Life Itself (2018)

"It is sentimental and sprawling, which are not necessarily bad things, but also manipulative and contrived, which very much are."

"Overall, his movie feels like an entire season of This Is Us compressed into two frustratingly uneven hours of tearjerking and grief porn."

"Isn't it amazing how human destinies intertwine? This movie seems intent on persuading you that the answer is "no.""

"You rarely get the sense of Fogelman's characters being complex figures with internal lives - instead they're merely there to smile weakly through whatever trauma their sadistic creator puts them through."

"Barely a moment seems to pass without a birth, a death, a betrayal, a starling revelation or a life-changing bombshell."

"The worst thing about Life Itself is not that it is emotionally sadistic. It's just how much it wants to be emotionally sadistic, while missing the mark by a mile."

"It's both schematic and self-important."