Natasha Senjanovic

In The Salt of Life, the actor-writer-director again plays his own alter ego, and gives us another deceptively small, vaguely autobiographical story with universal resonance, in more technically assured packaging.

The actor literally takes the metaphors of his bull-headed character to the limits and is never less than believable or mesmerizing.

Sunshine is stretched thin for the big screen. The decidedly art-house film is better suited for television.

Its schematic structure oversimplifies the drama, despite an interesting, mostly debut cast. It seems better suited for the small screen.

The dissected minutiae of this adultery drama unfortunately doesn't add up to a very original or moving whole.

Audiences can either fight it, trying to make sense of the shaky plot, or flow along with the film's languid, doomed romance accompanied by the southern poetics of singer-songwriter Tom Russell.

A smart psychological thriller with the one fatal flaw that Slavic women in Italian television and cinema must be dark, tormented characters who hardly ever smile. In a criminal caper with a twist, this actually works against the story.

Spans four decades of a troubled family with enough gentle pathos and sly humor to compensate for a less than original storyline.

It's tempting to call The Four Times documentary-like, except that documentaries usually explain what it is we are seeing. Instead, Frammartino uses his background as a video installation artist to create something that one could just as easily come across playing at an art gallery.

An ambitious film, and Guadagnino deserves praise for the risks he takes here.