In this case, what looks like an ambitious film-school project, complete with heavy-handed sincerity, experimental camera style, and an overplayed central metaphor, becomes gently lyrical and melancholy.
Comment
11/26/07
Choking Man (2007)
47
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:32
Fresh:15
Rotten:17
Average Rating:5.1/10
Consensus: Quirky animated interludes fail to lift this dull US immigrant indie out of its introverted torpid state.
Runtime: 84 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:14-11-2008
Synopsis: Set in New York's Jamaica, Queens, CHOKING MAN illustrates the neighborhood's rich diversity. Ecuadorian immigrant Jorge (Octavio Gómez Berríos) washes dishes at a local diner, where he connects... [More]
Starring: Octavio Gómez Berríos, Eugenia Yuan, Aaron Paul, Mandy Patinkin
Director: Steve Barron
Reviews for Choking Man
For all its enticing dramatic hooks, Choking Man has a fairly unrewarding conclusion.
11/09/07
Barron's direction is low-key but efficient.
11/09/07
The movie suffocates under the weight of too many wrong choices.
11/09/07
[Barron] has made Jorge so deeply withdrawn that you are unable to really feel anything for him other than a blind pity, which is decidedly not the stuff of compelling dramaturgy.
11/09/07
Choking Man mainly falters in its inability to reconcile the darker psychological elements of Jorge's mind and all that they portend.
11/09/07
Top CriticChoking Man is harsh and intermittently affecting but oppressively contrived and mostly pointless.
11/09/07
Top CriticThe film looks so good it could play without sound.
11/08/07
... wants to take us into Jorge's mind, though a less interesting and pleasant place would be hard to imagine.
11/08/07
I can think of no earthly reason why this well-made and thoroughly charming New York indie drama from writer-director Steve Barron has been languishing in limbo for two years.
11/08/07
If there is finally a point to the film it is that we're all human piñatas and that putting sprinkles in your fish soup may not be tasty, but it makes one's upchuck look pretty. I think.
11/04/07
Barron executes all the hard stuff remarkably well: vivid ensemble thesping, evocative locales and even unforced Catholic symbolism. But his high-concept protagonist is so introverted he projects a void at the film's center.
12/30/06
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