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It's nearly impossible for someone interested in the anime industry not to have heard of Yamada Naoko. Her personality-focused direction on K-On! is arguably what turned it into a hit and raised it above its contemporaries. More recently, she directed Koe no Katachi, a film that seemed to signal a move into a more art-house style with unusual shot compositions, a minimal soundtrack and a meandering pace. While the film had many flaws, its personal message resonated with a lot of people, further shining a light on Yamada's talent.
With this in mind, it was clear that Liz to Aoi Tori would be well received, even ... from the conceptual level - a down-to-earth, character-driven drama tied to an existing franchise, directed by the person who does that best, with a heaping helping of symbolism. However, in my opinion, the final product can be described as nothing other than a waste of talent.

First of all, the visuals. If KyoAni is known for anything, it's their high quality artwork and animation. However, in this case they're oddly mediocre while acting more flashy than ever. Characters have their hair flap around wildly to show off fluid key animation that everyone knew they were capable of anyway and doesn't add anything to the scene other than a distraction, while the background art consists of uncharacteristically low detail surfaces which seem to have been made completely separate from the foreground objects (and not in a superflat way, there was clearly an effort to portray depth within the frame). The transitions don't guide the viewer's eyes so much as throw them all over the screen, and there's a lot of random cutaways to objects lying around the room or to the side of a character's limb without any real purpose or meaning, not to mention it rarely goes more than two cuts without an obnoxious depth-of-field effect that puts winter's Violet Evergarden to shame.

The plot moves at the slowest of paces, and while that isn't a problem in and of itself, it makes the narrative progress (which is almost exclusively located in the last 20-30 minutes) feel jarring and unearned when it comes. There's a heavy focus on a story which our two main characters are obsessed with and constantly relate themselves to, even though thematically it turns out that the story doesn't fit either of their situations very well, making it feel like wasted time which is especially egregious when coupled with the aforementioned pacing.

On the other hand, the sound design is pretty exceptional (it was directed by Youta Tsuruoka and Kensuke Ushio after all), and I have no complaints regarding it. It really helped sell the reaction to Mizore's performance around the climax and the evocative dreamlike melodies may have been what kept me from completely disliking the film.

All in all, I don't regret watching it but I can't see myself rewatching it or recommending it to anyone. 5/10