The appearance of circus performers in any film not by Fellini usually bodes ill, and it does so here.

| Apr 1, 2010

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 30, 2006

A bleak, beautiful cinematic fable driven by the brutal logic of blood feuds and transformed by an overpowering sense of wonder.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 20, 2002

Salles' movie taps into matters that are at once ancient and mythical and, needless to say, headline-fresh.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 3, 2002

Salles starts with the loudly trumpeted theme, then tacks on a slim plot to justify the clamour.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 3, 2002

Full of poetic imagery, dazzling photography and heartfelt performances from a mostly unknown cast.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 22, 2002

A lovely journey, but it's like a picture book whose text is merely incidental.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 19, 2002

Salles is a fine director with the ability to invest moments with a sense of tragedy and inexorable fate.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 19, 2002

Salles here gives a story of inter-familial feuding and violence the kind of resonance that readily invites a leap to wider implications.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 19, 2002

Poignant and wrenching.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 19, 2002

After a certain point, no one is right and no one is wrong, both sides have boundless grievances, and it's the audience that wants to run away with the circus.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 19, 2002

Salles ... has found the beauty not only in this terrible place, but in a story by novelist Ismail Kadar that originally was set in Albania.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 18, 2002

Salles ... has crafted a compelling existential tableau.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 18, 2002

A rewarding parable on the futility of revenge and the redemptive power of self-sacrificing love.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jan 7, 2002

You're always aware ... that you're watching a quaintly middle-class, museum-poster notion of an 'elemental' peasant fable.

| Original Score: C+ | Jan 4, 2002

A dreary Aristotelian tragedy whose contemporary geopolitical relevance cannot compensate for the lack of gripping protagonists.

Full Review | Dec 21, 2001

Salles has the confidence of a storyteller too entranced by his tale to worry about the resistance of his audience, which he thus effortlessly overcomes.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 21, 2001

A gorgeously photographed, sun-baked fable about a rural vendetta.

Full Review | Dec 21, 2001

The trajectory is grimly inevitable, and yet its final descent still manages to startle.

| Dec 18, 2001

A worthy but somewhat less-than-satisfying follow-up to the Oscar-nominated Central Station.

Full Review | Dec 13, 2001