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The wonder review: florence pugh is the miracle in netflix's haunting movie.

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Florence Pugh has proven she can dominate the screen no matter the strength of the film behind her. Earlier this year, she starred in Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling and carried that film through sheer force of will. In The Wonder , directed by Sebastián Lelio ( Gloria Bell , A Fantastic Woman ), Pugh does something similar while having much more to work with. The Wonder may buckle under lofty ideas the film seems reticent to explore with the religious fervor its subject would call for, but it is a beautiful and haunting film thanks to the impeccable behind-the-scenes talent and Pugh's magnetism. Still, The Wonder will leave many wanting more when it comes to what lurks beneath its fascinating story.

Pugh plays Lib Wright, an English nurse called to a remote Irish village to watch over Anna O'Donnell (Kila Lord Cassidy), a young girl who has not eaten anything since her 11th birthday but is still miraculously alive. In eight-hour shifts, Lib and one other woman, a nun named Sister Michael (Josie Walker), are to watch Anna and report their findings to a local council at the end of a two-week period. Lib is naturally skeptical, searching every crook and crevice in the O’Donnell home for hidden food. The less scientifically inclined members of the village believe they are witnessing a miracle and Lib becomes hellbent on proving them wrong as journalists, believers, and non-believers descend on the village.

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The Wonder is an eerie film, and Matthew Herbert’s score evokes an unnerving chill as Ari Wegner’s camera glides over a lush but sparse Irish landscape. Wegner (whose recent work includes The Power of the Dog , an equally haunting film ) has the camera floating in and out of village homes and over the windswept tundra, acting as a ghost itself, an unseen miracle siding with Lib and her determination to root out the O’Donnell family’s potential fraud.

The script, which is adapted by Emma Donoghue from her own 2016 novel, rightly stays with Lib's perspective as she battles a traumatic past and a village that would rather her not be there at all. The English nurse is faced with all sorts of pushback while trying to do her job, a tough prospect for anyone, let alone a woman being overseen by a council of men who do not trust her, regardless of whether they are men of faith or science. The harsh landscape only serves to compound these issues, as does the nun also sent to watch over Anna. Lib is not to confer with her to make sure their findings are unbiased, but there’s a coldness to Sister Michael and Walker's staunch performance that adds to the unsettling nature of the task at hand.

Unfortunately, The Wonder isn’t all too interested in this task, overlooking the battle between faith and fact for more interpersonal interests as well as a romantic subplot that would feel unnecessary save for its usefulness in The Wonder ’s ending. It’s an ending that feels more like a deus ex machina than an earned development, but once again, Pugh is the film’s saving grace, as is a scene of Lib confronting the council with her findings.

In the way Pugh holds the film together, so too does Leilo and Wegner’s work. The supporting cast also does tremendous work with what little they're given, including Tom Burke, Ciarán Hinds, Toby Jones, Niamh Algar, and more rounding out the ensemble. For all their work in making The Wonder an atmospheric feat about miracles and the damage they can do, though, The Wonder ’s concept ultimately goes unexplored. This could be forgiven if the subtext weren't laid bare early on with the mention of Ireland's Great Famine and the clear connection to the "fasting girls" of the Victorian era. There may be few miracles in The Wonder , but it's clear that Pugh is one unto herself.

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The Wonder premiered on Netflix Wednesday, November 16. The film is 108 minutes long and rated R for some sexuality.

Based on the novel Room by Emma Donoghue, The Wonder tells the tale of a young girl in the Irish Midlands in the 1800s who is perceived as a saint based on miraculous events surrounding her. Florence Pugh plays nurse Lib Wright, who is sent to examine a girl who stopped eating but remains healthy. The girl, anna O'Donnell, is subjected to visitors across the land as people come to see the mysterious saintly child, but others believe she may be tied to something more sinister. The Wonder is a psychological thriller that pits love vs. evil as Lib and Anna grow closer despite the events surrounding them. 

• Movie Reviews
• 3.5 star movies

‘The Wonder’ Review: Florence Pugh Stuns as a Woman of Science in a Community of Faith

The director of “A Fantastic Woman” and the author of “Room” find a vehicle that perfectly blends their sensibilities

This review originally ran September 2, 2022, in conjunction with the film’s world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival.

You’ll need to have faith in your core to be swept away by Sebastián Lelio’s lovely and elegiac “The Wonder,” a mournful and textured psychodrama that gently nurses one into hope and spiritual serenity.

But not a religious kind of faith, to be clear: You’ll just need to believe in, or at least gradually come to accept, the power of stories as a means of survival.

A deeply feminine tale of fortitude with heart and teeth, “The Wonder” (making its world premiere at the 2022 Telluride Film Festival) hints at this very suggestion right at the start — perhaps a tad too expressly — and opens on what looks like a contemporary film stage. As the camera pans, it unveils the yarn’s eventual setting, the impoverished Irish Midlands of the 19 th Century, haunted by unspeakable grief under the recent shadow of the Great Famine.

As if to tell a bedtime story, a voiceover softly requests us to consider the complete devotion in which the dwellers of “The Wonder” believe in their own truths. As we’d soon find out, one side would be charged by mathematical facts and modern science; the other, by Catholic faith.

Lib Wright (the astonishing Florence Pugh, in a delicately searing performance) is firmly in science’s corner as a top English Nightingale summoned to a remote Irish village for a well-paying yet mysterious duty. After an arduous journey across seas and sweeping landscapes of mist and sward, all cuddled by the masterful Ari Wegner’s dewy cinematography of muted, buttery watercolors, the nurse faces an all-male panel of the town’s bigwigs, including the likes of Doctor McBrearty (Toby Jones) and landowner John Flynn (Brian F. O’Byrne).

