Critic Reviews
| 80 |
The New York Times
Fateful and funny, haunting and magical.
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| 80 |
Los Angeles Times
Sheri Linden
An eloquent and audacious lament.
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| 80 |
Empire
An unflinching and affecting depiction of the region’s tragic lunacies.
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| 75 |
New York Post
By terms moving and funny, the story reaches its apex when Half Moon, a beautiful young woman played by Golshifteh Farahani, makes her appearance from out of nowhere. Is she real, or perhaps an angel? You'll have fun trying to come up with an answer.
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| 70 |
LA Weekly
In a boom time for movies about the scars of the battlefield, Half Moon reminds that the unending strife and religious fundamentalism of the Middle East kills not just people but culture too.
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| 70 |
Chicago Reader
The suspicion and contempt the band encounters along the way symbolize the Kurds' historical sufferings, but the movie has many comic moments courtesy of the eager bus driver, who keeps putting his foot in his mouth. The nonprofessional cast is highly persuasive under the sure hand of director Bahman Ghobadi (A Time for Drunken Horses).
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| 70 |
The Hollywood Reporter
Ghobadi always uses non-pro actors but you would never know. In fact, professionals wouldn't do theses roles justice since the recruited performers are partly playing themselves and partly playing people Ghobadi has known since he was a boy.
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| 70 |
Village Voice
Aaron Hillis
Writer-director Bahman Ghobadi's picturesque road trip is less about preserving a musical heritage than accepting one's fate, a mythic trek that's both heartrending and boisterous--often as hauntingly absurdist as a Kusturica carnival.
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| 70 |
Wall Street Journal
This is a road movie unlike any other, the comical and mystical odyssey of old Mamo (an extraordinary performance by Ismail Ghaffari), a venerated musician who heads for Iraq from exile in Kurdish Iran with a busload of his musician sons to give a concert after Saddam's fall.
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