White Bird

[Forster] and screenwriter Mark Bomback marry the handsome production to directorial and script choices that, for all their attempted restraint, lean toward the obvious, the blatant, and the sentimental.

With elegant acting from its two young leads and picturesque cinematography from Matthias Koenigswieser, it serves as a competently executed morality play for audiences craving a bit of unambiguous humanism.

Forster’s steady direction keeps this thread of White Bird affecting even when it conforms to predictable narrative beats.

One could argue that Forster and company calibrate their anodyne effects to make a Holocaust narrative that’s palatable for younger viewers. But what mostly resonates is a particularly lachrymose brand of show-business hedging.

Mr. Forster’s affinity for flat dialogue, cartoonish characters, hokey contrivance and dull inspirational messages continue to be his hallmark, and the Hallmark Channel seems like an ideal place for his future work.

You can appreciate the artistry and the fine acting and the timeless messaging in the beautifully filmed coming-of-age drama White Bird without having seen Wonder, but the connection between these two very different films is quite unusual and absorbing...

Helen Mirren as Grandmother Sara, carries her role well as she tells the story, while Ariella Glaser as the young Sara, does just as well in a demanding role.

A very serviceable telling of a story that we've seen one way or another many times before.

White Bird might get some comparisons to The Diary of Anne Frank, but White Bird is a fictional story that won't be considered a classic. This dramatic film has good performances from the principal cast, despite the movie's treacly tone and drab dialogue.

While the link between school bullying and Nazism seems disproportionate, it aligns with the general simplification of this story in which there are no nuances, only saints and monsters. [Full review in Spanish]