Leading the committee is Ciarán Hinds’ imposing Priest Father Thaddeus, who guides Lib through her two-week assignment. She is hired to watch — and only to watch — the town’s famous 11-year-old Anna O’Donnell (a sensational Kíla Lord Cassidy in a breakthrough role), who hasn’t had any food for four months since her last birthday and yet still shows no signs of weakness or starvation.

Overwhelmed by nosy tourists and insistent journalists, the group simply wants to know whether the girl is a miracle or a fraud. Learning that she’d share shifts with a nun named Sister Michael (Josie Walker), “Why a nun?” inquires the science-minded Lib, understandably rejecting the possibility of divine intervention. “Welcome to Ireland,” is the loaded response she gets. In another scene that contrasts Lib’s contemporary ways against the devout town she dismisses as “backwards,” Lib fires, “I need facts, not stories,” when told that Anna’s last meal was the body of Christ. She indifferently notes down, “wafer.”

Adapted from “Room” author Emma Donoghue’s 2016 novel by Alice Birch, Lelio and Donoghue herself, “The Wonder” builds all its characters and their conflicting dilemmas patiently and compassionately, especially once the bedridden and angelically porcelain Anna enters the tale with her sweet and tranquil demeanor. Donoghue is a master when it comes not only to engaging with resilient feminine headspace, but also surveying a child’s inner world; understanding how little ones cope, adapt, transform and are reborn — that much we know from “Room.”

Meanwhile, Lelio is a maestro of portraying womanly strength and tenacity, as demonstrated through his impressive streak of “Gloria,” “A Fantastic Woman” and “Disobedience,” all telling stories that pit women against the perils of masculine bile, tradition and religion. In that regard, you can’t help but feel that there couldn’t have been a more fitting match between the curiosities of an author and filmmaker, while witnessing the cozy cadence in which Anna and Lib warm up to one another.

Each touched by their own familial grief and trauma, the duo comes with personal and domestic secrets that “The Wonder” skillfully takes its time to disclose, in rooms Lelio and Wegner (“The Power of the Dog”) light with shades of baroque, painterly chiaroscuro. Anna chirps lightly and prays to no end for her deceased brother, insisting that “manna” from heaven ensures her survival. Frustrated by the girl’s stubbornly religious family (the brittle yet resolute Elaine Cassidy is especially outstanding as the mother), Lib on the other hand gives everything she’s got to listening to and comprehending Anna, who often tells her, “You don’t understand us.”

Because she’s convinced that Anna is being fed in secret, Lib treats the situation like a detective case to be cracked. In a frantic and devastating violation of trust one day, she regretfully tries to shove food down the weakening little one’s throat. (During this masterful, tear-jerker of a scene, expect to secretly wish for Lib’s success while desperately wanting her to stop all the same.) Ultimately, nothing works on the fragile girl, who continues to believe in a spiritual kind of nourishment despite her deteriorating health.

Has Anna been brainwashed? Is she being used as a religious pawn by benefit seekers? It’s not until the persistent journalist Will (Tom Burke) finally breaks Lib and convinces her to collaborate with him that secrets crack wide open. As a person with closer leanings to faith than Lib and also a tragic past, he serves as a logical bridge in the tale; one who finds and connects the missing pieces of the two sides.

Divulging what the pair discovers would betray the serene rhythm that Lelio and his editor Kristina Hetherington (“The Duke”) establish throughout. Just know that the film possibly gains something from reading Donoghue’s book after seeing the screen adaptation. Then again, it perhaps loses a little something, too; you can’t help but feel a smidgen of hurry when Will and Lib fall into each other’s arms in a moment of need and assume a more luxuriously teased chemistry throughout the pages of the book.

Regardless, what a visual, aural and philosophical feat “The Wonder” is as a cinematic examination of empathy and truth, faith and reason, and pride and identity. Every aesthetic decision here complements the film’s searching qualities, from Matthew Herbert’s echoey score of dreamy sounds and pregnant screeches — the screaming sorts you’d perhaps hear in a dream or nature — to frequent use of central framing that emphasizes Lib’s growing isolation and desperation. Delivering a towering performance in a budding career already full of them, Pugh especially leaves a memorable trace as Lib tries to get inside Anna’s head, agitatedly sweeping the muddy earth with her “Lady Macbeth”–adjacent garbs in one moment, quietly sinking into her own demons in the next with a softening façade.

It would be too simplistic to summarize “The Wonder” solely as a lesson on the shortcomings of blind faith and organized religion. A more rewarding engagement is to see it as an exercise on listening with humility. In the end, Lelio earns the powerful close of “The Wonder” with every temperate turn. His film, a career-best, departs like a birdsong, with an optimistic finale as perfect and revelatory as they come.

“The Wonder” opens in select U.S. theaters Nov. 2 and premieres on Netflix Nov. 16.

This Was the Final Film Roger Ebert Reviewed

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• Roger Ebert continued to review movies until the end of his life, despite the challenges of his cancer, which inspired others facing the same disease.
• Terrence Malick's To the Wonder was Ebert's last review and showcased the director's iconic style and departure from his previous period pieces.
• Ebert defended Malick's filmmaking choices and believed that not every film needed to explain everything, highlighting the film's ambitious portrayal of spiritual longing.

Roger Ebert , who was for several decades the face of film criticism, died on April 4, 2013. For several years he had been managing life with a particularly destabilizing cancer, which had altered his appearance, and taken away his ability to eat, drink, and speak. Many public figures would have withdrawn, but Ebert remained visible while making the significant accommodations his health forced him to make. Because he continued reviewing movies until the end of his life, there has always been a lot of curiosity about what his last review was, and whether there might be any special meaning to what he said about it. His last review was for Terrence Malick 's To the Wonder . This is clearly a movie with a significant place in film history. But what it means is that it's also the subject of Ebert's final review is more subjective.

