Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 18, 2011

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 17, 2011

The Cove does what every great documentary with a cause should: It educates, entertains, and inspires audiences to take action.

| Original Score: A- | May 6, 2011

Restrained and harrowing.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 30, 2009

A taut, thrilling documentary that plays out like a heist movie while never overshadowing its message or activist credentials.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 23, 2009

There's an effective thriller element to this vividly assembled doc.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 23, 2009

The great strength of this documentary about the covert killing of wild dolphins in Japan is its aesthetic: artful edits, zippy music, even a few jokes. Radical stuff for an eco-documentary.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 23, 2009

One would imagine, and hope, that an Oscar nomination beckons.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 23, 2009

Facts, stats and grim archive footage help build up a convincing if one-sided case, but it is the film's revelatory covert recording that encapsulates the true power of documentary cinema.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 23, 2009

By any measure, this is a horror film: graphic, shocking, uncompromising. The horrors, moreover, are real: the annual slaughter of thousands of dolphins in a secluded cove in Japan, where they are trapped in nets and hacked and speared to death.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 23, 2009

The Cove is guerrilla journalism at its best. Structured and paced by director Louie Psihoyos as a thriller/caper movie, it brings audience-grabbing cinematic conventions to work in telling its story of dolphin genocide

| Aug 23, 2009

It is put together so smartly you can almost feel the urgency - from the patient set-up, which lays on the information and statistics without getting boring or too preachy, to the horrific finale.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 19, 2009

It is overwhelming, compelling and very depressing. In short, The Cove does its job very, very well.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 19, 2009

As the subject of a documentary, this grim enterprise distinctly lacks the warm and fuzzy appeal of The March of the Penguins. So director Louie Psihoyos ingeniously reinvents his film as a spy caper.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 19, 2009

There are five minutes in this documentary that ought to be mandatory viewing. The entire 90 minutes is utterly compelling, but the five alone are worth the price of admission.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 7, 2009

Psihoyos and his team got the footage they were after -- thanks to meticulous planning, lots of furtive sneaking around and the judicious placement of underwater microphones and cameras disguised as rocks.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 7, 2009

Beyond the high-stakes game of cat and mouse, the film explores the mysterious relationship between humans and dolphins and the unexplainable connection between our two species.

| Original Score: B | Aug 7, 2009

Directed by Louie Psihoyos, this well-intentioned documentary exposes the harvesting of dolphins by Japanese fishermen, yet its theatrics suggest a cross between reality 온라인카지노추천 and Mission: Impossible.

| Aug 7, 2009

The Cove is one of the best in a growing class of nonfiction films

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 7, 2009

The Cove plays like the James Bond version of an environmental doc. It could also be viewed as a horror movie for the carnage it depicts. Yet it's quite simply one of the year's best movies.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 7, 2009