Moretti and his actors establish a kind of instant empathy that makes the story all the more affecting.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 22, 2016

The general air of quiet intelligence throws the occasional outbursts of loud emotion into affecting relief, and John Turturro shines as the sort of unintentionally difficult star he doesn't seem like he'd be in real life.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 9, 2016

Ma Madre is effective in dramatizing the familiar paces adult children go through tending to their parents: the hospital indignities, confused consults with doctors, and helplessness at encroaching dementia.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 8, 2016

Moretti knows how to orchestrate a good laugh when it's needed, but he can plumb more soulful, sorrowful depths, too.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 2, 2016

Fortunately the movie-production scenes deliver plenty of laughs, courtesy of John Turturro.

Full Review | Sep 1, 2016

The biggest reason to see the Italian dramedy "Mia Madre" can be summed up in two words: John Turturro.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 1, 2016

This is a movie that doesn't quite come together, on both thematic and tonal levels, even though most individual scenes are competently acted and engaging.

Full Review | Sep 1, 2016

A story that, for all its well-crafted and sharply observed drama and its flamboyant comedy, is something more than a work of personal cinema-it's a virtual manifesto for it ...

Full Review | Aug 29, 2016

For a drama about death, it's also incredibly funny-not just wry funny, but also body humor funny-making for an interesting mix. Moretti is able to pull it off masterfully, and with heart.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 26, 2016

Italian drama Mia Madre is an either/or film, a humorous and poignant character study that frequently becomes an ensemble piece.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 26, 2016

Love, death, cinema - they're all there in "Mia Madre," bumping up against one another beautifully.

Full Review | Aug 25, 2016

An emotionally satisfying fusion of the mixed up and the magical.

Full Review | Aug 25, 2016

Mia Madre is most poignant when it finds a tone much like Moretti's 2001 La Stanza del Figlio (The Son's Room). Both movies are gently bewildered meanders through denial, regret, and the beginnings of acceptance.

Full Review | Aug 25, 2016

Tinged with the kind of honest sadness and comic frustrations that suggest a daily journal come to life.

Full Review | Aug 25, 2016

The saturation of Arvo Prt instant-melancholia on the soundtrack feels a bit too pushy, but otherwise this is a confidently controlled, accessible yet piercing look at the insidiousness of grief.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 25, 2016

As considerable as her gifts may be, Buy is ultimately unable to hold "Mia Madre" together.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 25, 2016

The most personal parts of Mia Madre are also the most thinly conceived.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Aug 25, 2016

Barry's preening self-regard and its counterpart, abject self-loathing, come across as rooted in vulnerability, inadequacy, alienation. You feel bad for this lonely guy, even as you laugh at him.

Full Review | Aug 23, 2016

Everything in "Mia Madre"-happenings, memories, and idle fancies-feels deftly interleaved.

Full Review | Aug 22, 2016

Margherita Buy's performance takes it to a high plane of emotionalism.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 11, 2016