“Ramos’ acting is brilliant in conveying emotion and the problems with needing extra time to communicate (and in some instances not even wanting to communicate). One scene is so poignant between him and Vivian, where they both so desperately need each other for support but because her speed is 100 MPH and Morris’ is the exact inverse, they fail at providing any kind of meaningful help for either of them. Even without speaking a word, this actor conveys so much pain and sentiment with his facial expressions that viewers can almost sense what he is trying to say to his troubled sister.”
– Tawny Farber, Set the Tape
“I’ll take a moment to talk about the beautifully written and acted out love story between David and Natalie. Alex Walton and Simone Policano are so convincing and completely pull us into their gradual falling in love, giving us some much needed warmth and goodness in what feels like a harsh everyday reality.”
– Angeliki Coconi, Unsung Films
“But all the performances in Extra Innings are to be praised. Robby Ramos as Morris is exceptional. He acts with his eyes; his gaze tells us everything. He’s unpredictable and intimidating at times, funny and sweet at others, but very little of that happens through words. He has the ability to turn from black to white and vice versa with just a frown or a quick eye move. David’s parents too, Geraldine Singer as Esther and Albert Dabah as Eli are eerily forceful.”
– Angeliki Coconi, Unsung Films
“The first section of the film is nicely supported by a strong performance from Brennan as the young David, whose innocent expression and soulful eyes capture perfectly a boy grappling with emotions just beyond his grasp. Alex Walton, playing the older David, perfectly inhabits the role of the 17-year-old who has stuck to his love for baseball despite his parents belittling it and never once attending a game.”
-Mike Fishman, Independent Film Now
“Mara Kassin impresses the loudest with her gypsy frost that breaks the hardened rocks of tension in the movie. She is a welcome energy. Like a page out of Tyler Hoechlin’s playbook, Alex Walton isn’t faking his baseball prowess yet carries a quiet heft as a romantic lead and family rebel. His scenes with the fetching Simone Policano often feel like a miniature Brooklyn all their own. Don’t let the resumes fool you. This is far from amateur hour.”
Every Movie Has A Lesson
“While there’s often an uneasy transition in films such as Extra Innings where two different actors play a character due to age differences, the transition is practically seamless here as both Aidan Pierce Brennan and Alex Walton shine as David. They both beautifully capture David’s tightrope walk of an existence as he struggles to discover himself and honor familial and faith responsibilities.”
Richard Propes, The Independent Critic
“Albert Dabah gives a wonderfully intuitive performance as Eli. It’s the kind of performance that feels as if a lifetime has been spent figuring the character out, a sort of introspective spark absolutely making us understand Eli even when we disagree with him. Geraldine Singer is mesmerizing as Ester, who is constantly going but never really getting anywhere with her children and, most painfully, with Morris. It’s a terrific performance that feels not far removed from Meryl Streep’s almost innate ability to slip on the skin of practically anyone she plays.”
Richard Propes, The Independent Critic
“Robert Ramos, as Morris, is the hidden tour-de-force performance inside Extra Innings. Ramos could have so easily gone into the mental illness caricatures of the 60’s and 70’s but instead gives the film’s most quietly remarkable, emotionally raw performance whether he’s acting alongside one of his siblings or Victoria Ric’s Maria, whose ability to understand and appreciate Morris gives the film a remarkable gravitas and sets in motion the powerful arc of Morris’s story.”
Richard Propes, The Independent Critic
“In a film such as Extra Innings, the ensemble’s the thing and there’s no question that’s true here.”
Richard Propes, The Independent Critic
“I really, really loved the scenes in this movie around the dinner table. There’s so much of a dynamic happening there. Where people are all talking, but sometimes to themselves and not to [the] others.
Peter Travers, Critic at Rolling Stone Magazine
“The interesting thing about this Albert, is that you choose to play your own father and you play him as somebody who is strict, but always loving. He seems to have this, no matter how many arguments he’s having with his son or his daughter, that he’s for them 100 percent. The disowning line always seems to me: ‘I love you so much I’m gonna do this thing to you, I’m not gonna talk to you because I don’t want you to do this thing,’ and it comes from a place of love.”
Peter Travers, Critic at Rolling Stone Magazine
“Part of the film’s appeal comes from the fabulous cast. As the narrative explores their struggles, they deliver convincingly dramatic and charismatic turns, including Aidan Brennan and Alex Walton, who play respectively young and older David, and Mara Kassin, in a tour-de-force performance as his older revolutionary sister. Her presence is ravishing, illuminating, provocative, feels like a volcano in eruption.”