Roger Ebert Was One of America's Hardest-Working Film Critics

Roger Ebert's decision to keep working , to demonstrate that life went on even with cancer, has always meant a great deal to the many others who also live with the same disease. That decision was very much in character for Roger Ebert. His career had a certain compulsive presence. He reviewed anything and everything that showed up on an American movie screen. Not only on his TV show with Gene Siskel , but in print, where he gave every movie the same 500 thoughtful words. While his decision to keep working through cancer has sometimes been attributed to a heroic lack of vanity, he himself identified this work ethic as a form of pride. He even candidly speculated that his need to get back to his show, during an earlier bout with his cancer, had caused him to make a reckless choice in his treatment. But being a workaholic was largely something he'd come to terms with about himself. When his health finally forced him to take a step back even from writing, he jokingly called it " A Leave of Presence ," because, even working at a slower pace, he'd still be putting out a lot of material. In that announcement, (at the end of a long list of all the ways he'd be keeping busy), he wrote, "I'll be able at last to do what I've always fantasized about doing: reviewing only the movies I want to review." He died the day after it was published.

If it was Ebert's mission to review absolutely every movie, that almost led to an outcome he'd probably have found darkly funny. The day of Ebert's death, the Los Angeles Times published that his last review had been for The Host , an adaptation of a minor work from the author of the Twilight series of YA novels: "it makes you wish the final words of the beloved critic could have been spent on a film that was far better -- or far worse."

This wish, of course, came true. As Jim Emerson, Ebert's long-time web editor, and a wonderful critic himself, was quick to clarify, Ebert had filed some reviews that had not yet been published. The last of these was not the review for The Host (a close call though!) it was for Malick's To the Wonder. People were relieved that Roger Ebert's last review turned out to be a "thumbs up ." But To the Wonde r is more than that, it's a pivotal movie from one of America's most important filmmakers. And so, though there were other Ebert reviews that were technically published even later because of those films' release dates, each of them comes with a disclaimer to clarify that it wasn't the last one he filed, making sure that the honor would remain with Malick.

'To the Wonder' Is a Challenging Film by an American Master

Terrence Malick was roughly Roger Ebert's age, and Ebert had been reviewing his films with reverence since his first, Badlands , was released in 1973. Malick spent his filmmaking career defining one of the most iconically recognizable styles in cinema, one which he has never deviated from.

The Terrence Malick aesthetic is easy to spot. The story is presented primarily in montage. There's very little onscreen dialogue; the work of advancing the plot is instead left to voiceover, delivered in poetic generalities. The images themselves are decadently gorgeous. Malick famously does a lot of his filming at "magic hour," the time of day just before sunset or after sunrise, giving his exteriors an otherworldly glow. Though the connection between the voiceover and the imagery is usually pretty clear, a lot of connective work is left to the viewer. It's not the most accessible style. But, perhaps thanks in part to critics championing his work, Malick was given leeway to make movies the way he liked.

To the Wonde r contains all of Malick's hallmarks. But it was in many ways a departure. For one thing, his previous films had all been period pieces with epic subjects. The New World told the story of Pocahontas. The Thin Red Line depicted the fighting in the Pacific during World War II. Days of Heaven was about a murder at the dawn of the 20th Century. His most recent movie, The Tree of Life , which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, told the smaller-scale story of a family during the 1950s. But it was the director's own life story, and it included an interlude set at the dawn of life on earth. To the Wonder was fully contemporary, and told the story of ordinary people.

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What Is 'To the Wonder' About?

Ben Affleck plays Neil, who lives in an upscale but nondescript housing division in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. On vacation in Paris, Neil meets Marina ( Olga Kurylenko ), they begin an affair, and he invites her and her ten-year-old daughter to live with him in America. She gives into their relationship with abandon, while he often seems to be going through the motions, playing the part of a swooning lover as best as he can, for her benefit. In America, they grow frustrated with each other (their story is mostly narrated from her perspective), and she returns to France when her visa expires. Neil begins seeing Jane ( Rachel McAdams ), but has many of the same problems giving of himself. Marina returns, and they give it another shot. Neil is at the center of the story but is closed off from the people in his life, and the camera only catches glimpses of his face. In an adjacent storyline, Javier Bardem plays the town priest, who seeks the closeness to God he knew in his youth. Everyone is seeking passion but is caged by self-awareness. The Oklahoma landscape is beautiful but polluted with strip malls, housing tracts, and chemical plants.

It wasn't only the film's subject matter that seemed ordinary. Terrence Malick's other films were painstaking recreations of the past; they often took years to create and recover from. Malick releases were rare events; there had been a twenty-year gap between Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line . But To the Wonder showed up less than two years after The Tree of Life . Perhaps that was why the movie was resisted as few Malick films had been before. His stylistic idiosyncrasies were given respect when he seemed to have returned from a journey by time machine, but not as much when he seemed to have just gotten back from down at the gas station. Malick was thought to be repeating himself, to diminishing effect.

Roger Ebert Stood Up for Terrence Malick's Filmmaking Choices

Roger Ebert understood the challenges To The Wonder presented. "A more conventional film would have assigned a plot to these characters and made their motivations more clear," he wrote. "There will be many... dissatisfied by a film that would rather evoke than supply." And while he understood that reaction, he felt the film's ambitious portrayal of spiritual longing more than justified its lack of a structured narrative. "Why must a film explain everything? Why must every motivation be spelled out? Aren't many films fundamentally the same film, with only the specifics changed? Aren't many of them telling the same story?"

