Hypnotic and serene.

| Mar 28, 2017

If only the viewing environment were more suited to casual contemplation, allowing the audience (like the passengers) to dip in and out of the car in 10-minute stretches.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 14, 2014

Manakamana works as a tone poem, a Warholian revel in the mundane and an ethnographic study of an isolated corner.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 12, 2014

Though its subject matter doesn't seem particularly fun on the surface, Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez's Manakamana is a sort of structural game, by turns contemplative and, yes, playful.

| Dec 11, 2014

Boring? Absolutely not. Strangely revealing, meditative and funny? Yes, as passengers reveal themselves by costume, silence, chatter and posture, rising up through a hazy, green landscape into the clouds where Manakamana.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 11, 2014

We're basically gawking at a commute.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 11, 2014

Multiple viewings simply allow for more diverse and creative readings of the material.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 11, 2014

Invited to sit in the facing seat, we have long minutes to watch, listen and assess, considering who these pilgrims are and what, aside from worship, has really brought them here.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 3, 2014

"Manakamana" is simple in conception, but the reactions it evokes in viewers will be complex and multifaceted.

| Jun 26, 2014

"Manakamana" is a haunting experience, one that requires patience (and then some) but that offers spiritual, philosophical, and aesthetic rewards beyond the immediate power of words to describe.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 15, 2014

Manakamana is a travel film that's not about the ride, but the riders. Ourselves included, of course.

| Apr 21, 2014

The directors, Pacho Velez (who did the camera work) and Stephanie Spray (who recorded the sound), condense world history into the confined space of a glassed-in bubble.

| Apr 21, 2014

By focusing on such a narrow slice of Nepali life, Ms. Spray and Mr. Velez have ceded any totalizing claim on the truth and instead settled for a perfect incompleteness.

| Apr 17, 2014

Manakamana doesn't answer any questions, yet makes its point: Nepal, like the rest of our planet, is a picturesque but far from peaceable kingdom.

| Apr 17, 2014

As a theatrical experience, Manakamana is spellbinding. But it's a complex spell ...

| Apr 17, 2014

I've never seen anything like it.

| Apr 16, 2014

You could hardly ask for a more beautiful vision of souls in transit.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 15, 2014

Manakamana is both calming and imagination-sparking, forcing viewers to look at human faces for 10-minute stretches, whether those faces are talking excitedly or quietly looking around.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 15, 2014

Filmmakers Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez insist that altered spectatorship, particularly patience and duration, is the foundation of cinematic edification.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 13, 2014

If "Leviathan" showed us the primal terror of everyday life, this new film is a warm hug, a salute to our shared humanity.

| Mar 5, 2014