Roger Costa, Brazillian Press
“Albert Dabah has pieced Extra Innings together so cleverly, that we really get to see every moment’s cause and result, every word’s effect on the other characters’ psychology; everything is so closely intertwined, one person’s smile becomes another one’s happiness, and someone’s unfair attack becomes someone else’s pain. There is so much love in David’s family, but it manifests itself in the wrongest of ways, with everyone ending up an antagonist and a victim at the same time. The writing builds on itself so beautifully that any seeming gaps turn out very much deliberate, for the whole point is for these hole-filled structures to inevitably come crashing down like a Jenga tower.”
Angeliki Coconi, Unsung Films
“Most impressive through all this is Dabah’s ability to avoid cliché given the topics of family obligation, the free-spirited nature of an older sister, a father’s desire for his son to be “successful” according to his own values, and the anguish that suicide leaves in its path. A final closing scene where David is at bat at a game and his father finally watching him play could have fallen flat but Dabah makes a bold choice to avoid a predictable closing moment, opting for a subtle and emotionally satisfying ending.”
Don Shanahan, Every Movie Has A Lesson
“Based on a true story, this is an earnest, low-budget indie drama, and the sincerity of those involved in the project is undeniable.”
Brian Costello, Common Sense Media
“That’s what this movie does: People can’t see it without wanting to talk to somebody about it afterwards, you want to deal with those feelings and yet, there’s something hopeful about Extra Innings, that’s why I love the title.”
Peter Travers, Critic at Rolling Stone Magazine
“While our protagonist, David, carries the movie’s perspective, its story really centers on the family itself. More specifically the movie focuses on the three (or four) siblings: Morris, David, and Vivian. If you look at it from that perspective it grows in scope and blossoms into a more realized vision of a Syrian Jewish family in the ’60s failing to cope with a streak of mental health concerns.”
Daniel Pappas, Irish Film Critic
“Set in the early 1960s in an insular Jewish Syrian community in Brooklyn, the award-winning ‘Extra Innings’ is at its core a coming-of-age tale, awash in intergenerational culture clash.”
Simi Horwitz, Jewish Journal
“Based on the life story of writer and director Albert Dabah, Extra Innings is a powerfully sentimental glimpse at the true human impact of mental illness on a family, and the complex condition that guides us all, Hope.”
Diamond Kesawn, Raynbow Affair Magazine
“What we really appreciated in Extra Innings was probably its bluntness and honesty. The film does not sugarcoat its issues and dilemmas and there’s an overwhelming sense of tragedy from start to finish.”
Jed Chu, Reel Advice
“Based on a true story, Extra Innings is a film that actually feels very real – and touching at the same time, precisely because it doesn’t try too hard to hammer its story home but really lets the story unfold, warts and all, with a cast of characters that feel so real and relatable because they are all fallible and loveable at the same time.”
Mike Haberfelner, Search My Trash
“David is torn between his love for baseball and his family’s expectations. This theme runs throughout the film and is easily identifiable for many viewers who can relate to his struggle.”
Mark Sugiyana, Eclectic Arts
“It was a good decent film and told a fantastic story that could maybe help raise awareness for suicide and mental health in the future. I would recommend the watch if you are a sports fan, or maybe have a hard time struggling with a religious life in your own home.”
Dan Berry, The Convention Collective
“Baseball features heavily in Extra Innings and the film makes an important, relatable statement about dedication and love for the sport.”
Dan Schlossberg (Writer at Forbes Magazine), The Internet Baseball Writers Association of America
“Baseball movies aren’t always whimsical, as in Field of Dreams, or comedic, as in A League of Their Own. Often, they are biographical (Pride of the Yankees) or historical (Eight Men Out).
Occasionally, they are a lot more than just baseball movies. Such is the case with Extra Innings, an independent two-hour movie that adroitly blends the themes of baseball, mental health, and family with Jewish identity, love, and hope.”
Dan Schlossberg (Writer at Forbes Magazine), The Internet Baseball Writers Association of America
“It’s an extraordinary movie, as we all feel when we watch it”
Peter Travers, Critic at Rolling Stone Magazine
“The pacing displays a care and patience with the material that takes viewers into a time of rotary phones and baseball coaches smoking cigarettes, with occasional nods to the changing times. The filmmakers often employ a stationary camera and medium-wide shots, giving the film a naturalistic, “fly on the wall” feel that adds to the film’s emotional arc.”
Mike Fishman, Independent Film Now
“It’s a film that brings to mind Rob Reiner’s underrated gem Flipped, a film that Reiner, Inuit an interview with The Independent Critic, proclaimed as one of his own personal favorites of his films. While the subject matter is different, Dabah, alongside co-director Brian Drillinger, has crafted a similarly stylish and substantial motion picture that understands its times, its characters, and its story and brings it all quite beautifully to life.”