In a recent interview in Vanity Fair , Martin Scorsese related a quote from fellow legendary director Akira Kurosawa : "I’m only now beginning to see the possibility of what cinema could be, and it’s too late." Kurosawa had said this when receiving a lifetime achievement Oscar, at 83. Scorsese, now 80, proclaimed "now I know what he means.” The creative process has no sense of how late it is. When legends pass, it's never with perfect timing. They leave with some of their ideas still unexpressed.

In the ten years since To the Wonder , Terrence Malick has completed three more feature films. Four films in a decade is a remarkable acceleration, in the context of Malick's career. Is he rushing them out because he senses that soon it will be "too late"? And was Ebert able to keep up with him on that path because he too, had the perspective of a man who was running out of time?

It's an interesting theory, but reading Ebert's 1978 review of Malick's Days of Heaven seems to disprove it. 35 years in the past, Ebert responded to Malick in a nearly identical way. Acknowledging that the film "doesn't really tell a story," but is instead an "evocation," he sets it apart from the typical film that is "jammed with people talking to each other all the time."

Kurosawa said "I’m only now beginning to see the possibility of what cinema could be," as if he was about to reinvent himself, and the medium of film. But what would he have really done with 83 more years? Make another 83 years' worth of Kurosawa films. Same with Scorsese, or Malick, given all the time in the world. And Ebert, if he'd lived another lifetime to review those movies, would have continued to express himself as he always had.

Not that every artist is only repeating themself; every individual thing that we make has its own details that set it apart. And of course, the volume means something on its own. For Ebert, reviewing every movie meant that every cinematic experience was meaningful and that this meaning could be set down in seven or eight paragraphs of plainspoken English. "From the Wonder," if you will. A style that could accommodate anything. And so, Ebert and Malick had one final collision. Ebert gave the movie three and a half stars , which seems fair. Terrence Malick is currently reported to be working on an extended cut of the film.

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Where to Watch

Watch The Wonder with a subscription on Netflix.

What to Know

The atmosphere's absorbing and the story is fascinating, but The Wonder of this period drama really lies in Florence Pugh's remarkable performance.

Although the movie is slow and contains some questionable storytelling choices, Florence Pugh makes it hard to look away from The Wonder .

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Sebastián Lelio

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Movie Review

Twirling in Oklahoma, a Dervish for Love

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By A.O. Scott

• April 11, 2013

In Terrence Malick’s films — he has made six so far, three in this century — it is usually possible to discern, beneath the blossoms of metaphor and the philosophical foliage, the trellis of a more or less conventional plot. “The Thin Red Line” is a combat picture. “The Tree of Life” is a nostalgic coming-of-age story. And “To the Wonder,” Mr. Malick’s latest, is a romantic melodrama whose major characters fall tragically and beautifully in and out of love.

Their narrative proceeds in a straight line and is easy enough to follow. In France, an Oklahoman named Neil (Ben Affleck) meets Marina (Olga Kurylenko), a Ukrainian expatriate with a 10-year-old daughter, Tatiana (Tatiana Chiline). We first encounter Neil and Marina in the bliss of early infatuation and in endlessly picturesque (if also somewhat familiar) settings. Paris is a wonderland for cinematographers, and Emmanuel Lubezki, Mr. Malick’s director of photography (who also shot “The Tree of Life” and “The New World” ), revels in the city’s limestone buildings, cobbled streets and the classical symmetries of its gardens. A trip west to Mont Saint-Michel is like a visit to heaven itself, as the spires and buttresses of the cathedral and the tidal flats that surround it are rendered in one glorious composition after another.

Mr. Malick is committed, as a matter of quasi-religious principle and aesthetic temperament, to finding beauty everywhere. When Marina and Tatiana follow Neil back to Oklahoma, “To the Wonder” spins visual poetry not only out of prairies and creek beds but also out of less obviously sublime facts of the landscape, like suburban subdivisions, concrete parking structures and supermarkets. Nothing drab, ugly or ordinary can exist in this world.

All the same, Marina, who occupies herself running through fields in golden sunlight, finds rapture hard to sustain. Her malaise is mirrored by the struggle of a priest (Javier Bardem) to hold on to his faith. Marina and her daughter return to France, and Neil takes up with Jane (Rachel McAdams), a rancher he knew in childhood.

The man pursued by two emphatically contrasted women — brunet and blond, exotic and domestic, impetuous and practical — is an ancient literary archetype, which may be a polite way of saying a cliché. In any case, what Jane and Marina have in common, apart from their attraction to Neil, is a serious commitment to twirling. Not the highly disciplined marching-band, baton-assisted kind, but rather the languid, flowing-dress-wearing, I’m-so-in-tune-with-the-universe-that-I-will-never-get-dizzy kind.

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Breaking News

Roger Ebert’s last thumbs up: Terrence Malick’s ‘To the Wonder’

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When Roger Ebert died last week little more than a day after declaring he was taking a “leave of presence,” people turned to see what the legendary film critic’s final published review was. Some were dismayed to find it was a rather middling take on the Andrew Niccol-directed adaptation of Stephanie Meyer’s “The Host.” It seemed somehow not enough.

Then Ebert’s longtime online editor Jim Emerson let it be known that there was one more on its way, a look at Terrence Malick’s “To the Wonder.” Ebert had long been a supporter of the filmmaker, even including Malick’s 2011 film “The Tree of Life” on his 2012 ballot for the Sight & Sound magazine poll of the greatest films of all time.

