Menashe is frustrating because it takes hard-earned access, retains documentary virtues, and then dilutes it all via a screenplay that hits every beat exactly where you’d expect.

| Jan 11, 2023

Seeing single fatherhood examined in the context of another culture that exists alongside other more commonly conveyed American cultures is a unique experience film-goers are not often afforded.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 25, 2020

Menashe is an easygoing, heartfelt comedy held together by a thread of tenderness.

| Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 16, 2020

Spoken entirely in Yiddish, Menashe is a sort of Kramer vs. Kramer of the Hasidic community in Borough Park, Brooklyn. Played by Menashe Lustig, the titular character proves immediately lovable, if not a mensch.

| Feb 27, 2020

Moving and occasionally rather heartbreaking.

| Jan 28, 2020

This sensibly directed, melancholic little film prizes sincerity instead of overblown melodrama.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 10, 2019

It is a sometimes emotional, eye-opening treatise showing the tough, gray area decisions religious people like Menashe have to deal with in today's world.

| Sep 19, 2019

Though we may not all live in the same community as its characters, the sheer love, commitment, and vulnerability involved are human qualities we can identify with. Let the film shine its gentle light on you and allow you to blossom.

| Original Score: B | Mar 30, 2019

For a film that focuses on parent-child relations in the wake of a tragic death, Menashe remarkably eschews sentimentality or lazy conjecture.

| Mar 7, 2019

An undeniably impressive work guided by an auteur-like Weinstein, Menashe is simultaneously entrancing and beguilingly underdeveloped.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 19, 2019

There are welcome insights in to a culture largely ignored by society; unfortunately, they are married in to a domestic drama that slowly loses steam and never manages to overcome how boringly familiar its central scenario is.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Feb 5, 2019

The scant 82 minute runtime manages to pack a shocking amount of heart.

| Original Score: A- | Feb 5, 2019

Menashe has a tenderness to it that is hard to decry, and because it's shorter than your average film, it doesn't have the time to go off the rails and become something it's not.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 10, 2018

This a touching film that depicts the father/son relationship in a manner that feels as authentic as its setting.

| Original Score: B | Nov 1, 2018

Weinstein walks a tightrope similar to the one of his main character, and though Menashe may occasionally falter, this director impressively does not in his first feature.

| Nov 1, 2018

Writer/director Joshua Z Weinstein is a documentary maker and this is his first feature but it has a very verité, naturalistic feel.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 27, 2018

It's a touching and nuanced film, and so skillfully made that you quickly get over the novelty of the fact that its characters are speaking Yiddish and get right into the story.

| May 24, 2018

Weinstein's ability to notch up the dramatic side of the story without bringing manipulative tricks into play is praiseworthy. His work serves up a tart platter that gives you food for thought.

| Original Score: 8/10 | May 14, 2018

A small tale of beauty, sadness and undeniable fascination ... In a way, the film is a kind of documentary hybrid; we're seeing a story, but what we're really watching is the milieu, which has never been depicted on film before with this veracity.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 4, 2018

Joshua Z. Weinstein's film is very modest but never less than interesting in the insights it offers into this rarefied world on the edge of Manhattan.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 4, 2018