Disney's live-action version of the Grimm fairy tale about humble endurance and the joys of ball-going isn't perfect. (For one thing, Helena Bonham Carter's Fairy Godmother is slapsticky and silly in a way befitting wicked stepsisters and no one else. For another, some of the personal and political machinations are a trifle Byzantine for so simple a narrative frame.) But director Kenneth Branagh (Thor, Hamlet) manages to tell an old-fashioned story with sincerity and style, and the result sparkles with something like the old Disney magic. (In places, it also sparkles with sparkles.) There are nods to the passage of time and change of sensibilities — notably, Cate Blanchett's magnificent turn as the wicked-but-also-wounded stepmother — but the film feels neither dated nor updated. Rather, it treads, with a light and careful step, the difficult middle path of timelessness. Lily James radiates approachable beauty in the title role, and Derek Jacobi is his usual excellent self as a dying, loving, worried King. (2015) — Matthew Lickona
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