Daddy Longlegs

One of the best portrayals of fatherhood I've ever seen. At least the kind of father I had who had the best of intentions but his own life got in the way. Being thrust into a position you're totally not ready for and may never have been ready for. The Safdies show the barebones of the kind of frantic, stressful filmmaking they would master in later films. Formally they're not there but I resonate too much with the film.

I had no idea how good the older Safdie brothers stuff was but its all come into my life at the perfect time. This was such an excellent and sincere depiction of single-parenting in the chaos of NYC. Tons of great cameos and thoroughly entertaining, I was genuinely sad it ever had to end.

More focused and cohesive than Pleasures of Being Robbed, with a strong lead performance from Ronald Bronstein (who's own directorial debut Frownland is a far stronger and more compelling bit of cringe-y verite behavioral horror). However the Safdie's filmmaking could still use a bit of work. It seems like they took every bit of Ray Carney pontification about the superiority of Cassavetes completely to heart and the result is uneven "naturalism" and sloppy visuals.

Going backwards in Safdie films and loving it a lot. Great personal touches that make Lenny a really good shitty dad. Feeling like you're right there in the city, attached to it's mess of relationships and responsibilities, make this really enjoyable.

Viewed January 19, 2020.

Probably my favourite of the Safdies I've seen so far. Lenny is the ultimate chaotic neutral, and watching him go about his day is such a trip. This is a pretty stressful watch, but it's well worth it for the characters.

Safdie Bros make clear their marked talent for vérité filmmaking and an indebtedness to the humanist works of Cassavetes in their first directorial debut as a pair. Brilliant usage of telephoto lenses to translate Lenny's existential instability onto the viewer; if it feels disorienting, then consider it mission accomplished. Truly, the start of a new form of American neorealism at the turn of the decade.

Lenny is never malicious, and alot of his failures are his life working against his efforts. Truthfully, this movie inspired alot of sympathy in me for how difficult it is to be a dad and a father, to be a breadwinner and a caretaker, to not be spread completely thin between the obligations of a world rushing you along or everyone else's selfish expectations, and again, this is but a two week study of that struggle.

they hadn't really cultivated a distinct aesthetic yet, but the tone is already starting to emerge and the writing is fully there. the abel ferrara mugging, the museum and subsequent nightmare, the sleeping pills, the tea and soda, the stepping game, the tornado of rude cartoons--it's easily one of the more credibly specific of these post-cassavetes indies not to mention whirlwind eventful, confidently lurching between comedy, tragedy and horror and satisfying on all three counts.

This struck me as something like "What if Woody Allen had made a quasi-family-life drama with less intellectual humor and more bad decisions and their outcomes." Perhaps state child welfare offices across the country can use this as training material. It is sad, of course, that parenting doesn't come with an instruction manual; even if it did, I can't see this father being able to make time for the classes.

Kind of a slice-of-life realist drama about a single father trying to parent his two boys on his watch with them, and not doing a very good job of it. Pretty low-key, probably not tightly-scripted, and not quite as excellent as the Safdies' later works, but still a very good movie. One of the boys is played by the son of Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo who also cameos, as does Abel Ferrara.

The Safdie's twitchy, anxiety-ridden style is in evidence here from the first scene, where the man-child at the center of their story attempts to hop a fence while holding a hot dog. The expected disaster ensues, as the rest of the film replays some version of that scene for 90+ minutes. I would like to feel more compassion for Lenny, but really only end up feeling sorry for everyone connected with him, none more so than his kids. In this, the film is an interesting failure.