Bird
MUBI | Release Date: November 8, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
74
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 36 Critic Reviews
Positive:
27
Mixed:
9
Negative:
0

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
NMEJordan BassettNov 1, 2024
With scenes of harrowing violence, the film often feels totally unsafe: no adult’s motives are beyond reproach. In true Andrea Arnold style, though, it’s also a life-enhancing tale that soars with unexpected grace, optimism and faith in humanity. Read full review
91
The PlaylistRafaela Sales RossMay 18, 2024
There is so much beauty in Bird, both within the relationships unraveling onscreen and on the screen itself — bright reds and whites and blacks lusciously captured in the film, the edges of the image burnt and remade, almost like yet another bird, the phoenix. Read full review
90
Little White LiesHannah StrongNov 4, 2024
This is no kitchen sink drama; those most marginalised by years of British austerity are making do, and they’re as entitled to magic as the rest. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesDec 2, 2024
What struck me more was the film’s interpretation of Bailey’s coming of age not as something to be mourned or that comes on too soon. Instead, it’s an activation. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoNov 8, 2024
Arnold's films elevate the potential of youth, and for this one, it takes a little magic to fulfill it. Read full review
83
Original-CinLiam LaceyNov 6, 2024
Beneath the soft storybook ending, there’s a hard emotional knot here in an exploration of how the scars of poverty, abuse and neglect are bound up with family love and interdependence, and how those contradictions are what prime the springs of imaginative creativity. Read full review
82
The Film VerdictDeborah YoungMay 18, 2024
In Bird Andrea Arnold once again shows she has the magic keys – in this case Franz Rogowski’s piercingly tender bird-man, and Barry Keoghan’s manically affectionate drug-dealer dad -- to extract drama, fantasy and authentic emotion from characters living on the lowest rungs of English society. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleNov 14, 2024
If it’s too much to ask of Arnold that her bid for heightened naturalism make a ton of sense, “Bird” at least maintains a heartbeat of ache and affection for youth in all its rudeness, revealing a filmmaker who isn’t afraid of losing her claws if she traffics in the thing with feathers. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeNov 11, 2024
Bird finds beauty and wonder in every frame (one that Arnold has slyly shaped to evoke the format and curved corners of a smartphone screen, echoing the way Bailey captures private moments of visual poetry). The film celebrates rather than judges its erratic and occasionally challenging characters It’s the closest Andrea Arnold has come to a feelgood flick. Read full review
80
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyNov 7, 2024
Bird is for every lost child who wishes someone would have stood up and defended them. It’s a fragile but beautiful vision, and marks the strongest blend yet of Andrea Arnold’s primary directives as a filmmaker. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalZachary BarnesNov 7, 2024
Though the more fantastic symbolic concepts of Bird don’t take flight as they’re meant to, the film’s human portraits give it vibrancy. Read full review
80
Rolling StoneDavid FearNov 7, 2024
Bird may be the most divisive movie of Andrea Arnold’s career, and we’re including the gloriously feral 2011 adaptation of Wuthering Heights. But like everything else she’s done to date, it’s also rewarding in unexpected ways — the sort of film that taps into endless reservoir of empathy as much as it shocks you with extremities. Read full review
80
EmpireSophie ButcherNov 5, 2024
A classic Andrea Arnold picture, complete with striking new talent and moving insight into life lived on the margins. Read full review
80
The Daily BeastNick SchagerSep 7, 2024
Barry Keoghan is arguably the most electric actor working today, and he absolutely ignites Bird. Read full review
80
Paste MagazineFarah ChededMay 29, 2024
A film so ambitious lives and dies by its central performances, but Rogowski is typically brilliant, and acting newcomer Adams marks yet another casting coup for Arnold. Read full review
80
Total FilmJames MottramMay 20, 2024
Delivering her first narrative feature since 2016’s American Honey, Arnold initially seems to be retreading familiar social-realist ground, delving into poverty-stricken working-class lives. But in its second half Bird crosses into fable-like territory, with impressive results. Read full review
80
Screen DailyLee MarshallMay 18, 2024
Bird spreads its wings slowly, but ends up soaring away from its dingy broken-Britain locations in a moving flight of hope and empowerment. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterLeslie FelperinMay 18, 2024
Thanks to the director’s magisterial knack with actors (especially non-professionals such as terrific adolescent discovery Nykiya Adams, who, as the protagonist, is in nearly every frame of the film), the result is quite entrancing. Read full review
