although wobbly in parts like so many cinematic anthologies, Garrone's alternately silly and entrancing adaptation of Giambattista Basile's Neapolitan stories provides a welcome gothic antidote to more stately treatments of similar material
a lavishly realized and long-overdue adaptation of three stories from 17th-century Neapolitan scribe Giambattista Basile's "Pentamerone," which predates and even inspired many of the classics in heavy rotation today, from Rapunzel to Cinderella
a dreamy, fresh take on the kind of dark and gory yarns that have come down to us from the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault, only here they're pleasingly new and unfamiliar
by Peter Bradshaw [The Guardian ]
