Metacritic reviews

This is not “Death of a Salesman’’ or “Save the Tiger’’ (in the case of the latter, thank God). But how refreshing to see a movie about a mother’s struggles that doesn’t culminate in her lying on her back to make ends meet.

One way to judge a filmmaker is by the way he or she directs children. Take Tze Chun and his impressive first feature, Children of Invention.

Heartfelt but dramatically tepid tale.

Urgent, artful and even austerely poetic.

The young director Tze Chun is not a flashy filmmaker, but he understands the vulnerability of immigrant workers in the sleazy sub-rosa economies of a floundering 21st-century America.

A modestly scaled, quietly effective independent movie about a struggling single mother and her two children.

Chen and Chiu's genuine, rarely cloying performances along with Cheung's urgent sincerity add immeasurably to this timely film's many modest pleasures.

Children of Invention seems furiously scribbled in shorthand, undermining what it has to offer in contemporary resonance.