Full Description
Vikram Jayanti’s doc is no mere portrait of Uri Geller, the famed spoon bender and Michael Jackson confidante who got his start in the early 1970s performing feats of telepathic wizardry for the Israeli army before becoming the world’s foremost showbiz psychic. Jayanti makes the curious case that while the handsome Geller was dazzling nightclub crowds and late night talk shows, several government intelligence agencies used (and possibly still use) Geller’s unique paranormal powers. A handful of CIA operatives and scientists refuse to confirm or deny Uri Geller’s alleged involvement at the end of the Cold War in telepathically locating needle-in-a-haystack codebooks, pinpointing hidden Mexican oil reserves and wiping the data off Soviet computer disks. The filmmakers reveal a shadowy $20 million US government project that utilized paranormal research from mentalists like Geller, a classified project that served as the inspiration for George Clooney’s The Men Who Stare at Goats. While some of these tales seem impossibly tall, the interview portions with the 67-year-old Geller are the film’s entertaining high point. Whether recounting his friendship with John Lennon or his years as the psychic bodyguard for the first family of Mexico, Uri Geller is a hypnotic raconteur who makes this doc fascinating to watch.
California Premiere
