Brent Simon

Love & Gelato is basically the professional equivalent of a work-study program, the type of movie which affords young actors the opportunity to cut their teeth on uncomplicated material within the well-manicured confines of an easily prescribed genre.

If it sounds flamboyantly colorful to call Ahed’s Knee the cinematic equivalent of an echoing regurgitative scream, it’s also accurate. The film is a highly personal work that becomes trapped in its own feedback loop, making the same point over and over.

There’s a genuine sense of lived-in sadness here, but it isn’t enough to elevate the proceedings into something special or compelling.

The movie’s slipshod reasoning and grating rhythms suggest strongly that Lasseter’s ignominious professional defenestration (he was driven from his perch in 2017-18 amidst allegations of sexual misconduct) has impacted his storytelling judgment, the expertise and skill level of people who wish to work with him, or both

It is a bewildering misfire which roundly illustrates the differences between a historically under-told story which arguably should be amplified and a movie that actually does a good job of accomplishing that task.

In the end, Code Name Banshee doesn’t have interesting ideas about who its characters are, or even wish to be. It’s a cliché-driven, rinse-and-repeat exercise in expended bullets, nothing more.

A yawningly simplistic and roundly inconsequential action movie, The Princess lacks, on a narrative level, the certitude and clarity of purpose of its title character.

The end result is a movie whose chief entertainment value may come from taking an inventory of the different ways its various characters pronounce the name of its imprisoned, assistive madman.