Spike Jonze‘s Where The Wild Things Are, in the view of N.Y. Times cricket Manohla Dargis, “startles and charms and delights largely because Jonze’s filmmaking exceeds anything he’s done in either of his inventive previous features, Being John Malkovich (’99) and Adaptation (’02). [Now] he has made a work of art that stands up to its source and, in some instances, surpasses it.

It’s a film “that often dazzles during its quietest moments, as when Max (Max Records) sets sail, and you intuit his pluck and will from the close-ups of him staring into the unknown. He looms large here, as we do inside our heads. But when the view abruptly shifts to an overhead shot, you see that the boat is simply a speck amid an overwhelming vastness. This is the human condition, in two eloquent images.”