I agree with Christopher below; true science fiction. It is an internal movie where all is not as it seems and you realize that quite late. There is a strong metaphor here relating to having to deal with the consequences of your actions.

What a pleasant surprise! It has a bit of a sleepy feel but the story moves right along and draws you in to a childhood that has become very complicated. Two young people are saved by the concentric circles of their family.

A powerful movie and quite a performance from Sophia Loren who received the Oscar for it (the first time awarded to an actor in a foreign film.) A Mother manages to protect her daughter through most of WWII until their trip home to Rome at the end where they are attacked by soldiers. Good Italian directors can nail Italian culture in a way that is rare among American directors with our culture. This movie is a great example. Proud people but cowardly too as in the scene where nobody will agree to show German soldiers how to retreat through the mountains so they choose a young man, the son of one in the group, and he is killed. There is some great outdoor photography in this with obvious care for the tones in the black and white.

This movie blew me away. I really felt as though I was in the presence of directing genius. This movie just, plain, works on so many levels. If you take a look at the film as a whole it has the feel of art made from found objects. It forces you to look at something ordinary in a new and extraordinary way. On the technical level it is equally a work of art. To have created such a consistency of tone between the place and the actors was amazing on its own but Soderbergh even manages to keep the actors all at a certain level, and these are untrained actors. At the same time I think that this is masterful storytelling. There is really no good reason to care about these characters or their circumstances at all, they themselves seem to barely care. But Soderbergh sets a pace for the story and then doles out the information and the images in such a way that you are pulled along despite yourself. Clearly this is not a movie for everyone but if you enjoy seeing the thumbprint of a director on a movie this is worth a watch.

I watched this as an intro to the life of Harvey Milk, prior to viewing "Milk." It is a straightforward telling of the rise of Harvey Milk in the SF political and gay scene. Since the documentary begins with the end, we know that we are marching toward an inevitable tragedy and the filmmaker moves all of the players into place through the use of interviews with contemporaries and archival footage. The story, and the tragedy, do not end with the murders as the trial provides an "act II" for the city of SF. It was clearly an injustice and the filmmakers do a good job of explaining the role that the death of a gay man in 1978 plays in mitigating an appropriate outcome. I feel like we learn a lot about Harvey Milk in this movie but he doesn't seem to ever lift out of the two-dimensional.

I just don't think that Bill Maher has the intellectual capital to pull this off. It sounded a lot like the kid in an algebra class saying, "why," or "I don't understand," over and over. At some point you begin to wonder if it is willful ignorance. I am certainly no friend to organized religion but at the same time I recognize that an individual's relationship to their beliefs is intensely private and may actually defy explanation. I felt most uncomfortable during those times when Maher challenged the everyday practitioners, as in the trucker chapel scene. To me, a better examination of the topic may have been to focus on obvious instances of hypocrisy and abuse, or the wielding of religion-laced government policy that draws us all into one powerful individual's religious world view. I think that Maher could have done a real number on the former, his huge ego going toe-to-toe with the huge ego of Ted Haggard or Jimmy Swaggart. That would have been a hoot.

This movie deserves a disclaimer describing the fact that, while incredibly rewarding, it is not necessarily easy to watch. This is a subtle film that moves about an inch over its 90 minute length. There are a couple of thoughts that I have right off the bat: 1. The cinematography is enchanting. The close-ups of boys faces have a photojournalistic quality. The scene of the burning hillside reminded me of Mordor. There were times when the scenes had a dreamy quality; they seemed to rock as if filmed on a boat. Other times the background receded or came forward responding to some camera effect. 2. The dialogue is odd as rarely do you actually see anyone speaking. 3. The grandmother seemed to assume the role of Mother Russia sending all her boys off to war. The young soldiers are all attracted to her, even the Chechen boys can't stop staring at her. There is a potent statement about war and its costs here and I recommend that you give this challenging movie a chance.

I found this unwatchable. Imagine Lenny from "Of Mice and Men" as Chris McCandless in "Into the Wild" Now give him a dog to care for...

I've seen just about everything Werner Herzog has done and in this setting he is at his best. By that I mean, documentary, odd characters, breathtaking natural beauty. If there is someone who films the natural world more seductively than Herzog, I'd like to know who it is. Herzog's narration is a hoot. I love the way that the camera lingers on people far past the end of what they are saying and then past even their comfort level. Some people can't keep it together under that scrutiny. This is a hugely overlooked movie that deserves a wider audience.

I was leery of this movie but really fell in love with it. The North American scenes are so lush and wild that by the time we make it to England I too was in awe of this strange civilization. The DVD has some fantastic shorts on the painstaking research that went in to the authenticity of the film.