The City of Lost Children

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

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.

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.

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

An empty triumph of overkill set design and weirdo casting.

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.

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.

An extraordinary and twisted fairytale...

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.

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.