BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

PaulyC Every night, before New York City wakens, Ahmad pushes his coffee and donut cart to it's usual spot on the street corner. As the movie moves along, we find out that Ahmad was a bit of a rock star in Pakistan. His wife is dead and his in-laws won't let him see his son. Did Ahmad come to America to pursue a relationship with his son? The answer is never clear. He meets a pretty vendor up the street but can't bring himself to have a relationship with her. It is slow moving but in a good way as I would describe it as a "slice of life" kind of movie. The actual making of the movie involved using a concealed camera for a lot of shots including a scene where Ahmad sells bootlegged porn DVD's to two guys. These two guys were not actors and didn't even know they were going to be in the movie. It was shot in less than three weeks on a small budget. This is a pretty decent film for it's atmosphere and character development but is clearly not for everybody. A true example of low budget guerrilla film-making.

Martin Teller A meditative study of struggle and loneliness, following a Pakistani man who schleps his food cart (in a most Sisyphus-like manner) through the streets of New York in the wee hours every morning and tries to scratch out enough money to survive and hopefully see his son once in a while. The casual pace, restrained performances and attention to detail are naturally reminiscent of Bresson, and by extension, the Dardennes. Specifically, it has much in common with MOUCHETTE and ROSETTA. However, it doesn't have the emotional resonance of those films. Somehow the miseries piled upon Ahmed feel a bit more contrived. He's not just living in a harsh world, he seems to have bad luck thrust upon him. Still, it's a thoughtful film with a relatable lead performance by Razvi. I also liked Leticia Dolera, the Spanish newsstand girl. The other actors are a mixed bag, with Charles Daniel Sandoval coming off as particularly poor. Even if this film didn't quite satisfy me, it did leave me curious about Bahrani's later work.

runamokprods Slight, simple, but genuinely moving, and astoundingly beautiful visually for a ultra low budget film shot in 3 weeks on the streets of New York. A Pakistani immigrant tries to make a living selling bagels and coffee from a little stand he pushes around and dreams of buying. That's really the whole story. But subtly, fragment by fragment, we get glimpses into his life, his back-story, etc. It's life in bits and pieces adding up to a greater, much more powerful whole than the sum of it's parts would suggest. A lovely complex look at the kind of un-glamorous character we too rarely see in our films.

fnorful I watched this debut film of Ramin Bahrani at the 33rd Cleveland International Film Festival. It's a very minimal approach to film-making. There is good composition of the many pre-dawn scenes of Ahmad pushing his cart to its location in mid-town Manhattan. The bleak scenery of dark, low-lit streets, garbage trucks, buses and the constant noise of the city mirror Ahmad's internal landscape. We get some small pieces of his story, but it's very incomplete. We don't know why he doesn't try to regain the success he had in his home country, nor why he sabotages efforts by others to help him. How does the girl fit in? My expectation for a movie still remains that I need to be told a story, care about the characters or be wowed by technique. This was like reading the middle four chapters of a depressing book. I have friends who loved this movie because it lacked those elements which I find essential in film. For me, the movie could have been a twelve-minute short, repeated as many times as you find personally satisfying. I did very much enjoy Bahrani's 3rd film, "Goodbye Solo", where the story is still minimal but the characters are extremely well developed. It's worth watching "Man Push Cart" just to see how well Bahrani's core views are being honed in later movies.