A likeable and accomplished addition to the Latin American new wave.

| Sep 28, 2006

The toastiest summer on record is but an intermittently flickering 40-watt bulb when held up to the positively incendiary sexual firestorm that is Brazilian import Lower City.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 26, 2006

Everything feels obvious and by-the-numbers, as if director and co-writer Srgio Machado was constrained by archetypes and narrative tradition.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 18, 2006

With a distinct lack of action, Machado resorts to far too many close-ups of his stars until, as good-looking as they are, you tire of looking at them.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 18, 2006

A steamy love triangle that may earn our attention primarily on prurient interest, but ends up being honestly involving.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 18, 2006

Everyone involved in the film seems better than the material.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 12, 2006

Tells a familiar story with an emotional intensity and a high eroticism that makes a lacerating impact.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 28, 2006

Brazilian filmmaker Sergio Machado scores a strong debut with this look at young hustlers in a lovers' triangle.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 28, 2006

Machado ... saturates his directorial debut with rich, golden color, defining it with close, handheld shots that accentuate the feeling of skin on skin.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jul 27, 2006

The result is something you've seen many times but never quite like this.

| Jul 6, 2006

The themes are all familiar and the plot unfolds slowly and in predictable ways, but there's plenty of heat generated by the three leads.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 29, 2006

This frenetic potboiler about a love triangle on the Salvador waterfront smacks of liberal slumming and bristles with faux authenticity.

Full Review | Jun 29, 2006

The film is gritty and graphic, with 'artsy' takes where the camera holds on a motionless actor. But art it isn't.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Jun 16, 2006

Machado remains nonjudgmental while getting convincing performances from Braga and, as the young men, Lazaro Ramos and Wagner Moura.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 16, 2006

There's also something patronizing about the zeal with which Machado wallows in the muck, especially since his characters' lives revolve entirely around sex.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 16, 2006

The movie turns out to be a predictable and somewhat sentimental lower-depths love triangle, but Ms. Braga almost makes it work.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 15, 2006

A pleasurably swollen Brazilian soap opera.

| Original Score: B+ | Jun 14, 2006

It's slick homogeneity, co-produced by Salles and co-funded by the Brazilian petroleum giant Petrobras, of a kind that commonly finds U.S. distribution while far better, riskier, more memorable films on the international table are ignored.

Full Review | Jun 13, 2006

In the end, Lower City is never quite as energetic as it wants to be, touched by the strange, milky lethargy that steeps every waterfront film.

Full Review | Jun 12, 2006

The Monster's Ball Fan Club will surely get a kick out of Srgio Machado's Lower City, another specious mix of febrile sex and faux race commentary.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 9, 2006