| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 1, 2006

Thanks to a pristine eye for period detail and strong acting skills by the entire cast, there's no need for the script to press any points.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 13, 2006

A fine, exciting film that makes a bloody historical event live all over again by showing it through the eyes of children on the edges of the conflict.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 9, 2005

That rare film that merges the personal and political without sacrificing restraint or intellectual honesty.

| Nov 18, 2005

[The film has] an unerring eye for time and place that's counterbalanced by an overly passive, if sympathetic, central character.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 21, 2005

It's a sensitively wrought work that reveals a time in Chile when class differences were both ignored and emphasized, depending on your perspective.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 15, 2005

An eloquent and moving take on the tragedy of a society that attacks its own and successfully humanises difficult ideas of political and class loyalty.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 10, 2005

One of those special films that broadens and deepens as it goes on.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 28, 2005

Machuca is sweet, poignant, and winningly evocative of the period, though occasionally dogged by predictable scenarios and caricatures.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 14, 2005

Grabs our hearts by lingering over details of the trio's friendship.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 23, 2005

An astonishingly intimate and painful coming-of-age story.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 21, 2005

Both sweet and stringent, attuned to the wonders of childhood as well as its cruelty and terror.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 20, 2005

Wood is fastidious about period set design, but not much else; rather than burning with experience, the film feels opportunistic.

Full Review | Jan 18, 2005

Richly human in focus, the drama steadily cranks up its political and emotional charge, poignantly viewing its themes through the eyes of two 11-year-old boys.

| Jan 12, 2005

Like John Boorman's Hope and Glory, Machuca conflates a boy's coming-of-age with a country's social upheavals.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 27, 2004