Richard Propes, The Independent Critic
“D.P. Luigi Benvisto’s lensing is warm and natural yet unafraid to envelope in the film’s more emotionally intense scenes, while Keti Chichinadze’s production design is period appropriate and effective in representing the film’s layers of relational complexity. Seville Michelle’s costume design and Sasha Prishvin’s art direction are similarly impressive.”
Richard Propes, The Independent Critic
“You can’t really see this movie and be somebody who has no passionate response to it. That’s the great thing about it, I see a lot of movies where they are Hollywood formula and the movie’s over and you say to your friends or your wife or husband: ‘where do we go eat?’ Here, you want to talk about this.”
Peter Travers, Critic at Rolling Stone Magazine
“You’ve given us a movie not only to think about, but to feel about. And in this world that I spend my life watching movies where they don’t do that, where it’s basically just escapism, you’ve given us a movie that matters.”
Peter Travers, Critic at Rolling Stone Magazine
“Dabah was careful not to lay blame at anyone’s feet. The family is dysfunctional, but there are no villains. Even the father, who seemingly is the most disconnected, is doing the best he can.”
Simi Horwitz, Jewish Journal
“‘Extra Innings is a well-crafted movie focussed on bringing a message of hope to those afflicted with mental illness. It also helps suicide prevention and foster a conversation about reducing the stigma that surrounds mental illness,’ said Roy Abraham Kallivayalil, secretary-general of the World Psychiatric Association, who is behind the screening of the India premiere of the movie at the Pushpagiri Medical College on Tuesday under the auspices of his own Department of Psychiatry.”
Radhakrishnan Kuttoor, The Hindu
“This movie does an amazing job of telling the story of mental illness from a perspective of those helpless to understand or help those afflicted, but whom are loved dearly. For anyone who has lived or loved someone with mental illness, this will surely draw parallels, and for those who haven’t, it certainly pulls back the curtain and allows a peek into the confusing and trying world of being in such a situation.”
Tawny Farber, Set the Tape
“Mental illness is present in all of us, so the question really becomes to what extent it prevents us from living a decent life and developing healthy relationships, how damaging or harmless to those around us it turns out to be and on what level it ultimately stops us from experiencing some kind of happiness. In David’s family, his brother Morris is schizophrenic and his sister Vivian bipolar, but both combined don’t even make a dent when it comes to the damage that the parents’ mental disorders cause on the family and most importantly, on David.”
Angeliki Coconi, Unsung Films
“Extra Innings has already received four richly deserved awards, and more must surely be in the pipeline. Dabah works with SAVE (Suicide Awareness Voices of Education), NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) and NASW (National Association of Social Workers) trying to lessen the stigma surrounding mental illness. His sensitive film is a public service in itself.”
Dina Gold, Moment Magazine
“Mental illness wraps its claustrophobic fingers all around the already small world David tries to thrive in, he a bright, energetic boy trying to make the most of his troubled youth, pleasing his parents and secretly pursuing his baseball dreams. That of course means sacrifice, one for the other, a balance not always easy to maintain as he of course loves both. Then tragedy strikes and changes everything, signaling the end of childhood for David and just about everything with it. Or perhaps there is hope in the loss.”
David Duprey, That Moment In
“Extra Innings is not an easy watch, since it covers some big social issues that weighed heavily on those who were part of this era. As viewers watch the story unfold, it is hard to imagine that this much tragedy can happen to one person in one lifetime, and if it had been a fictional story, one would probably deem this account too far-fetched. However, for Albert Dabah, this was just his life.”
Tawny Farber, Set the Tape
“Albert Dabah, the writer and director of the truly wonderful drama Extra Innings, has delivered a heartrendingly personal portrayal based on his own life story.”
Dina Gold, Moment Magazine
“There’s a warm, lived-in feel to Extra Innings, the film deeply respectful of its characters and its time, patient in allowing them to fill in the spaces they need as it all orbits David and his choices. Dabah, in his feature length directorial debut, is obviously well connected to it and his cast feels as committed, the film never not authentic, even as some moments feel purposefully elaborated. A sentimental and profoundly sincere effort.”
David Duprey, That Moment In
“Extra Innings never goes clinical or preachy when observing this lesson through storytelling. Its rawness to portray different aspects of untreated grief and incomplete forgiveness is impressive, especially when this film is based on the life of its writer and director Albert Dabah.”
Don Shanahan, Every Movie Has A Lesson
“This is clearly a project that has a great deal of personal meaning to Dabah and that passion shows in his meticulous attention to character development. There are no cookie cutter characters in this movie.”
Carlos deVillalvilla, Cinema365