Pretty Good

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I expected this to be about Randi's debunking of psychics and religious healers, but it was also about his much younger boyfriend (now husband), and his struggles to stay in the USA, despite having stolen someone else's identity. Very touching. How did I miss Randi's coming out (at age 81!)? I was a bit disappointed that it did not go into his debunking of religion in general, and it revealed none of the magic tricks--even as Randi is exposing someone like Uri Geller as merely a magician, not a psychic. Nonetheless, the documentary was riveting. An Honest Liar. The Amazing Randi (James Randi was also a great conversationalist--he had an all-night radio show on WOR-New York when I was a teen, competing with Long John Nebel and Brad Crandall.)

I've always loved magic. I study films and music to the point that while I still appreciate art at its best, the secrets have been spilled. I want to keep the secrets of magic under wraps so the best showmen can still captivate me. I'd actually never heard of James Randi, a self- proclaimed substitute for Houdini after his death, or maybe I had but forgotten him, so it was a delight to find out he'd been involved in significant events in magic that I looked into - such as Uri Geller's live exposé. Even in his 80s he's a charismatic entertainer who's fun to watch. He knows the value of the secrets of magic, and hates when it's abused to manipulate people for profit, rather than entertain them for profit. It's very satisfying to watch Randi's successes as frauds are exposed and the filmmakers have a wealth of footage to illustrate their points. The chapters may seem to end prematurely, but it culminates in its crisis point in the third act in a way that keeps a balanced argument as to whether what Randi is doing is justice or invasive of people's freedom and hope. But what's most engaging about the doc is Randi's own life and the hidden side of him of his partner. An Honest Liar is a very well put together doc about an important figure in magic everyone should know about.8/10

!!!! SPOILERS !!!!! Yeah I know it's a documentary but I'm taking no chances James Randi ? One of the first names I discovered via getting connected to the internet . I know over 3.600 IMDb comments beg to differ but when I first had an internet account in Febuary 2001 my favourite sites were the skeptics ones exposing and demolishing everything to do with faith healing , para-psychology and other nonsense . One name that constantly kept cropping up , almost on a par with being a secular God of the skeptical movement , was James Randi , a Canadian born sceptic who started out as a magician and who later became an exposer of frauds , hoaxes and other naughty rip off merchants . This documentary tells of his life , his great successes and his present life which despite all his fame involves something of a personal tragedy of sorts The documentary works best when it concentrates on Randi exposing cheats and how gullible the public are when it comes to being cheated . Anyone remember The Carlos Hoax ? I'm too young too remember but archive footage shows Randi taking a young South American called Jose Alvarez who claimed to channel spirits of the dead to Australia , making up easily checkable fake resumes and getting "Carlos" on every Australian news and documentary show Carlos strutted his stuff with the dead . He could have been a household name today but it was up Randi and Alvarez themselves to stick their hand up and state it was all an act and was done merely to show how lazy , incompetent and downright useless journalists can be when checking facts . Then we get the famous exposure of evangelical faith healer Peter Popoff whose direct contact with God was down to the much less miraculous miracle of wearing an earpiece and getting his wife to give names and ailments of people in the congregation . Randi's (in)famous and long running feud is also covered along with a few now forgotten self promoting self proclaimed mystics Now one thing you can't really accuse Randi of is being lovable . From what I've seen of him he's short tempered , doesn't suffer fools and takes no prisoners . This isn't a criticism and if DOCTOR WHO was an American show Randi would have been born to play the anti-heroic cantankerous incarnation of the first Doctor . Don't believe for a second that this is a sycophantic glowing love letter to James Randi and the clue is in the title - AN HONEST LIAR . As it turns out Randi is a homosexual which he revealed late in life . Again not a criticism . And he partnered up to Jose "Carlos" Alvarez many years ago . Again not a criticism . But as it turns out Alvarez isn't who he claims to be and is one Deyvi Pena who entered America on a false passport , Cue a fair amount of unspoken innuendo that the man who exposed so many con artists has become a victim of sorts to a con artist . I thought this aspect of the documentary which has a feel of undisguised schadenfreude was rather unfair and just a little bit cruel towards Randi and ends an often fascinating documentary on a downbeat , negative vote

Very interesting subject matter is presented haphazardly to create a pretty boring documentary called An Honest Liar. The biggest let down in this movie is all the claims that he's figured out how the con artists are doing their tricks, but save for the preacher using the ear piece, we are never clued into any of it. How were the spoons bent? How did they make the thing under the glass dome move? We get our hopes up to be enlightened and then the secrets aren't revealed as if it doesn't even matter. And so much attention is given to his gay relationship; I wonder if he was straight and involved with a woman, would his relationship be so prominent? I understand why "Jose" is an important part of the story, but he's not THAT important that he should take up nearly half of the movie. All in all this is a poorly executed documentary because it left me confused and unsatisfied. I don't feel I know any more about this guy after watching this film than I did just by seeing a critic's review of the film. Really, claiming the guy was faking it when he bent the spoons but then not bothering to tell us how it was accomplished was just as much of a rip off as being fooled into believing the guy was bending the spoons in the first place.