Emerson recalled that in their last days of correspondence, Ebert asked in one message: “Did the review of ‘To the Wonder’ make sense to you? Such a strange movie.”

Roger Ebert: Career in pictures

The film, which opens Friday, involves an American (Ben Affleck) who falls in love with a woman (Olga Kurylenko) while in Europe. Bringing her and her daughter back to the U.S., they settle into a certain domestic bliss. Yet as things grow strained between them, he seems to rekindle a relationship with a woman (Rachel McAdams) from earlier in his life. At the same time, a clergyman (Javier Bardem) tests the boundaries of his faith.

There is little dialogue in the film, pared back to its barest essence, with Ebert noting, “As the film opened, I wondered if I was missing something. As it continued, I realized many films could miss a great deal.

“A more conventional film would have assigned a plot to these characters and made their motivations more clear,” added Ebert. “Malick, who is surely one of the most romantic and spiritual of filmmakers, appears almost naked here before his audience, a man not able to conceal the depth of his vision.”

RELATED: Fans, celebs react to Ebert’s death

In wrapping up what would seem to be the final review of a long and influential career, Ebert concluded, “There will be many who find ‘To the Wonder’ elusive and too effervescent. They’ll be dissatisfied by a film that would rather evoke than supply. I understand that, and I think Terrence Malick does, too. But here he has attempted to reach more deeply than that: to reach beneath the surface, and find the soul in need.”

Though famously averse to speaking to the press, Malick released the following statement , saying he was “was very sorry to hear of Mr. Ebert’s death and remembers him, with deep gratitude, as a man of kindness and generosity, encouraging to all, a loving man whose goodness will not be forgotten by those whose lives he touched.”

A funeral was held for Ebert in Chicago on Monday. The annual Ebertfest film festival will go on as previously planned from April 17-21 in Champaign, Ill.

Roger Ebert: First citizen critic and father to us all

Remembrance: Roger Ebert, film’s hero to the end

Roger Ebert’s last review: A lukewarm assessment of ‘The Host’

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Roger Ebert's final review: 'To the Wonder'

By Aaron Souppouris

Via Daring Fireball | Source Chicago Sun Times

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After reviewing movies for more than forty years, Roger Ebert died last week at the age of 70 . The Chicago Sun Times has published Ebert's final review , for Terrence Malick's To The Wonder . A haunting, disjointed tale of love and faith, To The Wonder pleased Ebert, who gave the film three and a half stars.

"'Well,' I asked myself, 'why not?' Why must a film explain everything? Why must every motivation be spelled out? Aren't many films fundamentally the same film, with only the specifics changed? Aren't many of them telling the same story? Seeking perfection, we see what our dreams and hopes might look like. We realize they come as a gift through no power of our own, and if we lose them, isn't that almost worse than never having had them in the first place?"

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The Wonder (2022) Netflix Movie Review – A film you can believe in!

A film you can believe in.

Director Sebastián Lelio’s new film The Wonder is set in the aftermath of the Great Famine in 1862 Ireland but if you’re expecting to be thrust headlong into the film’s ravaged Irish setting within the opening few moments, you are going to be in for a surprise.

Instead of a shot of the wind-swept Irish countryside or the cobbled streets of one of the country’s small towns, the film begins in a modern-day film studio with a voiceover from actress Niamh Algar, one of the key players from the film.

As the camera pans across the studio, she introduces us to the film’s story. She says:

“This is the beginning. The beginning of a film called The Wonder. The people you’re about to meet are characters. Believe in their stories with complete devotion. We are nothing without stories, and so we invite you to believe in this one.”

The camera then settles on the set of a boat cabin and the actors playing out their roles within. One of these actors is Florence Pugh who is sitting at a creaky wooden table eating a meal while smoke rises from a stove behind her.

So, what is Lelio’s intention with this curious opening? Well, it’s a kind of metaphor for the film’s main story. Encouraging us to believe in a tale that starts on a film stage and an artificial boat is purposeful because Pugh’s nurse, Lib Wright, is also encouraged to believe in something that, on the surface, seems like a hoax.

Moments after the ‘fake’ opening, we see Lib on a horse-drawn carriage being transported through the Irish countryside to the village inn where she has booked a room to stay. As the film is now on location, we can start to believe in the events that follow, as we were invited to at the beginning.

But what about the nurse? She has been hired to watch over Anna (Kíla Lord Cassidy), a young girl who is observing a religious fast. Anna hasn’t eaten for several months but remarkably, she seems healthy. This is the miracle that has entranced the people in the local community but is the girl’s story something Lib can believe in?

Well, no. She is sceptical of this so-called ‘miracle’ and her only concern is for the health and well-being of Anna. She is worried that the girl may be starving but when she tries to convince the village elders of this, they ridicule her position and tell her to get back to the job they hired her to do. It’s clear that some of the committee do believe in Anna’s story with “complete devotion,” as incredulous as it might seem.

But is God really sustaining Anna with “manna from Heaven” as the child herself suggests, or is she dangerously ill? Or is she pulling the wool over everybody’s eyes with the help of her family?  The answer isn’t one we can reveal here but you’ll be glad to know that the truth is eventually revealed during the final section of the film. Whether or not you’ll be satisfied with the truth will depend on whether you sit on the side of science or religion.

Thanks to the expert cinematography which perfectly captures the look and feel of famine-ravaged Ireland it is easy to believe that what we are watching is real. The acting helps us to suspend our disbelief, thanks to the accomplished performances of Pugh, Cassidy, and all of the surrounding players, and Lelio’s direction does much to draw us into this strange tale too.

