Critic Reviews
| 80 |
Hollywood Reporter Randee Dawn
Disaster's footage is riveting and at times difficult to watch, but this is important viewing. At times, the 40-minute documentary feels abbreviated, ending before most of the threads pursued in the main story conclude, but that's a minor quibble. |
| 80 |
Los Angeles Times Mary McNamara
China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province, which premieres on HBO tonight, is a heartbreaking example of what can only be called "Testimonial Television." |
| 80 |
New York Daily News David Hinckley
Filmmakers Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill, whose previous work includes "Baghdad ER," have done a good job of humanizing the disaster in Sichuan. The same cannot be said, by the evidence here, for Chinese officials. |
| 80 |
PopMatters Cynthia Fuchs
No matter how close its framing of a despairing face or how wide its look at a demolished area, China’s Unnatural Disaster maintains a powerful focus on the complicated social and political relations producing continued distrust and helplessness. |
| 80 |
Wall Street Journal Dorothy Rabinowitz
In these brief 45 minutes of filmmaking by Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill, there is more vivid testimony to the way the state party apparatus works to prevent any expression of dissent from reaching foreign news sources than any piece of reporting in memory. |
| 80 |
Washington Post Tom Shales
Artful but never artsy, as direct and natural as a conversation with a friend, Unnatural Disaster is a uniquely powerful piece of work, typical of what we've come to expect from Sheila Nevins's documentary division of HBO but even more moving than most. |
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