Our take
I think it’s safe to say you’ve never seen a Pinocchio adaptation quite like Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. It still largely stays true to the source material, which is to stay it’s still about a father grappling with the loss of his son and a boy figuring out where he figures in the world. But the movie departs from it in significant ways too. Instead of a fairy tale setting, for instance, this Pinocchio has 1930s fascist Italy as its background, lending the film a realism and historicism that weren’t there before.
Stars Ewan McGregor, Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton, and newcomer Gregory Mann lend their voice in this tender and stellar stop-motion animated movie.
Streaming arrival
What it won
Other
1 nom
The story
During the rise of fascism in Mussolini's Italy, a wooden boy brought magically to life struggles to live up to his father's expectations.
Elsewhere
"Though the rounded beauty of Disney’s draftsmanship—remember the cathedral-like cavern of the whale’s interior—can never be erased, the angularity of this latest attempt has a piercing punch of its own."
— Anthony Lane
"As strange and macabre as it is heartfelt."
— Kambole Campbell
Who picked it
Renee Cuisia is the lead curator at A Good Movie to Watch. In her spare time, she likes to watch K-dramas and analyze them to death. She's also seen You've Got Mail one too many times but is still convinced it's one of the greatest films out there.