80
TimeStephanie ZacharekMay 17, 2024
This is what Arnold is so great at capturing: people just doing their best, which often means they surpass every expectation without even knowing it. Her generosity toward her characters is also generosity toward us. She hands us nothing, even as she gives us everything. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeMay 17, 2024
Not everyone will approve of the big swing here. But few will resist the richness and fullness of [Arnold's] characterisation. Read full review
80
Time OutDave CalhounMay 16, 2024
If ever a film puts its arm round a kid and says: ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got you’, that’s Bird and Bailey. She’s a character you feel Arnold would lie on railtracks to protect – and that’s a powerful, moving instinct to share. Read full review
75
IndieWireRyan LattanzioMay 18, 2024
Bird is not Arnold’s best film — how can you top the cross-country raptures of “American Honey” or the final synchronized dance to Nas in “Fish Tank”? But it’s certainly her most ambitious in terms of willingness to stretch her creative reach beyond the social-realist-only confines of some of her early work. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreNov 8, 2024
Bird is the newest feature from Andrea Arnold — her first scripted film since the 2016 U.S. road odyssey American Honey — and it serves up an endearing, ungainly mix of the gritty and the magical. Read full review
70
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Saffron MaeveNov 7, 2024
Perhaps Bird is best understood as a film about self-consciousness or perhaps it is just a self-conscious film, ironing out the flaws of these well-meaning characters to create a fairy tale or apologue. Read full review
70
The New York TimesAlissa WilkinsonNov 7, 2024
There’s a wealth of lovely performances in Bird, including Adams, who holds the film together by slowly taking on tenderness as it progresses. But the two poles of the movie are Rogowski and Keoghan, who radiate precisely opposite energies. Read full review
70
Vanity FairRichard LawsonMay 18, 2024
Bird is a puzzling film, but gradually draws us toward a significant catharsis. Read full review
63
Washington PostTy BurrNov 15, 2024
There are pieces of a great movie here, but they never quite come together in a way that allows a gifted filmmaker to take flight. Read full review
60
ColliderCaleb HammondMay 18, 2024
Bird ultimately reads as Arnold “playing the hits” with a narrative she fundamentally knows how to stage in her sleep. Ultimately it feels too familiar, even with the welcome magical realism additions and a hallucinogenic slime secreting toad. Arnold fans will no doubt find plenty to latch onto with Bird, but it’s unlikely to convert non-believers. Read full review
60
The TelegraphTim RobeyMay 18, 2024
Personally, I couldn’t follow Arnold over the dotted line into violent magical realism, however situated it might be in a young girl’s sense of fantasy. It’s a miscalculation, like playing your weakest suit mistaking it for a trump. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 18, 2024
It meditates on identity and belonging, the poignancy of not being valued, not being seen, the transition from childhood to adulthood, girlhood to womanhood, sexism and cruelty. The energy and heartfelt good humour offset the moments of cliche and implausibility. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyMaureen Lee LenkerAug 31, 2024
Like the butterflies and pockets of natural beauty that Bailey is drawn to, there are glimmers of potential in Bird. But it never fully manages to take flight, leaving its provocative conclusion more jarring and confusing than revelatory. Read full review
58
The Film StageRory O'ConnorMay 18, 2024
The director has gestured toward magical realism in her work before (think of the white horse in Fish Tank or the elemental yearning of her Wuthering Heights) but this first foray into anthropomorphism feels strangely surface-level and does more to break the film’s spell than enhance it. Read full review
50
The Associated PressJake CoyleNov 6, 2024
Bird may go down as a rare miss for Arnold but you can still see the keenness of her eye and the nimbleness of her camera, with her regular cinematographer Robbie Ryan. And that’s true never so much as when the camera is on Adams, a talent, whose melancholy eyes say more than all the theatrics around her. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineDavid RobbNov 5, 2024
As evocative as it is, the film’s use of small-town squalor as a blank canvas for artful indulgences often detracts from its purported authenticity. Read full review
50
Screen RantPatrice WitherspoonMay 28, 2024
A harrowing narrative that contemplates the transition from girlhood to womanhood, Arnold uses magical realism to capture preteen angst with a strong desire for existential freedom. Read full review
50
VarietyOwen GleibermanMay 18, 2024
The film is Arnold trying to have the integrity of her severity and eat it too. Bird is a feel-bad movie that turns into a feel-good movie. What it never feels like is a totally authentic movie. Read full review
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