It's genuinely impressive, in its own way, to construct a movie entirely out of cliches. You watch Made in Italy shamble forth, cobbled together like Frankenstein's monster from long-expired components of the predeceased, and your reaction is awe mingled with incredulity. It's alive? Somehow?

A catalogue of the warmed-over tropes from other romantic dramedies risks becoming a simple plot synopsis. Sad-sack estranged son? Check. Absentee dad whose roguish exterior conceals his regret and guilt? Check. Klutzy meet-cute with the beautiful…

Almost two months after I've seen this movie, I'm still trying to decide what I think of it. It's certainly effective, accomplishing everything it sets out to do. Robert Eggers is scarily self-assured at the helm of his first feature film, creating an atmosphere of uncanniness and spiritual dread that is unwavering and flawlessly oppressive. If The Exorcist is a horror movie for Catholics, then The Witch is a horror movie for Protestants: Because the individual (not the institutional church)…