Exhilarating, exuberant and drolly funny.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 4, 2007

The rare Iranian film that is not only thoughtful and thought-provoking but also a lot of fun.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 15, 2007

Its ruminations on secular Iranian nationalism are effectively couched within the characters, and the film, which won the Berlin Film Festival's Silver Bear but is banned in Iran, has a refreshing slyness to it, as if it's getting away with something too.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 8, 2007

Offside is a slow slog through bloated scenes with little happening. Framed and shot like a crude documentary, it proceeds in long, clunky takes, as if an editor couldn't be bothered.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | May 18, 2007

Humanizes the Iranians and shows that they're just as crazy about their sports as Westerners, if not more. If anything, it proves that soccer is truly an international language, providing an arena where anyone can communicate.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 18, 2007

[Director] Panahi has perfected the art of realist filmmaking, here turning his camera on scenes that seem more improvised or captured on the fly than staged.

| May 10, 2007

As funny as it is sharp.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 27, 2007

Jafar Panahi of Iran is one of his country's great filmmakers, and Offside is his best movie to date.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 20, 2007

The director shoots largely on location -- parts were filmed at Azadi Stadium during an actual match -- and mixes fiction and documentary so deftly we can't tell which is which.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 20, 2007

Most of this winning drama shows [girls] bantering with their male keepers, boyish soldiers who don't want to miss the game themselves. Over the crowd's roar, they argue about Islamic prohibitions and the statistics of star players.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 20, 2007

Although its message is deadly serious, Offside is almost lighthearted, filled with wit and winning characters.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 20, 2007

Offside is shocking in its revelation of the legal oppression of women in Iran. This film is also hugely funny.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 7, 2007

As the political rhetoric between Washington and Tehran becomes dangerously overheated, Offside offers an intimate antidote: an affectionate glimpse into the cultural schisms that young Tehranis face every day.

Full Review | Mar 26, 2007

Offside may be the ultimate Iranian film: It's both an advance for its director, moving away from his slight political didacticism, and a perfect metaphor for a population that's more liberated than its stone-age sexism would imply.

| Original Score: 5/6 | Mar 24, 2007

It's a sports film unlike any other, and a political film that makes the personal profound.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Mar 24, 2007

The story is good-natured, but Panahi's message is serious: That ludicrous rules turn Iranian women into third-class citizens. And what better way is there to get that point across than through sports and laughter?

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 23, 2007

Director Jafar Panahi has long been an eloquent and passionate representative for Iranian women. But judging by this deeply poignant comedy, they may not need a mouthpiece much longer.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 23, 2007

The great virtue of Offside is that it never degenerates into an us-versus-them situation. [Director Pahani] understands that a repressive system victimizes the oppressors as much as the oppressed.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Mar 23, 2007

The film's rich, pointed comedy arises from the sense that men and women alike are trapped in an absurd, insoluble predicament.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 23, 2007

The delicately subversive [director] Mr. Panahi makes his subjects perfectly clear -- the stupidity of authority, and the hypocrisy of discrimination. Offside is surprisingly entertaining, and edifying to boot.

| Mar 22, 2007