C'mon C'mon

This light-touch, bittersweet beauty of a story about the relationship between an uncle and his young nephew envelops you in its quiet loveliness.

Quietly, shamblingly human after the spectacular derangement of Joker, [Phoenix] plays Johnny with an inconsistent complicated history of care and affection woven into his slouchy body language and muted line readings.

It’s as if the film’s real purpose were to reassure an educated, progressive audience, full of worries about themselves and the world, that their lives are in some basic sense OK.

C'mon C'mon is awash with regret-over badly tended sibling relationships, undealt-with mommy issues, but also the satisfaction of everyday caretaking, the hope implicit in all those lunches made and dishes done.

What we have here is basically a 2020s riff on 'Kramer vs. Kramer,' the modern man, unexpectedly pressed into child-rearing, and finding something of himself in the process.

C'mon C'mon is a great big bear hug wrapped in celluloid.

… the best kind of slow burn …

The black and white cinematography harkens back to the past, both to the old school ways in which cinema was captured, and to times gone by.

It's lyrical, soulful and comes with its own reading list that you'll wish you had a pen and paper to write down as they appear on the screen.

In a year filled with epic sci-fi stories, major musical productions, large-budget superhero flicks and historical tales, this quiet yet beautiful film is one of the best of the year.