Casey Epstein-Gross

Cooper isn’t reinventing comfort food, but he is cooking it well. You may not remember it in a few months, but it goes down easy and leaves you feeling surprisingly full—and in a world of stiff, larger-than-life, emotionally vacant Oscar-bait any day, sometimes that can be enough.

Park is a virtuoso of tone, and for a while, No Other Choice hums with delirious energy: the precision of a thriller and the absurdity of farce. But once the machine reveals itself, its designs become clearer and more repetitive.

The craftsmanship, framing, pacing, and droll humor are admirable, and yet the film is never quite subtle enough to hit home the way it needs to.

There is so much that can be mined from the terrifying experience of aging, but The Front Room is decidedly uninterested in everything that wellspring of tragedy has to offer—save for incontinence, and that is something (perhaps the only thing) it is very, very interested in.