Metacritic reviews

Sollers Point is an intimate and wise character study, not only of an unformed young man but also of a neighborhood struggling to preserve itself in the face of economic decline.

Mr. Porterfield’s evenhanded direction doesn’t try to pull the viewer’s sympathies one way or another. Within his realistic mode he crafts some startling effects — a strip-club brawl that spills out into broad, embarrassing daylight is eye-opening.

Sollers Point is a moving and elusive blend of naturalism and melodrama, less a character study than an analysis of a community.

Sollers Point boasts a cool, classically observational tone marked by Sabier Kirchner’s invitingly elegant cinematography that eschews the vogue for artificial shaky-cam edginess, and the naturalistic detail of a lived-in neighborhood populated by at least a dozen instantly memorable characters — by turns stressed, satisfied, curious, weird and sad — just doing their thing.

It transfixes, not with artifice or cheap sentiment, but with a strange alchemy of gloom and light.

Keith’s sincerity and depth of feeling are embodied in Lombardi’s performance.

Sollers Point is easy to admire, abstractly and on principle. But you may still leave wondering if a little melodrama, a little bullshit, might have been preferable.

Sollers Point isn’t really about the plot, or advancing it. It’s all about the place, the sorts of people in it and the good and bad support systems that could sink or swim our hero. Thanks to Lombardi, we stick around for the answer.

What saves the movie from tedium is a cast that is easy to watch, from understated veterans such as Belushi.

One can imagine that Sollers Point might be better if its focus expanded to the area's inhabitants, not just Keith.