All These Small Moments is a charming, well-acted New York City coming-of-age set against a family-in-crisis drama.
There’s something so charming and idealistic about movies set in New York City. There’s a different kind of energy that they give off. Something homey. All These Small Moments is no exception. It’s a testament to first-time director Melissa Miller Costanzo. The movie feels lived in — the central family’s cluttered Brooklyn brownstone feels real and intimate.
All These Small Moments follows the Sheffield family. Teenager Howie (Brendan Meyer) and his younger brother Simon (Sam McCarthy) have been noticing that their parents — Carla (Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club legend Molly Ringwald) and Tom (Spotlight’s Brian d’Arcy James) — have been sleeping separately.
Like any parents with the best intentions, they try to maintain an air of normalcy for their kids even though things clearly aren’t. As a coping mechanism, Howie has become infatuated with a woman — we eventually learn her name is Odessa (Jemima Kirke) — he sees every morning on the bus. One day, he ditches school to follow her. What he finds unsettles him — his father in a cafe with another woman.
From there, the movie unfolds as a familiar coming-of-age story of a kid dealing with the typical teenage angst issues against his parents’ crumbling marriage. It’s never melodramatic, though. It has all the feelings we’ve come to love from a light-hearted New York City drama — all the sentimentality, cynical humor, and longing.
Miller Costanzo has a focused and classic style that makes the little moments in All These Small Moments work — the brothers sharing the bathroom sink, their parents arguing over asking a waiter for bread at a restaurant.
Like Lady Bird, the movie is built as a series of vignettes that follows the characters growing and changing. Each scene building on the last to complete a portrait.
If anything, the movie’s biggest issue is that it’s too controlled. Unlike Lady Bird and other successful recent teen coming-of-age movies like The Edge of Seventeen and Eighth Grade, there are never those moments when you can feel real life happening on screen.
In particular, there are cut-ins to Carla and Tom in marriage counseling that ring a bit false and scenes between Howie and Lindsay (Harley Quinn Smith) — a classmate he verbally spars with often — are more whimsical than real
All These Small Moments hits a lot of the beats you’d expect of a movie with this plot — the kids listening to their parents argue on the stairs, a young teen infatuated with an older woman — and some you don’t expect. Still, it’s a solid enough family and coming-of-age drama that shows a lot of promise for a new director.
Where to watch All these Small Moments: Available to rent or buy on Prime Video or
Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.