The eerie music score, with its whistles, howls, and ephemeral voices, makes a powerful impact, and this, combined with the dark visuals of Anna’s home, with its flickering candles and jumping shadows, adds to the haunting feel of the film. This isn’t to say the film borders on horror territory but there are dark themes beneath the surface that are gradually unveiled as Anna’s backstory is revealed.

Of course, we know we are only watching a story play out but it’s one that isn’t too hard to believe in. This isn’t only because of the technical prowess of the filmmakers and the accomplished acting but because the film is set in a time and place where people did cling to the idea of miracles to lift themselves from the despair caused by the recent famine.

The Wonder is available to stream on Netflix now and is highly recommended. It’s slow in parts so it does require patience, but if you are able to “believe in the story with complete devotion,” you will be rewarded with an expertly made film that will give you much food for thought long after the end credits have rolled.

Read More: The Wonder Ending Explained

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• Verdict - 7.5/10 7.5/10

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Roger Ebert's Final Review For 'To The Wonder'

The Chicago Sun-Times has printed late film critic Roger Ebert's final review.

At the time of his death, Ebert's last published review was for "Twilight" creator Stephenie Meyer's latest film, "The Host." Ebert's review, which was posted on Mar. 27, was a fairly negative one, giving the film 2.5 out of 5 stars. Ebert did, however, find some greater meaning in the film, as he wrote:

Soul Melanie (known as Wanderer) falls in love with Earth Melanie, even though in theory this isn't possible because the Wanderer has become Melanie. This intimate form of self-love leads to dialogue that will possibly be found humorous by some people. When Wanda is about to kiss the boy she loves, for example, the film uses voiceover to warn her: "No, Melanie! Wrong! No! He's from another planet!" True, in our own lives, we pick up warnings on that frequency: No! You'll get pregnant! No! He's from the other side of town! No! He's your best friend's boyfriend!" I imagine this as a version of one of those debates where little angels with harps and devils with pitchforks perch on your shoulders.

The Sun-Times has since published Ebert's review for "To The Wonder," the last review he wrote before his death on Thursday. A drama starring Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko, "To The Wonder" tells the story of a rocky relationship between an American man and a European woman. Published on Saturday, The Sun-Times noted, "The following is the last review written by Roger Ebert. Appropriately it’s a review of a film by a director Mr. Ebert held in great esteem: Terrence Malick."

Ebert, who died at the age of 70, awarded "To The Wonder" 3.5 stars, penning a generally favorable review:

As the film opened, I wondered if I was missing something. As it continued, I realized many films could miss a great deal. Although he uses established stars, Malick employs them in the sense that the French director Robert Bresson intended when he called actors “models.” Ben Affleck here isn’t the star of “Argo” but a man, often silent, intoxicated by love and then by loss. Bardem, as a priest far from home, made me realize as never before the loneliness of the unmarried clergy. Wandering in his empty church in the middle of the day, he is a forlorn figure, crying out in prayer and need to commune with his Jesus. A more conventional film would have assigned a plot to these characters and made their motivations more clear. Malick, who is surely one of the most romantic and spiritual of filmmakers, appears almost naked here before his audience, a man not able to conceal the depth of his vision.

Later in the review, Ebert poetically questions the purpose of films:

“Well,” I asked myself, “why not?” Why must a film explain everything? Why must every motivation be spelled out? Aren’t many films fundamentally the same film, with only the specifics changed? Aren’t many of them telling the same story? Seeking perfection, we see what our dreams and hopes might look like. We realize they come as a gift through no power of our own, and if we lose them, isn’t that almost worse than never having had them in the first place?

Head over to The Sun-Times to read the entirety of Ebert's final review.

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‘The Wonder’ movie review: A disturbing, dreamy exploration of faith, passion, and grief

Based on emma donoghue’s eponymous book, ‘the wonder’ is a beautiful yet disturbing psychological thriller with a stellar performance by florence pugh.

Updated - November 18, 2022 01:11 pm IST

Published - November 18, 2022 01:05 pm IST

Florence Pugh in a still from ‘The Wonder’ | Photo Credit: Netflix

The Thaumatrope is a persistent presence in Sebastián Lelio’s unsettling The Wonder . The film begins in a studio with a voiceover telling us, “This is the beginning. The beginning of a film called The Wonder . The people you are about to meet, the characters, believe in their stories with complete devotion. We are nothing without stories and so we invite you to believe in this one.”

By now, the camera has moved into a ship bound for Ireland and focuses on an English nurse, Lib Wright (Florence Pugh). It is 1862 and Ireland is reeling under the long shadow cast by the Great Famine. Lib has been asked to observe a girl, 11-year-old Anna (Kíla Lord Cassidy), who has not eaten for four months, subsisting on “manna from heaven.”

Though Lib initially thinks it is all superstition, which she intends to sweep off the table with the wand of science, the more she interacts with Anna’s family — her parents, Rosaleen (Elaine Cassidy) and Malachy (Caolán Byrne), and her elder sister, Kitty (Niamh Algar) — the more she realises that things are not so cut and dried.

The committee of village elders who brought Lib to watch over Anna have their own agenda with the priest, Thaddeus (Ciarán Hinds), wishing for a miracle, and the doctor McBrearty (Toby Jones), hoping to stumble upon the fountain of youth.

There is also a journalist, William Byrne (Tom Burke), who has returned home to the Irish Midlands to write about the miracle even though Lib disparagingly tells him, “You’d write anything for a shilling.” Byrne gives Anna a thaumatrope with a bird on one side of the disc and a cage on the other. When spun on a thread, the pictures blend due to the persistence of vision. A thaumatrope, incidentally, is a precursor to the moving picture — how cool is that? On turning the thaumatrope, Anna asks Byrne if the bird is free or caged, in or out, underlining the motif of The Wonder — of perception and ways of seeing, of who is imprisoned and who is free.

