If you’re want to watch one of those “this is why I make movies; look at my parents,” things without really having to suss through knowing way too much about the filmmaker going in, this is your best bet.

| Nov 10, 2022

It's just almost pathologically elementary, floating with nostalgia and a few painful moments that could go even further in its narrative purpose.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 27, 2022

D’Ambrose triumphantly exemplifies a film language forged by Robert Bresson, resulting in a film that is emotionally affecting, even as it is aesthetically distancing.

| Oct 5, 2022

Juxtaposes remembered interactions and still-life shots with a deliberate, elliptical precision, the minor-key notes building to a chord that resounds with the ache of lost time and unexpressed emotions.

| Sep 16, 2022

The Cathedral feels very much universal and personal at the same time, as it plays out like an emotionally unencumbered version of Richard Linklater's Boyhood, akin to Terence Davies' work.

| Sep 5, 2022

The Cathedral marries form to content in a striking way.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 2, 2022

Part of the pleasure of “The Cathedral” is how D’Ambrose plays with — and gently destabilizes — narrative conventions by drawing from different realist traditions.

| Sep 1, 2022

The viewer is asked to be as observant to details, to furtive gestures and to shades of meaning, as D’Ambrose is in adapting his own family story, making The Cathedral a genuinely radical act.

| Aug 2, 2022

The Cathedral is a deeply humanist film, but its also a relentlessly bleak exorcism of a familys intolerances.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 22, 2022

The Cathedral is perhaps more substantial in retrospect, where ultimately defining memories of this experience are inconsequential in the moment and the film leaves marks that might only protrude as time marches forward and youth is a distant past.

| Original Score: B | Feb 8, 2022

I hate to label The Cathedral an experimental film (not exactly a lure for distributors), but that is the genre from which D’Ambrose has produced a hybrid unlike any other.

| Feb 7, 2022

Something of an elevated photobook of sorts, DAmbroses second feature is a deft, deeply felt family study that feels as personal as it does dream-like.

| Feb 3, 2022

The Cathedral is a quietly stunning jewel box of a film, filled with images that together form the captured memories of the main character, Jesse (played by various actors through his childhood and youth).

| Feb 3, 2022

The intriguing domestic drama views things as if the subject is turning the pages of a family album.

| Original Score: B | Jan 30, 2022

A fervent memory piece, filled with haunting images of Jesse's visions. Amazingly, these scenes don't have the subjective feel of point-of-view shots; rather, they render memory as fact and present inner experience as an objective reality.

| Jan 29, 2022

Coming of age story presented in an interesting way. The storytelling is creative, but takes away the emotion at times. Beautifully shot.

| Jan 28, 2022

The Cathedral builds to a quietly devastating ending, one that rejects the tidy catharsis of so many coming-of-age tales for a more measured reckoning with the past.

| Jan 27, 2022

D'Ambrose clearly has a confident, fascinating voice as a filmmaker, making a family drama that plays out almost like a memory.

| Jan 27, 2022

The Cathedral is fascinating to look at, but oddly chilly and detached.

| Jan 25, 2022

D'Ambrose has the technique and narrative instincts down; presumably next time we'll see what else he has on his mind.

| Jan 25, 2022