An ambitious premise that only just falls short of genius.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 14, 2008

This densely textured film by the writer-director team responsible for the sublime wartime drama Divided We Fall (2000) displays the same giddy blend of realist drama and bleak humour in the fine absurdist tradition.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 30, 2006

When you understand its message, the film takes on a different level.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 21, 2006

Forget Crash. This vivisection of race and class, set in the Czech Republic, offers no easy redemption, if any.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 3, 2006

A sprawling comedy-drama that actually tries to say something -- not just about its characters, but about the Czech Republic and what it's turned into since becoming a capitalistic society.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 25, 2005

[A] fascinating but disjointed portrait of strained family relations in the modern Czech Republic.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 24, 2005

Up and Down spends most of its time at the lower elevations.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 17, 2005

Hrebejk suggests, through this tragi-comic film, that while things are rough now, they've got to get better. I mean, they can't get much worse, can they?

| Original Score: B | May 22, 2005

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 11, 2005

Hrebejk's stylish direction and perfectly chosen cast make what might otherwise have been a depressing tale of post-perestroika working class woes into a melancholy, comedic riff on what it means to be European these days.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 8, 2005

For an engrossing, funny, sad, cautiously hopeful portrait of post-Soviet life in Eastern Europe, look no further than Up and Down.

| Apr 29, 2005

The movie asks us to see these people as humans and to forgive them for being human and doing to each other what humans beings do to each other. It's a deeply humane film.

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

Serious stuff, to be sure, but hilarious touches abound.

| Apr 28, 2005

The suspense of watching the storylines weave together (and occasionally butt heads) like a Czech-language "Short Cuts" makes for a compelling and darkly funny film.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 28, 2005

While parts of 'Up and Down' are effective, as a whole it doesn't measure up to its laudable ambition...the last word of the title proves more accurate than the first.

| Original Score: C | Apr 26, 2005

A dryly scathing examination of life after communism.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 22, 2005

It manages the neat trick of being both charming and bilious, and its tart points about racism translate excellently into English.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 22, 2005

The story's lack of impact onscreen reflects its lack of impact on those of us offscreen.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 22, 2005

Its many ideas never quite cohere, and it remains an admirable misfire...

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 18, 2005

Hrebejk's post-Soviet Czech Republic is more than a little like the American South, a conquered territory rife with old wounds and fresh indignities.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Apr 15, 2005