What begins as a documentary following the final tour of a dying magician - "The Amazing Johnathan" - becomes an unexpected and increasingly bizarre journey as the filmmaker struggles to separate truth from illusion.... (Full plot summary below)
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What begins as a documentary following the final tour of a dying magician - "The Amazing Johnathan" - becomes an unexpected and increasingly bizarre journey as the filmmaker struggles to separate truth from illusion.
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| The PlaylistJordan RuimyBerman ultimately turns his incredible meta-story into an ode to documentary filmmaking. And its exhilarating stuff because you have absolutely no clue where this movie is going to take you next. Berman’s doc keeps pulling the rug from under you, and it’s a high-wire act of reinvention that rewards the viewer at every step. |
| Film ThreatAnthony Ray BenchThere’s a darkly unique spin to it that makes the old and tired feel fresh and new. ... This film is straight up magical. |
| The A.V. ClubSean O'NealLike The Amazing Johnathan’s act, it’s a funny, trippy, lively bit of sleight of hand that can often make you feel like you’re seeing something extraordinary, even if it’s just some prankster f**king with you. |
| TheWrapElizabeth WeitzmanOut-pranking the prankster, [Berman] turns a documentary about an unpredictable subject into a meditation on what it means to make a documentary about an unpredictable subject. |
| Screen InternationalFionnuala HalliganA strangely-compelling, unpredictable and manipulative piece of work. |
| Los Angeles TimesGary GoldsteinA deeper dive into Szeles’ ostensibly complex psychological makeup might have given the movie more heft, though Szeles, magician that he is, clearly remains more about the illusion than the reveal. |
| EmpireIan FreerThe Amazing Johnathan Documentary starts as a blast but as the journey progresses, becomes ever more slippery: Is Szeles tricking Berman? Is Berman bamboozling us? The answer is entertaining and frustrating in equal measures. |
| The GuardianPeter BradshawBerman is guilty of one of the most tiresome cliches in documentary – solemnly playing the audio of a phone conversation, with subtitles, over an exterior shot of the building where it is taking place, giving the impression that this is smoking-gun proof of something sensational, or at any rate interesting, when it is pretty ordinary. |
| Slant MagazineJoshua Minsoo KimOver and over, the film reminds us that banking on a gimmick isn’t an adequate substitute for an incisive character portrait. |
| RogerEbert.comOdie HendersonThe fact that director Ben Berman is making a documentary would make this concept quite unsavory, that is, if the entire enterprise weren’t so damn dull. |
