Judy Berlin

There's a subtext about the elliptical quality of memory -- the persent is too transient and past too obscure, only a dedicated documentary could distill a moment in time. The metaphor of the eclipse remains ambiguous, but there is some similarity between the indirect and cautious method of viewing an eclipse and the timidity with which these people live their lives. By film's end, I felt this modest little production had managed to be quite profound.

Another entry in quirkism.

I loath everyone and everything that appears in this film. Yet such is Long Island.

This looks entertaining enough, & sports a swell title, so it is all the more disappointing when while watching the uncomfortable conversations my attention turns to my stomach, I'm hungry, & what's more I'm yawning. Real life, even when made slightly clever in setting, is still boring.

More or less a collection of somewhat rudimentary albeit well-executed student film-ish quirks, living proudly in the long shadow of Lynch cira-Blue Velvet and early Hartley (granted it must be hard to be a Long Island filmmaker and not have that looming over you). I feel like a few years earlier this would have been respectably received as second-tier Jarmusch/Hartley-ism, and a few years later Mendelsohn might have been the new Miranda July, take your pick.