Struggling to make sense of his life in America, prepubescent immigrant Samuel Chu grapples with the mysteries of learning a language, navigates the urban streets of Los Angeles on a pair of roller skates in the dubious company of ghostly strangers, and finds himself at odds with his young mother when it comes to her unrealistic expectations about who he should be. An affectionate chronicle of one boy's formative months in a new country, "Everything Beautiful is Far Away" is also an intimate portrait of the complicated relationship between a mother and her only child.
"Funny, poetic,...