Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022)

In fact, the two stars are so sweet and searching together — their characters’ respective power and mutual solitude pulling them together with practical magic — that some of the film’s more spectacular detours seem flimsy by contrast.

The cumulative merits on display in Miller’s museum of amazement, from the whiz-bang recreations of freakified old-world grandeur to the humbler miracles shared between two wayward souls, we hang on every word of the narration — as sure a sign of a well-spun yarn as any.

It’s a curious film, messy in all its ambition but consistently transfixing, an earnest labor of love—and one about love.

George Miller combines myth, magic, and romance to mixed effect in a visually dazzling adult fairytale starring a committed Swinton and Elba.

Hardly lacking ambition or verve, this amped-up fairy tale comes complete with social commentary and a grownup examination of the consequences of seeking connection, but the episodic, intermittently engaging saga frustrates more than it enchants.