question: War/Dance is beautifully filmed, and effectively captures the heartbreaking and uplifting experiences of its subjects.

numbered reviews: 1. Children in dire situations can be a tricky, quasi-exploitive subject for filmmakers ... but it's handled here in a responsible, occasionally joyous fashion. You can still feel your heartstrings being pulled, but when it's done this well, it's tough to be
2. War/Dance is the sort of documentary that's meant to appall us, to shake us out of our uninformed complacency. And yet there are moments in the film that may make an audience uncomfortable in ways the Fines may not have intended.
3. The glories of War/Dance are torturously won, and all the more glorious for it.
4. An uplifting documentary about the healing powers of music, song, and dance on a group of traumatized Ugandan youth who participate in a National Music Competition.
5. An uplifting, visually pleasing documentary.
6. Relies a little too much on the old formula of the underdog sports movie, but it has a lot more substance to it than that.
7. Because no one dares to call a film about suffering children boring, Fine and Nix slack on analysis and investigation and concentrate on gorgeous saturated cinematography
8. These kids are amazing in the most literal sense of the word, and you will never forget them.
9. The horror and heartwarming [is] equally compounded.
10. The music offers the northern Ugandan children a chance to heal from their fear and pain--that part of the film cannot be questioned.


question: More visually elaborate than the fragmented story can sometimes support, The Fall walks the line between labor of love and filmmaker self-indulgence.

numbered reviews: 1. Shot piecemeal over the course of four years on locations in 18 countries, The Fall is a genuine labor of love -- and a real bore.
2. This whacked-out fairy tale for grown-ups is as stunning in its beauty as it is in its lack of logic.
3. Some of the set pieces are ravishing, more often they're ravishingly clunky.
4. For a film that wants to present itself as extravagantly dazzling, there is something thuddingly familiar and bland in its vision.
5. This is a feast for the eyes and a famine for the brain.
6. [Tarsem] Singh's visual sense is stunning, but he's also attuned to the darker corners of children's imaginations.
7. The Fall is aptly named not only because it pertains to a tragic descent but because viewers will feel as if they have plunged headlong into an alternate universe with this dazzling adult fairy tale.
8. Each and every of Tarsem's visuals scratch onerously at the mind, heart, and cornea.
9. A paean to the art of storytelling as it existed before mass-produced visual media replaced the spoken word as the primary creative medium.
10. The scope of Tarsem's imagination and vision and the delightful pairing of Pace and Untaru creates an eclectic fantasy tale unlike anything we've since The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.


question: The main stars are absolutely perfect in this absorbing, existential drama that dissects human relationships.

numbered reviews: 1. Kiarostami has become the new Kieslowski, an emigrant to Western Europe whose pretentiousness embarrasses the whole concept of art cinema-as proven by Certified Copy.
2. What is cinema but an elaborate simulation that, in the hands of an artist, mines real truth from fiction? By that criterion, Certified Copy is indeed the genuine article.
3. An exhibition in arthouse for arthouse's sake, Certified Copy doesn't do enough to draw a second glance from lovers of the movement nor mainstream cinemagoers alike.
4. This deceptively slim film might not be Kiarostami at his most heavyweight, but it's a rewarding and mischievous slice of cerebral entertainment.
5. Certified Copy is something unique to Kiarostami's career, bringing to mind an adjective I never thought I'd append to him: adorable.
6. Ultimately, the film's slow-building, eventually overwhelming emotional pull gives Certified Copy its shape and pace.
7. After years of working on photography, poetry and more experimental films, Abbas Kiarostami makes an engaging return to narrative cinema in a delicate, bittersweet comedy set in romantic Italy.
8. More compelling as an intellectual exercise than an emotional one.
9. Initially puzzling, this toying with, mixing of, fact and fiction takes getting used to. It's for the patient few who can discuss it for long afterwards.
10. A thought-provoking romantic drama about the mysteries of love and the formidable challenges of marriage.


question: It may be a little too deliberately paced for more impatient viewers, but The Way is a worthy effort from writer/director Emilio Estevez, balancing heartfelt emotion with clear-eyed drama that resists cheap sentiment.

numbered reviews:
1. ...is uplifting without being maudlin, and has a heart on its sleeve sincerity that sidesteps sentimentality. It's also a bit too long.
2. 'The Way' is a rare movie in that it deals with religion and family issues without playing like a sermon or a satire.
3. A nice little movie, and very obviously well intentioned. Unfortunately, it's also predictable and so corny that it sometimes feels like a joke in search of a punchline.
4. Uplifting and sensitive without being sentimental, the mystic destination is worth the arduous trip.
5. Like The Big Year it contains blissful moments of clarity and awareness that few movies have lately. You walk out of the theater feeling better about yourself. Not enough to hike 900 miles or chase birds around North America, but it's a start.
6. I'm guessing more than a few moviegoers will lace up their hiking boots for their own pilgrimage.
7. With "The Way," writer-director Emilio Estevez has made a respectable failure.
8. Heartfelt if occasionally plodding.
9. It could have come out sentimental, but doesn't. The secret is the matter-of-factness.
10. The Way is real personal cinema. It's an Estevez family project. But it's not a vanity project -- it's a spiritual legacy.