Amateur movie with Big budget

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

After mentioning there are 167 languages in Jackson Heights, the movie only concentrated on the situation of Latino and LGBT communities there. Anything was glossed over or totally missing. Very skewed view, unless you were interested in only those two features of Jackson Heights!

I watched this travesty because I live in Queens and regularly visit Jackson Heights, and I did not notice the length of the movie before ordering. What I got was over 3 hours of home video, full of endless boring community talks and small business owners complaining about gentrification of Queens, same people who buy at Costco for resale. Disproportional number of LGBT scenes. It's Jackson Heights, not Provincetown. It has its good moments - some very beautiful street shots and the best part - the taxi driver school towards the end of the film, the reason for my 5 star rating (would be 2 or 3 otherwise). Cut this disjointed mess down to 1 hour, and you can get a very good documentary worthy of 7 or 8 stars.

I had the unfortunate experience of watching this movie recently in Queens. I was hoping for a survey of the various residents and eclectic vibe of Jackson Heights. What I got was 3 hours of trans-genders/gays, Spanish-speaking immigrants (Mexican's mostly), and a few old Jewish residents. Queens in general is known for it's ethnic diversity. Jackson Heights in particular is known for it's high South Asian population, along with East Asian - lots of Chinese, and Nepalese, which is not true for other areas in Queens. Literally every other neighborhood in NYC is filled with immigrants, gays, and Jews, and there are many other neighborhoods in NYC where it's easy to find a stronger representation of each of these ethnic groups - East Harlem, Washington Heights, Chelsea, Greenwich, the West Village, Bensonhurst, many parts of Brooklyn on the J line. Yes, Jackson Heights does have a history of gay rights, but not 3 hours worth at the expense of everyone else. Whatever point this movie was attempting to make about Mexican immigrants, trans-genders, and the elderly, it never came through. I'm giving this movie 2 stars because while it meandered on and on and on...an on, there's a lot of potential. With a good editor and a stronger point of view, this movie could be fantastic.

"In Jackson Heights (2015)" was edited, produced, and directed by Frederick Wiseman. Everyone who watches documentary films knows that Wiseman is a genius. As pointed out in the introduction to the film, Wiseman's style was set out in his first film, Titicut Follies, in 1967. He has stayed with that formula ever since. Wiseman arrives, starts filming, shoots hundreds of hours of film, and then edits his footage down to movie length. (Well, three-hour movie length.) He doesn't use fades, he doesn't use voice-over, he doesn't appear in the movie, and he doesn't add music to tell us if what we're seeing is happy or sad. We just watch what Wiseman watched, and then what decided to include in his film. The amazing thing is that people don't appear to act differently while they are being filmed. No doubt Wiseman edited out footage of people who were self-conscious, and kept glancing at the camera. Every image we see looks as if people were behaving as if the camera weren't there. Jackson Heights, Queens is a famous neighborhood because of its diversity. One of the speakers points out that 167 languages are spoken in Jackson Heights. Ethnic diversity is definitely a strong element of the movie, but there are other factors as well. Another theme running through the movie is the interaction of the LGBTQ community with the other inhabitants of the neighborhood. A third element is gentrification, against which Jackson Heights has apparently held out so far. However, according to what we see in the movie, gentrification may actually have already started, and may be unstoppable.I've seen many Wiseman documentaries, and I've enjoyed and appreciated every one. I believe that he's a unique genius, and we are fortunate to have so many of his movies at our disposal. We saw "In Jackson Heights" at the outstanding Dryden Theatre in the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York. Not only is the Dryden an excellent venue, but the film selection and the pre-film introductions are world class. We're lucky to have a theater of this quality in Rochester.If you're not fortunate enough to be able to watch "In Jackson Heights" on a large screen, it will work well enough on a small screen. Some of the noise, color, and general excitement may be lost, but most of it will come through. If you love great documentaries, you can't miss this movie!