Minyan

I didn't have high expectations when starting this film, and yet it crept up on me. Expertly crafted, it's a subtle, yet powerful piece. A dark humor runs within it, but I found it illuminating in so many ways- the love, support, idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies of family and communities.

A worthwhile watch when you want to be moved by a film.

It takes a while to get into this subtle, understated film. Exchanges between characters tend to be muted and at times abruptly truncated. This, you gradually come to understand, reflects the closeted world of the main character, David, whose most crucial interchanges are often a matter of a sidelong glance, a touch, amidst the garrulous world of his mother and fellow Jewish emigrés in nineteen eighties Brighton Beach. I was slowly drawn into thus milieu, permeated as it is by memories of the holocaust and ominous references to a disease affecting gay men, and ultimately found it deeply moving.

I didn't mind this at all, slow burn but not boring. There was something intriguing about the narrative, some left of field scenes and plot holes not explored but mostly a good film. I'm a fan of anything set in New York City and this was a side of it I'd never seen before.

Sensitive and uplifting, director Eric Steel's coming-of-age sexy drama won the Best U.S. Narrative Feature Prize at Outfest. Channeling the obstacles of growing up gay in a conservative Russian-Jewish community in 1980's Brooklyn, it brings a career-changing performance by Broadway's The Inheritance's Samuel H. Levine, in the role of the rabbinical student David, a teen struggling with hormones and family expectations. A beautiful portrait of a Brighton Beach boy exploring his sexuality, identity and culture, as well as a rich meditation on generational values (he's educated by his grandfather and other local elders), Steel conceived a powerfully perceptive debut.

An exceptional, moving performance all the way around. Every aspect exuded excellence yet this is a film that isn't for everyone. Deep dive into an ethnic that most of us only very slightly know and even fewer understand without being one of them. It's one of those rare glimpses into the unknown and still one can never thoroughly understand unless it is YOUR story.

I can not imagine y'all watching it. Painfully slow but so exacting in every detail. Beautiful in the extreme when it explores things you are familiar with, but mystifying in the unknown pieces of those lives and loves.

And the soundtrack featuring clarinetist David Krakauer takes you on a wild ride to heaven and back. Just took my breath away...