The fact that we know Weiner lost the election gives this film a sense of inevitability. While Weiner still hopes for some miracle we already know he will always be 'the punchline'. It all stays a bit superficial, but i suppose that's the best any documentary can hope for when your subjects are media-trained up to their eye-balls.Is Weiner a good person? Nah, he is a politician after all, and i dislike a lot of the things he says in that capacity. And he has this one big moral weakness where he says 'yes' to any woman that comes on to him (coincidentally the same kind of weakness as Bill Clinton: both men not only strayed, but continued to do so after being found out).But another side of this is that Weiner is depicted as the victim of stalking: one of the women he sexted jumps at the opportunity to do a sex-tape and to follow him around (big silicons in a small dress) and very obviously only started feeling 'victimized' when there was money in it for her. Not an innocent victim for sure, but most stalking-victims aren't.(and i am really just speculating, but i can't shake the feeling this is one of those cases where a guy married someone he is 'supposed to marry': ultra-thin and with great connections, and doesn't want to admit even to himself that he feels more sexually attracted towards 'ugly women')

'WEINER': Four and a Half Stars (Out of Five)The critically acclaimed documentary about Anthony Weiner's troubled political campaign for Mayor of New York City, in 2013. The movie was directed by Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg. It not only received nearly unanimous positive reviews from critics, but it was also nominated for dozens of prestigious awards (and it made multiple critics' year end top 10 lists). I think it deserves all of the acclaim it's been given.The film begins in 2011, when Anthony Weiner was forced to resign from Congress; due to inappropriate photos of him in his underwear surfacing online (that he had previously sent to multiple women). The film then covers his reemergence in politics, in 2013, when he ran for Mayor of New York City (in the Democratic Party primary). The filmmakers follow him, and his wife Huma Abedin, as things first went really well for them (in the campaign). Then the couple was forced to deal with more accusations of inappropriate sexual conduct (by Weiner). This also (of course) caused severe trouble for the campaign.The movie is cringeworthy to watch, a lot of the time, but (for me at least) I couldn't look away either. It's so bizarrely fascinating, and extremely insightful. The filmmakers managed to get an incredibly intimate look into the personal life of Anthony Weiner; and he claims that they didn't have permission to use video of his wife. The film wouldn't have been nearly as insightful, or intimate, if they hadn't used it though. It's a documentary masterpiece, just about as good as they get (in my opinion)!Watch our movie review show 'MOVIE TALK' at: https://youtu.be/mFAp0zxR-lY

"Weiner" is a thoroughly engrossing and at times gut-wrenching documentary. It defines the "fly on the wall" style of documentary film-making, finding a situation in which so many would kill to "be a fly on the wall", and against the odds, making such a proposition possible. There is even a time when the filmmaker, off screen, asks Anthony Weiner why he allowed the moment that has just transpired to be filmed. Weiner doesn't seem to know. The man is a fantastic politician, one who lit a fire in the hearts of many liberals across the US. But as his political career ascends, his personal life falls apart. "Weiner" begins as the former congressman from Brooklyn rises from the ashes and attempts to run for mayor. As we know, but the filmmakers couldn't have foreseen, another scandal was brewing.If "Weiner" has a flaw, it's that its subject is too adept at handling questions about his infractions. As such, we don't really get a sense of why he did what he did. This man's enigma is a double-edged sword: he doesn't know why he sent those texts, and he doesn't know why he let a documentary crew follow him around in the midst of the fall out. As a result of this we get closer than we expect, but not too close.

Anthony Weiner was a loud-mouthed congressman whose career came to and end amid (relatively) minor sexual scandal. But Weiner is an insufferable egoist, and instead of accepting his time in the spotlight had come to an end, he decided to stand for the mayoralty of New York City, and invited a documentary maker to film him as he did so. The results are painful: the press is only interested in the scandal, new scandal erupts, but the underlying feeling one gets is of Weiner's selfishness and need for attention. That he might just retreat to a backroom role for the sake of his wife (an aide to Hilary Clinton) never seems to occur to him. Weiner might ultimately be remembered as more than a footnote because an FBI investigation into his sexual texting was exploited by enemies of Clinton during her recent failed election campaign against Donald Trump. Aside from that, this documentary is basically a reminder that politicians are simply not like the rest of us, not because we're all morally virtuous, but because any normal person caught in this sort of situation would give up and move on.