It feels more like a poem. Or, at times, a symphony. But it's much less effective as an actual movie.

| Original Score: C- | Nov 21, 2014

"God tells truths in parables," someone says - a line that Edwards most likely aspires to take possession of, as if his poetic, pictorial parable had its own truths to tell.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 21, 2014

A gorgeous look at the raw, wooded Indiana of the early 1800s and a dreamy study of the boy Lincoln who was destined to leave it behind.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 14, 2014

History, as subject matter, is hard enough to sell as cinema. The Better Angels will not make the struggle any easier.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 13, 2014

Had Terrence Malick taken a shot at making a Ken Burns movie, it would probably have turned out better than "The Better Angels," A.J. Edwards's humorless, pretentious black-and-white tone poem about a very young Abe Lincoln.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 13, 2014

Narrators tell us what to feel, but there's something hollow at the center. The tone of the picture seems perversely oblique.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 13, 2014

Just as those around Lincoln grow frustrated by his obscurity, so may audiences watching "The Better Angels."

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 13, 2014

On paper, this lyrical, black-and-white rendering of Lincoln's backwoods boyhood may seem pompous, but it is beautiful, poetic and graceful, with its own flowing rhythm.

| Nov 7, 2014

Whereas other directors have presented the man in mythic terms, "The Better Angels" renders young Abe relatable, provided auds are willing to put themselves on the film's wavelength.

| Nov 7, 2014

"The Better Angels," as pictorially beautiful and emotionally evocative as it is, is so bereft of conventional narrative momentum that you have to consider it a miracle it got made.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 7, 2014

All that extensively researched authenticity and soul-stirring cinematography go only so far in establishing a compelling connection to a specific time and place.

| Nov 6, 2014

The sense of predestination hangs heavily over the movie, but not a sense of life.

| Nov 6, 2014

The Better Angels at times resembles a group of folks puttin' on a show at a restoration village.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 6, 2014

If you succumb to "The Better Angels," the effect is like falling into a gorgeous photograph, but that also means the narrative in this arthouse film is oblique and sketchy.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 6, 2014

It comes across as an apprentice work, not unlike the second-rate versions of paintings created by students who would work at the side of Renaissance masters.

| Original Score: C+ | Nov 6, 2014

"The Better Angels" is a striking attempt to show us Lincoln's childhood in a fresh way, which is why its miscalculation is all the more disappointing.

| Nov 5, 2014

Rendering the life of young Abraham Lincoln as a tone poem, "The Better Angels" sags under the weight of its own resolute earnestness.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 5, 2014

Though quiet and slow, the film flows like a brook.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 5, 2014

The overall effect is close to parody, tinged by a frustrating coyness that refuses to identify its protagonist (Braydon Denney) by name for the entire running time.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 4, 2014

Kruger and Clarke do their best to look steadfast with a camera swooping around them like a wounded bird, but there's no rescuing this imprecise family portrait from its own impulses toward obscurity.

| Nov 4, 2014