Flow.

Irena Salina wants Flow "to do for the world water crisis what An Inconvenient Truth did for climate change," notes Kristi Mitsuda at indieWIRE. "While the facts revealed in the documentary, as conveyed in interviews with numerous activists and scientists, are not exactly stunning revelations - or maybe at this point I'm just unsurprised by tales of apathetic governments or corporate greed trumping concerns for public welfare - it manages to bring to light an issue which merits more attention but often gets lost amidst headline-grabbers like global warming and oil shortages."

Updated through 9/13.

"We're using up the planet's water too fast, and very soon oil wars will be replaced by H20 battles," notes Vadim Rizov in the Voice. "Salina's argument trends alarmist - is it really necessary to call water 'blue gold,' per activist/author Maude Barlow's formulation? - but generally rings true."

"Salina's astonishingly wide-ranging film is less depressing than galvanizing, an informed and heartfelt examination of the tug of war between public health and private interests," writes Jeannette Catsoulis in the New York Times. "Naming names and identifying culprits (hello, World Bank), Flow is designed to awaken the most somnolent consumer. At the very least it should make you think twice before you take that (unfiltered) shower."

"Like Patrick Creadon's recent national-deficit downer, I.O.U.S.A., Flow: For the Love of Water skips right past depressing on its way to apocalyptic," writes Nathan Rabin at the AV Club.

"Technically unremarkable (even ugly in certain low-quality video sections), the immediacy of Irena Salina's topic overwhelms her film's aesthetic shortcomings," writes Benjamin H Sutton in the L Magazine. "No point in repeating the exhaustive stats and examples laid out throughout Flow, let's just say they're very convincing and depressing."

For Filmmaker, Nick Dawson talks with Salina "about activist filmmaking, falling foul of Nestlé, and working for the young Orson Welles."

Earlier: Reviews from Sundance.

Updates, 9/13: "Jumping back and forth between various issues, facts and local news stories as if in search of a coherent thesis, the director offers up a call-to-arms against bottled water conglomerates that, in its structural sloppiness, feels like a high school student's tossed-off research paper," writes Nick Schager in Cinematical.

"This movie was made to shake up viewers, and it does just that," writes Michael Tully at Hammer to Nail. "Although there are no monsters or boogeymen onscreen, at times Flow is scarier than most standard horror movies."

Posted by dwhudson at September 12, 2008 6:11 AM