Fairly standard documentary on mime/”Panic Movement” theater director/symbolist and surrealist filmmaker/comic book writer/new age group therapy guru Alejandro Jodorowsky. The last third gets odd as Jodorowsky pulls the doc’s director out from behind the camera and starts pulling his Jedi Mind Trick act on him. Interviews include Marcel Marceau (apparantly, it was Jodorowsky who invented the “mime in a box” move. . .but I doubt that), Peter Gabriel (Jodorowsky was somehow involved in “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway,” but I couldn’t figure out how) and French comic book artist Moebius (with whom Jodorowsky worked on designs for an unfilmed version of “Dune.”) Oddly, the doc kinda glosses over Jodorowsky’s most celebrated work, the films “El Topo” (again, considered to be the first “midnite movie,” but I doubt this as well) and “The Holy Mountain,” but this may be because of copyright issues. Also, not one mention of John Lennon, whose LSD-laced admiration for “El Topo” (when screened for him by Jonas Mekas at the Anthology Film Archives) is the only reason Jodorowsky received any attention in the first place.
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Jordan Hoffman is a New York-based writer and film critic working for The Guardian, Vanity Fair, Thrillist, Times of Israel, NY Daily News and elsewhere.
He is the host of ENGAGE: The Official Star Trek Podcast, a member of the New York Film Critics Circle and challenges you to a game of backgammon.