The stranger-than-fiction biopic Big Eyes is only the second of [Tim Burton's] non-animated pictures to have a woman at its center, and, perhaps not surprisingly, it's one of the richest portraits he's brought to the screen yet.

Burton had a chance to make a powerful statement on the struggle for a woman to achieve artistic recognition and instead settled for another childlike fairy tale.

Burton is telling a fascinating story here, and his confident sense of time and place, allied to Adams's adept performance as the increasingly assertive artist, provide many pleasures.

It enforces the notion that spousal abuse doesn’t always have to take the form of physical violence.