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

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

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

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

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

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

Full Review | Nov 28, 2007

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 26, 2007

For all its enticing dramatic hooks, Choking Man has a fairly unrewarding conclusion.

Full Review | Nov 9, 2007

Barron's direction is low-key but efficient.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 9, 2007

The movie suffocates under the weight of too many wrong choices.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 9, 2007

Choking Man mainly falters in its inability to reconcile the darker psychological elements of Jorge's mind and all that they portend.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Nov 9, 2007

Choking Man is harsh and intermittently affecting but oppressively contrived and mostly pointless.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 9, 2007

The film looks so good it could play without sound.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 8, 2007

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.

Full Review | Nov 8, 2007