Kind of agree, Joe, about dads getting beat up in various media, but in this case, I was able to believe that the bottle just owned that guy and he didn't have much left for a son popping in out of the blue after many years. Sometimes addiction can kill love, and the capacity to make real connections, and that grim truth is not going to be sugarcoated in a film like this. Fatherhood, in general, was not on trial in TSN.

I'd agree with Marc about how films that are criticized for being 'self-indulgent' and 'pretentious' could just as easily be considered 'personal' or 'ambitious', say.

I'd agree. "self-indulgent" is the fancy way of saying "personally, I didn't care for it."

Not really.
Maybe that you didn't care for a rather personal work of art.
Basically I think self-indulgent often is used to refer to art that is considered overly personal and not successful as such, or is perceived as having excesses of self (me-me-me) which could have used more editing.

I agree that it depends on what you think of the filmmaker. People who like Michael Moore's style and slant don't mind how much he's in the frame. Those who don't like, might call him self-indulgent. It's like Ned Flanders and his famous opinion of (early period) Woody Allen movies: "They're great, except for that little nervous guy."

I can tell you one thing: I am going to avoid using that term henceforth!

I hope this posting wasn't too....never mind.