Popular reviews

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  Review by brat pacino ★★★★½ 5

  the empathetic docu-fantasies of agnès varda live on through kirsten johnson. attempts to answer the immutable question of how we are supposed to shoulder the burden of knowing that the people we love will die, then accepts that there is no answer. or rather, that acceptance is the answer. 

  there’s a memorial bench at the cemetery by my apartment that reads “LOVE IS LONGER THAN LIFE AND STRONGER THAN DEATH.” it doesn’t get more succinct than that.

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★★ 5

  film your loved ones before they’re gone. make your own memories. store them on Netflix. it’s easier to watch something than to recall it. a lovely, joyful documentary — Kore-Eda’s AFTER LIFE here on earth.

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  Review by Karst ★★★★ 15

  I think this struck a chord much deeper than just grieving over a parent and made me appreciate documentary on another level. That scene about her mother and the stairs is specifically something that'll stick with me till I (and all my loved ones) die. Dick Johnson is a lucky man but Kirsten Johnson is just as lucky to have something like this to hold on to forever. Can’t wait to confuse my mom and film her doing something completely insignificant tomorrow just to have a little something to look back on.

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★½

  I found myself wanting to do without the fantasy Heaven sequences and some of the other goofy bits, I was getting distracted by the Seattle locations...but really that was me resisting this as much as I could. What's depicted here without question is one of my greatest fears. By the finale I was powerless and destroyed in the best way.

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  Review by Scott Tobias ★★★★★ 8

  Saw this at True/False in March and thought I'd never see a better movie this year. Saw it again and can confirm. Kirsten Johnson is such a special filmmaker. She approaches her father's "long goodbye" with an intellectual's sense of how the process and ethics of the documentary form can be interrogated, but she's got such a generous heart, too. She's used film to keep her father alive and there's a magic to that.

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  Review by Matt Singer ★★★★

  Kept putting this off because I didn’t feel like I could emotionally handle it right now aaaaaaand I was right.

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  Review by Jack ★★★★

  “I’m no longer your father, I’m your little brother."
  
  you ever just cry through an entire film? well, this one will put you through it. so, so special

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  Review by David Chen ★★★★ 4

  "It would be so easy if loving only gave us the beautiful. But what loving demands is that we face the fear of losing each other. That when it gets messy we hold each other close. And when we can, we defiantly celebrate our brief moments of joy."

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  Review by Sarah ★★★★½ 5

  cinema can bring people back to life. I'm fucking bawling

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  Review by Victor Morton ★★★★½ 6

  DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD (Kirsten Johnson, USA, 2020) 9

  At the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, I saw Kirsten Johnson’s CAMERAPERSON while coincidentally sitting right next to her. As the closing credits rolled, I whispered to her “that was the best film of the festival.” She said “why, thank you” and pressed her cheek against mine. I then immediately left the theater without another word, as I knew going into the film that I’d have to rush to a sports bar immediately to see a friend fight on national TV. That incident is part of my history with that movie, which was my favorite film of 2016 and one of my 10 Best for the whole decade.

  At the 2020 Sundance…

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  Review by Ayo Edebiri

  I cried :)

  A lot ! :)

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  Review by Chance Solem-Pfeifer ★★★★ 2

  Can't currently recall a starker example of tears turning to laughter than when Dick's friend plays that fucking horn.