Like a rich and fading tapestry, the film successfully manages to create a lost world, a lost time.

| Feb 28, 2020

An endearing and heartfelt elegy to the subtle changes taking place to a small Alabama community in the early 1950s.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 23, 2019

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 16, 2011

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 16, 2011

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 16, 2011

An engaging and inspirational tale... handled with graceful understatement.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 27, 2008

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 18, 2008

While this may not be the rowdiest birth-of-rock-'n'-roll film ever made -- it's very likely the least rowdy -- Sayles addresses a transitional moment in his own patient, precise way.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 18, 2008

| Original Score: B+ | Oct 18, 2008

It's optimistic, and maybe it doesn't have a heck of a lot to do with history, but it's a tale well told.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 18, 2008

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 1, 2008

It's a leisurely paced period musical drama set in the Jim Crow south of the 1950s that's steeped in the black southern mores ... .

| Original Score: B | Jun 22, 2008

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 10, 2008

John Sayles, after 27 years and 16 films, is the ancient mariner of independent cinema, navigating the constantly swirling waters of the genre with passion and skill.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 5, 2008

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 9, 2008

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 8, 2008

This isn't the kind of flashy Big Issue movie that makes people stand up and take notice. It's quiet and moody, with outbursts of strong emotion and energy.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 1, 2008

inert

| Original Score: 1/4 | Apr 2, 2008

In this allegory, you understand, times change and troubles stay the same.

Full Review | Mar 21, 2008

... a tone deaf movie, filled with obvious, overly expository dialogue and sometimes patronizing symbols.

Full Review | Original Score: 77/100 | Mar 21, 2008