| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 1, 2006

Could be Exhibit A for anyone arguing the case that modern filmmaking lacks a strong sense of story.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Oct 28, 2005

Leonidas walks this tightrope quite engagingly, showing us a girl on the cusp of womanhood, torn between two competing needs -- to become an adult, to remain a child, to vilify, to revere.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 28, 2005

McKean's inexperience as a director trips the film. There is so much going on that the viewer can't take in all the imagery, and McKean's devotion to his skewed vision slows the story to a crawl.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 27, 2005

Too long, and too rich, for its own good, but clearly Gaiman and McKean were bursting with ideas. Those ideas fly all over the place, sometimes landing with a thunk, but more often taking the breath away.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 21, 2005

With its mind-numbing excess of digital imagery and lack of compensatory storytelling, MirrorMask suggests that something of Gaiman's is getting lost in translation.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 7, 2005

It's so beautiful and so different and has such a unique feel to it.

Full Review | Oct 3, 2005

[An] entertaining if sporadically overstuffed package of magic.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 2, 2005

Each scene is a masterwork of composition and execution.

| Original Score: A- | Oct 1, 2005

Other efforts of this sort have succumbed to terminal whimsy, but director Dave McKean gives us enough reminders of the girl's fragile emotional state to provide some grounding.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 30, 2005

Too strange and disjointed to attract much of an audience, but its astonishing visuals showcase a major new talent: first-time feature director and book illustrator Dave McKean.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 30, 2005

Like many dreams, you won't remember it when you wake up.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 30, 2005

If you can fall into it, you should be amazed, if not enchanted.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 30, 2005

Aggressive visual invention is rarely its own reward, and this movie does nothing to better the odds.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Sep 30, 2005

If MirrorMask is a marvel of visual ingenuity, its monochromatic panoramas are too busy and flat to yield an illusion of depth or to convey a feeling of characters moving in space.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Sep 29, 2005

There is something oddly intoxicating about Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman's coming-of-age fantasy.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 29, 2005

So single-minded in its reach for fantasy, it becomes the genre's evil opposite: banality.

| Sep 29, 2005

At best, Helena's wiggy adventures recall such Jean Cocteau films as Orpheus and Blood of a Poet. At worst, they resemble the Vegas act of Cirque du Soleil.

| Original Score: B | Sep 29, 2005

The magical images will engage and fire the imagination of the audience, even if the story sometimes feels cool and understated.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Sep 29, 2005

For all its flying cats with rainbow wings and navigational library books, MirrorMask barely has a story, its talent and vision focused entirely on its singular dreamworld facade.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 29, 2005