| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 18, 2011

Low-key indie.

| Original Score: B | Jul 9, 2009

For all its concern with social and mental disintegration, Choking Man is a strangely tender film.

Full Review | Nov 16, 2008

Despite efforts to impart a little tension and human interest, the tale is told with such discretion, it's almost anonymous.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 14, 2008

There's enough charm and enterprise here to win over viewers who have the patience to stick by the tongue-tied Jorge. An intriguing change of direction for pop-video pioneer Barron, though next time he might like to cut loose that bit more.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 14, 2008

The creepy and original power of the film is the schizophrenic other who taunts him when he finally crawls home to his maggoty bedsit. Weird.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 14, 2008

Some US indie films are so torpid, so pointless and so incredibly whingey that you want to reach into the screen and slap the face of everyone involved. This film, by writer-director Steve Barron, is one such.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 14, 2008

The film marries digicam naturalism to animated fantasy to oddsome but fascinating effect, rendering magical the inner world of the shy and almost muted Jorge. It's an unusual but valuable addition to the cinema of contemporary migration.

| Nov 14, 2008

It's all a bit anonymous despite engaging performances, especially from Yuan as the sunny optimist, but the character of Jorge is so cripplingly introverted that there's nothing to latch on to.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 14, 2008

Steve Barron's darkly melancholic, low-budget drama is worlds away from the blockbuster swagger of his earlier Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 14, 2008

They don't add up to much; and he's just too passive to make us care even slightly about whether he gets the girl or ends up taking a meat-cleaver to his rival.

| Nov 14, 2008

After more than an hour in Jorge's relentlessly miserable company the voice in The Sneak's head was saying "leave now".

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 14, 2008

Modest, quirky, well acted by an unknown cast.

| Nov 14, 2008

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 14, 2008

It's meant to be a portrait of a man "choked" by his own alienation, but Jorge's shyness comes over as dullness, and after all the sensitive maundering the conclusion is a terrible letdown.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 14, 2008

It's not a bad effort at all - and certainly a whole class above Ninja Turtles.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 14, 2008

Impressively directed drama with strong performances and a subtle script, though the tilt into magical realism doesn't quite work.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 14, 2008

| Original Score: 3/6 | Nov 13, 2008

rises above the mundane with the inclusion of some gorgeous animated interludes and just a touch of Latin American-style magical realism.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 14, 2008

Overburdened with disorienting stylistic devices and contrived plot elements that reduce the psychological depth to which it aspires.

Full Review | Nov 28, 2007