Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 17, 2011

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 18, 2008

To address the economic inequality of teeming Sao Paulo, Brazil, documentary maker Jason Kohn has joined several loosely related topics into a sort of rhetorical doughnut, leaving a hole in the center where his thesis should be.

| Jan 4, 2008

Kohn is a talented filmmaker and he's tackled a subject not seen before in documentary film, but you almost feel bludgeoned by the depressing state of Brazil instead of introduced to the problems there.

| Nov 1, 2007

Artful framing and 23 peppy songs on the soundtrack lend a gloss to subject matter that alternately repels and fascinates...

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 28, 2007

We see where this is going early on; by the end, despite the film's beautiful cinematography, persuasive subjects and ironically upbeat soundtrack, we just feel bludgeoned.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 27, 2007

Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), a documentary about corruption, crime and human adaptation during difficult circumstances, is a slick, sly and beautifully shot documentary.

| Sep 27, 2007

Wow, bet the Brazilian Tourism Board hates this movie.

| Sep 21, 2007

With a keen eye for wide-screen imagery, Kohn captures the personalities of his interview subjects.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 21, 2007

The movie has a great flashiness -- copter shots that swoop over Sao Paulo; swift, playful editing; and pop-operatic sequences driven by catchy songs.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 14, 2007

The 'characters' in Manda Bala are lucid and deliberate as they tell their stories and relate their points-of-view, but it is the construction of the film that sets it apart and multiplies its impact.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 8, 2007

Made with energy and style...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 31, 2007

The director, a New Yorker of South American extraction named Jason Kohn, serves up a bewildering, yet seldom uninteresting, assortment of subjects.

| Aug 30, 2007

Kohn's genius for access is astonishing.

Full Review | Aug 30, 2007

Lurid, fascinating, sickening, and eye-opening.

| Original Score: B+ | Aug 29, 2007

A weird hybrid of political expos and sensationalistic fluff.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 17, 2007

Kohn takes seemingly disjointed and mildly bizarre elements to create a crafty, infuriating portrait of a society seemingly poised, like a scorpion, to be consumed by its own toxins.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 16, 2007

Kohn's film brilliantly depicts the Brazilian financial capital of So Paulo as a hallucinatory Blade Runner realm of the present.

| Aug 16, 2007

With an excess of excitable style, samba music, and heady, montage-driven metaphor that threatens to bury his film's key ideas, young-gun director Kohn So far, he's succeeded.

Full Review | Aug 14, 2007

Once you get past the gore, Manda Bala makes a powerful statement about the consequences of wanting the good life at any cost.

Full Review | Aug 13, 2007