Towering over this eye-watering beautiful film is Florence Pugh. As Lib, she brings in the tenderness and world-weariness of someone who has seen horrible things during service in Crimea and one who has suffered great loss. In Pugh’s Lib, you can see the cosmic battle between faith and science, as well as grief and love.

A slow-burn psychological thriller, The Wonder, based on Emma Donoghue’s eponymous book, is a disturbing, dream-like dissertation on faith, passion, belief, sin and redemption.

The Wonder is currently streaming on Netflix

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In final review, roger ebert finds beauty in sparse ‘to the wonder’.

Terrence Malick's film caused the late critic to ponder upon dreams: "If we lose them, isn’t that almost worse than never having had them in the first place?"

By THR Staff

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Roger Ebert , the ardent, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who put his indelible thumbprint on the history of film criticism forged from spending a lifetime at the movies, has died, the Chicago Sun-Times has reported . He was 70.

The Chicago-Sun Times has published the final review from its longtime critic Roger Ebert .

When Ebert died at age 70 Thursday, his blistering critique of the film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer ’s The Host was his most recently published, leading it to be incorrectly identified in some media reports as his final review.

PHOTOS: Roger Ebert’s Top 20 Best- and Worst-Reviewed Films

But on Saturday, the Sun-Times published Ebert’s review of Terrence Malick ’s To the Wonder , along with an editorial note reading: “The following is the last review written by Roger Ebert. Appropriately it’s a review of a film by a director Mr. Ebert held in great esteem: Terrence Malick .”

In his 3.5 star review the film starring Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams and Olga Kurylenko , Ebert wrote that he initially struggled to come to terms with the film’s sparse dialogue and lack of back story for its characters. But he ultimately concluded perhaps this was for the best. Read an excerpt below:

“Well,” I asked myself, “why not?” Why must a film explain everything? Why must every motivation be spelled out? Aren’t many films fundamentally the same film, with only the specifics changed? Aren’t many of them telling the same story? Seeking perfection, we see what our dreams and hopes might look like. We realize they come as a gift through no power of our own, and if we lose them, isn’t that almost worse than never having had them in the first place?

PHOTOS: Roger Ebert’s Life and Career in Pictures

Ebert’s funeral is to take place Monday in Chicago, with a memorial service to follow on April 11. In addition, the previously planned Ebertfest film festival will occur April 17-21 in Champaign, Ill.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic died after battling cancer. On April 3, he took a “leave of presence” from the Sun-Times after revealing what he thought was a fracture was cancer and that he was undergoing radiation treatments.

To the Wonder opens in limited release April 12.

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Roger Ebert's final review: "To the Wonder"

I found Ebert's review to be a very fitting last word on the outlook of cinema: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/to-the-wonder-2013

Having just watched To the Wonder, I'm not sure I know the feeling I am left with. The Tree of Life (after a few viewings) has left me with a larger-than-life feeling of wonder, but this one seems to fall short of that mark, intentionally, and instead turn intimately inward. The beginning felt like a dream that you have where you are indescribably happy, perhaps because you're living the life you've always wanted or perhaps because you're in love with the person you've always dreamed of. As we see the relationship start to degrade in the film, it feels like the moment when you awake from that dream and you're in bed, struck with disappointment at the fact that those feelings were only in a dream, and you're desperately struggling to fall back asleep and return to that dream. A take on the fact of life that time changes all things. Magical moments can fade and we are sickened by their memories. What's your take on Malick's latest film?

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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors, rebel moon - director's cuts.

Now streaming on:

Your investment in Zack Snyder ’s creative vision will likely determine how badly you need to see the R-rated director’s cut of “Rebel Moon,” Snyder’s grim Netflix space opera adventure. This new director’s cut adds 120 minutes of footage, including a numbing wealth of computer-animated gore and a bit more sex. Some of this new material adjusts without significantly enhancing Snyder’s stab at a “ Star Wars ”-style sci-fi pastiche and an over-extended update of “Seven Samurai” that mainly takes place on the storyboard-perfect farm planet of Veldt. 

Some new scenes add more information about the characters’ motives, while others extend already lifeless action sequences. This new material usually only lets the previous version’s footage play out slower. In its new form, “Rebel Moon” now seems mediocre where it used to be outright bad, a frequently monotonous fable that confuses volume with intensity and generally resembles cut scenes from a video game that you’ll never get to play.

Where the previous release of “Rebel Moon” sometimes sped through superfluous flashbacks, this new director’s cut wades through them while still being over-reliant on leaden expository dialogue and faux-lyrical voiceover narration. Now we get to spend more time with the robot warrior JC-1435 (voiced by Anthony Hopkins ), who mostly watches and frets over the people of Veldt as they prepare to fight the implacable space fascist Admiral Noble ( Ed Skrein ) and an inexhaustible army of Nazi-looking Imperium soldiers. There’s also more backstory connecting Noble with Kora ( Sofia Boutella ), a mysterious orphan hiding out on Veldt. Kora leads a group of castoff fighters, including former Imperium General Titus ( Djimon Hounsou ) and cyborg swordsperson Nemesis (Doona Bae), in protecting Veldt from Noble. 

Everybody good in “Rebel Moon” has lost somebody that they’ve loved, usually because they had no other choice but to either kill for or be killed by the Imperium. Now they kill the Imperium’s soldiers with impunity, even the few who express misgivings, and especially that one guy who, in the movie’s second half, begs to be spared for the sake of his wife and children. He gets shot in the face and so do a few other Imperium soldiers, many of whom get pumped full of holes with laser guns in slow-motion. Noble also betrays a few more of his informants and allies, presumably establishing how badly he and the Imperium need to be stopped. It’s still hard to understand why we need to see the same process of collaboration and violent betrayal play out so many times and at such punishing length in “Rebel Moon,” as if repetition necessarily added meaning instead of just extra steps.

