With Walker and cinematographer Dudu Miranda, Muniz has a hawk's eye for the weird beauty of bulldozed hillocks of trash and the catador faces that he chose to star in photographic portraits.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 14, 2016

Muniz is a gifted, modest and altogether delightful man, and his project is both aesthetically fascinating and philosophically stimulating.

| Feb 28, 2011

A well-made and often uplifting film that refuses to get angry yet still manages to point out that things aren't as they should be for a great many.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 25, 2011

The glimpses of favela life will make you thank your lucky stars you weren't born there.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 25, 2011

Perhaps not life-changing but certainly life-affirming.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 24, 2011

This is undoubtedly a bold raid into an unknown territory - both geographic and conceptual - that the prosperous classes prefer not to think about.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 24, 2011

Walker finds inspiration and strange beauty in the squalor.

| Feb 24, 2011

As in her memorable Blindsight, in which sightless climbers took on Everest, Walker celebrates the indomitability of the human spirit.

| Feb 23, 2011

Compelling and vivid, it's another fine piece of work from an up-and-coming talent.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 22, 2011

I do not mean to make their lives seem easy or pleasant. It is miserable work, even after they grow accustomed to the smell. But it is useful work, and I have been thinking much about the happiness to be found by work that is honest and valuable.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 10, 2011

While we await the definitive documentary about the glut of garbage, "Waste Land" reduces this global catastrophe to touchingly human scale.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 10, 2010

It's sheer pleasure watching Muniz work -- seeing him seized by mad impulses of delight.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 3, 2010

"Waste Land" is a testament that things can go from good to bad in an instant. But they can also improve just as quickly.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 3, 2010

It's not a very good title, Waste Land - this isn't a bleak film, at all - but just about everything else in Lucy Walker's documentary works, and illuminates.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 2, 2010

"Waste Land" is a film about recycling, but it's far more intriguing than the average eco-documentary.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 19, 2010

"Waste Land'' is just what the film's website says it is: "stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the alchemy of the human spirit.''

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 18, 2010

"Waste Land" is a must-see PBS-style Cinderella story with true grit, a brilliant cast and an improbably big heart.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 11, 2010

That a beautiful film could be set in the world's largest garbage dump sounds like an oxymoron, but acclaimed documentarian Lucy Walker has pulled off precisely that feat in her profoundly moving "Waste Land."

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 4, 2010

[An] inspiring documentary.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 3, 2010

[Muniz's] intention to have them re-create photographic images of themselves out of garbage, while it may not pass muster as high art, has the effect of raising their spirits. At least for a while, their lives, and ours, have been transformed.

| Original Score: B+ | Nov 1, 2010