of parable over preachy sermon. An unsullied vision of gothic heft & pictographic purity.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 7, 2022

Few films have captured the spirit of steampunk with as much peculiar daring and imagination.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Nov 29, 2021

Delivers a darkly pleasurable tour of its makers' dark dreams.

| Apr 9, 2018

A strange and inventive blend of fairy tale, dreams and steampunk stylings that doesn't quite hold together but is nevertheless a treat to behold.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 16, 2016

It feels like concept art come to life.

| Original Score: 7/10 | May 17, 2015

City of Lost Children is unmistakably of its era: filled with oddball artifacts, and itself quite pointedly an oddball artifact, seeking approval on those very terms.

| Original Score: B- | May 16, 2015

Jeunet and Caro have distinctive signatures like nobody else's.

Full Review | Nov 20, 2013

On visual terms alone, The City of Lost Children is something of a masterpiece, using state-of-the-art physical, optical and digital special effects to stretch cinematic boundaries.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 20, 2013

Essentially, The City of Lost Children is a macabre fairy tale, and while its tentacled comic-book plot and freak-show cast narrow its appeal -- this isn't a work of any allegorical depth -- Caro and Jeunet have pulled off a cinematic delight.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 20, 2013

The production values are extraordinary.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 20, 2013

The City of Lost Children showcases dazzling art direction that takes cinematic expressionism to new heights.

| Nov 20, 2013

The City of Lost Children gets so caught up in its own weirdness that it all but shuts out the viewer.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 20, 2013

An empty triumph of overkill set design and weirdo casting.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 20, 2013

One of the most fantastic (in the literal sense) films to have emerged from Europe in the past 50 years; a masterpiece of dark invention.

| Nov 20, 2013

The look of The City of Lost Children is worthy of a dropped jaw or three.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 20, 2013

For those who thought films could do nothing new, prepare to be surprised.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 20, 2013

Set in a wondrously seedy waterfront world populated with runaway children and grotesque, sinister adults, it glistens with dense fantasies, technological feats that make the catch-phrase "state of the art" seem antique.

| Dec 7, 2012