“Rebel Moon”’s grisly action scenes remain pretty monotonous, featuring way too many stock poses and gestures, and at such length that even diehard fans will likely wonder why so much dramatic short-hand was used. Too much money’s on the screen for the movie’s big fight scenes to be flat-out ugly. Still, there are only so many times that you can be impressed by turgid bloodletting wrought by stick-figure heroes whose physical movements are never graceful or well-choreographed enough to warrant so much slow motion. Everything blends together (often literally, given the eye-straining soft-focus camerawork and butter-colored lenses). Only the most hardcore Snyder fans will care about what happens to protagonists who explain away their personalities rather than embody them through their behavior. 

Stunted by Snyder’s literal-minded, reproduction-heavy imagination, “Rebel Moon” lacks the sort of emotional inflection needed to justify its indulgent length. There are some additional stabs at a topical/timely subtext to the movie’s hammy anti-fascist parable in this new director’s cut, particularly whenever a supporting character forgives one of the leads for doing whatever they must to survive. It’s also pretty telling that the best new material in this new release of “Rebel Moon” is an extended sex scene in “Chapter 2,” a relatively tender reunion for Kora and her meek farmer beau Gunnar ( Michiel Huisman ). Sadly, Kora and Gunnar’s sex doesn’t match the tone or style of the movie since it presents the two leads as human-scaled individuals instead of over-inflated effigies of suffering and badass revanchism.

More of everything doesn’t otherwise enhance this new version of “Rebel Moon,” whose shameless and uninspired cribbing from superior films soon makes six-plus hours seem interminable. The best scenes remain the ones that don’t revolve around people. I said it before, but I maintain that Snyder’s latest only really sings when big objects are either exploding or crashing into other large things. The director’s cut of “Rebel Moon” features the same imaginative shortcomings as the last edition. It’s campy and joyless and will never be more than the sum of its well-oiled parts, a feature-length mood board for Snyder and his collaborators, and a pretty slog for everyone else.

Simon Abrams

Simon Abrams is a native New Yorker and freelance film critic whose work has been featured in  The New York Times ,  Vanity Fair ,  The Village Voice,  and elsewhere.

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Prime Video movie of the day: The Wizard of Oz gets a strange makeover in The Wiz

Motown meets The Wizard of Oz in this 1978 movie remake of The Wiz's 1974 stage play

Every day, we cut through the bottomless list of streaming options and recommend something to watch. See all our  Netflix movie of the day  picks, or our  Prime Video movie of the day  choices.

Describing The Wiz (out now on Prime Video , aka one of the world's best streaming services ) feels rather like telling someone about a weird dream you had. Essentially, it's The Wizard of Oz but, instead of the Dorothy that many of us know and love, the lead character an aged-up, Black version of the character played by Diana Ross. The titular wizard – going by his 'The Wiz' title – is portrayed by Richard Pryor, and none other than pop legend Michael Jackson is The Scarecrow. Yes, really. Oh, and it's also directed by Sidney Lumet, who is best known for gritty dramas like Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon. Go figure.

Based on the 1974 stage play of the same name, which itself takes heaps of inspiration from The Wizard of Oz , there are clear similarities between The Wiz and its main influence – not least its main characters, fantasy setting, and earworm-inducing soundtrack. That said, it's also something of a cautionary tale. The Wiz showed that you can spend a huge amount of money on a production and hire some of the world's biggest stars, but you'll still end up with a film that doesn't quite work. In my mind, it's fascinating to watch, but it's definitely flawed.

• Watch The Wiz on Prime Video

What's wrong with The Wiz?

The Radio Times best summed it up, calling The Wiz "one of the most expensive movie flops of all time". That appears to have been down to the focus it placed on its A-list actors, which led to some significant alterations to The Wizard of Oz 's familiar story. 

Indeed, as Time managzine put it at the time: "Banks will not back a big film unless the star is someone even a banker has heard of. Thus, when you want to cast a black version of The Wizard of Oz , you do not hold an audition for beautiful teen-age black girls who can sing like crazy, though the possibilities of such an audition stagger the imagination. You sign up Diana Ross". And that, dear reader, is a problem: Ross is a grown woman, whereas Dorothy is supposed to be a young girl. By rewriting the story with an adult as the main character, The Wiz lost the sense of childish innocence and wonder that’s in the original story. Little wonder, then, that people weren't enthused with it.

There were, however, some positive reviews that The Wiz was met with. For one, Variety praised most of the cast, although its reviewer remarked of Jackson: "Though vocally great, needs more acting exposure". Famous critic Roger Ebert praised Jackson's warmth, but only awarded the movie three out of five stars. He called its special effects "sensational", but later added: "The movie has great moments and a lot of life... [but] it hedges its bets by wanting to be sophisticated and universal, childlike and knowing, appealing to both a mass audience and to media insiders." 

Of those who saw the movie over 45 years ago, The Washington Post 's review was perhaps the most glowing of all, saying: "Sidney Lumet's spectacular, joyous production of The Wiz generates a mood of wonder and sentimental rapture recalling the arrival of the Mother Ship in Close Encounters of the Third Kind ". High praise indeed for a flick that we'll refrain from adding to our best Prime Video movies guide.

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Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than a dozen books. Her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man , is on sale now and her next book, about pop music, is out in 2025. She is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind .

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