A fascinating, important documentary, and one that manages to highlight just how powerful the media can be.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 7, 2024

It's powerful stuff. The story of the uprising is well told and seems balanced. It's also an important film in terms of cinema as it illustrates a major shift in the way documentaries are made.

| Nov 1, 2018

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 18, 2011

No matter how many times anyone tries to appropriate shaky camera techniques, they'll never recreate anything as real as a reporter fleeing heavily armed police.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Mar 1, 2011

Mesmerizing, Oscar-nominated inside look into the 2007 uprising via the cameras of 30 or so underground videographers who risked torture and prison to record the chaotic events surrounding the rebellion of Buddhist monks against the repressive military

| Original Score: 88/100 | Jul 3, 2010

...pummeling, electrifying

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 11, 2010

It's powerful, to be sure, but the most interesting scene is one in which two reporters discuss the impact of their work; are they really changing anything?

| Feb 19, 2010

Events are movingly and fortuitously recorded here, but the world's attention has shifted to other media moments.

| Jan 15, 2010

If it is rather more interesting as a social and political document than a cinematic one, well, politics and society can be important, too.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Jan 7, 2010

Burma VJ celebrates the courage of the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), a group of underground journalists who risked their lives to document the 2007 uprising against the junta.

Full Review | Dec 15, 2009

The word 'brave' is thrown around too liberally in Hollywood. The folks behind Burma VJ are the bravest souls you'll see on screen this year.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 2, 2009

the footage, with the picture jumping as frenetically as the protesters being filmed, brings home as nothing else quite can the energy and the danger of the events depicted

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 16, 2009

Burma VJ would be even more intense without its early announcement that some scenes have been restaged, putting the viewer in a regrettably uncertain relationship to what follows.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 17, 2009

Narrated by a frightened journalist who trembles as he accumulates forbidden footage and provides a historical viewpoint, "Burma VJ" uses shocking video images and reconstructed scenes to create a coherent, mostly chronological account of what happened.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 27, 2009

In traditional terms, this is hardly a film at all. It's more like a bootlegged YouTube video.

| Aug 23, 2009

Although directed by Denmark's Anders Ostergaard, the true heroes of Burma VJ are the cadres of guerrilla video journalists who secretly filmed the junta's brutal suppression of the popular revolt in the fall of 2007.

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

Ostergaard could have just thrown this together like coleslaw and Burma VJ still would be an important documentary.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 7, 2009

Watching these brave amateurs is pretty compelling, which is a good thing.

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

An awe-inspiring documentary by Denmark's Anders Ostergaard that tracks how the news escaped in 2007 during Burma's civil uprising.

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

Thanks to the new guerrilla narrative, the world has a constant flow of images to file in its collective consciousness. And that camera-testable accountability slowly becomes a global civic right that fulfills the noblest purpose of journalism.

| Jul 31, 2009