Jeremy Hersh’s movie often has the feel of an academic exercise, and the fact that its characters are earnest Brooklynites doesn’t help.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 6, 2022

Writer-director Jeremy Hersh tackles the intersection of race, sexuality, class and disability with rare nuance in this wry indie drama, which observes sharply the trappings of millennial entitlement and liberal hypocrisy.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 12, 2021

[T]his is a finely turned exercise.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 10, 2021

If it initially lacks momentum and oomph, the film becomes a multi-faceted look at issues surrounding surrogacy, anchored by Jasmine Batchelor's central performance as a woman forced to make a life-changing decision.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 10, 2021

Genuinely thought-provoking and handsomely acted.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 9, 2021

It's a brilliantly written and deftly performed morality play disguised as social satire. By the end the cracks are chasms, the arguments forensically examined, and the decision no easier to make.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 9, 2021

Writer-director Jeremy Hersh, making his feature debut, excels at unpicking how the threads of each character's moral position are tangled up with other issues, such as class, gender... that have real material effects on how they see the dilemma.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 7, 2021

A superb central performance from Batchelor guides the audience through a film which navigates an ethical and emotional minefield, and concludes that there are no easy answers.

| Jan 8, 2021

It's all about the performance of Jasmine Batchelor. [The Surrogate] is wonderfully anchored by her.

| Jun 12, 2020

An absolutely terrific debut from Jeremy Hersh, and Jasmine Batchelor is fantastic.

| Jun 12, 2020

Hersh has a good ear for the way people talk about sensitive and difficult issues.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 12, 2020

Its characters may illuminate a number of thorny issues, but they never exist just to illustrate them.

| Jun 11, 2020

As it stands, the whole enterprise feels like something the classic-Hollywood problem-filmmaker Stanley Kramer might have come up with, if he were a sadist.

| Jun 11, 2020

Played by anyone else, Jess might read as cloying, even intrusive, but Batchelor finds a well of empathy in Jess.

| Original Score: B+ | Jun 10, 2020

There are no movie-of-the-week histrionics here, and zero moralizing... just perceptive, thoroughly absorbing, granular adult drama based on difficult questions to which there are no right or wrong answers, let alone easy ones.

| Jun 5, 2020