83
The Film Stage by John Fink
The joy of Ferrara’s The Projectionist is simply in getting to know its subject.
The Projectionist
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
- Greece,
- United States
- 2019
- · 81m
Director
Abel Ferrara
Cast
Nicolas Nicolaou,
Abel Ferrara
Genre
Documentary
In his first New York City-set documentary in nearly a decade, Abel Ferrara uses the experience of one longtime cinema owner to chart the changes to the city’s theatrical landscape. It follows Nick Nicolaou who began working as a teenager in small neighborhood theaters, and who now is one of the city’s last independent theater owners.
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What are critics saying?
75
The Playlist by Chris Barsanti
A thin but heartfelt piece of work ... But with Ferrara content to let his subject mostly drive the show and not impose more of an authorial vision and context that could have created a grander narrative about the history of moviegoing in New York, the passion is missing.
75
Slant Magazine by Sam C. Mac
Where The Projectionist ultimately excels ... is as the kind of cultural microcosm that makes Ferrara’s other documentaries feel at once urgent and incredibly rich in their broader implications.
70
The Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy
This labor of love should be embraced wherever the term cinephile means anything.
60
The Guardian by Charles Bramesco
For cinephiles, this will be effective propaganda in service of a belief they already hold, a reaffirmation of their purist convictions from a simpatico mind. ... [But it] can sometimes slip into slightness, as Ferrara pads an already slim run time.
50
Screen Daily by Wendy Ide
It’s possible ... that in his affection for and identification with Nicolaou, Ferrera has over-estimated the fascination of his subject’s life story.
50
Screen International by Wendy Ide
It’s possible ... that in his affection for and identification with Nicolaou, Ferrera has over-estimated the fascination of his subject’s life story.
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