The setting plumbs the depths but the movie stays on the surface.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 25, 2022

Held and Farmer have natural onscreen chemistry, bringing an almost docudrama realism to their characters’ shared fate even as it teeters on tragedy.

| Mar 25, 2022

In the end, the most alluring aspect of “Topside” — its capacity for embodied feeling — is perhaps the one that was most cut short.

| Mar 24, 2022

Everyone here means well, and there's a commitment to the entire venture that's admirable, but this falls deep into what is often referred to as 'poverty porn.'

| Sep 11, 2020

The whole concept of a lo-fi New York movie shot on the streets has been done and redone so many times that it risks cliché, but "Topside" works as well it does because it never tries to reinvent that playbook.

| Original Score: B+ | Sep 10, 2020

A striking debut, cinematic and affecting.

| Sep 8, 2020