The Band's Visit.

"I'd be lying if I said that The Band's Visit isn't touching and uplifting and all those other audience-friendly emotions against which film critics are believed to religiously steel themselves," writes Scott Foundas in the Voice. "But in a season rife with movies (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Grace Is Gone, The Kite Runner) that aggressively pry open viewers' chest cavities and yank on their heartstrings, [Eran] Kolirin's film merely plucks gently. It has an elating lightness that belies its heavy subject - peace, or at least conversation, in the Middle East - and it leaves you filled with a sense of possibility."

Updated through 12/9.

"The Band's Visit, the Israeli film that's become celebrated for what it lacks - enough Hebrew to contend for the best foreign language Oscar - can now be seen and appreciated for what it has in abundance: visual wit, verbal charm and a completely droll sense of humor," writes Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times. "Debuting today for a one-week run before a February opening, this story of an Egyptian band's visit to Israel is both sweet-natured and sharply pointed, a film whose poignant, emotional effects and subtle acting sneak up on you."

"Amid the awkward conversations (spoken in lightly halting and fluid English), the even more uncomfortable silences, bits of music and some nicely executed physical comedy, the Egyptians and the Israelis circle one another warily," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "Love doesn't exactly bloom in this desert, but a sense of unarticulated longing does."

Earlier: Reviews from Cannes and Toronto.

Update: "Though it's both a predictable culture-clash comedy and a gentle plea for people of different political backgrounds to 'just get along,' The Band's Visit nevertheless manages to use its central contrivances and inevitable cliches to its favor, and becomes something ethereal and winning," writes Michael Koresky at indieWIRE.

Update, 12/9: "It all goes pretty much exactly as you expect, but Kolirin holds it together with a perfectly judged narrative pace, slowed to the measure of mutual awkwardness and minor trepidation," writes Michael Sicinski. "Add to this the director's innate sense of space and framing, continually drawing subtle, often forlorn compositions from the exurban landscape, and voila. The Band's Visit is a lovely middlebrow entertainment, one that actually generates warmth rather than imposing it from above."

Posted by dwhudson at December 7, 2007 9:39 AM