Popular reviews

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  Review by jing ★★★★★ 4

  Sundance 2022 — Film #3

  I’m floored. What a beautiful, beautiful film. I’m not sure if I’m able to find the right words to do it justice and to describe how I’m feeling right now, so I’ll just try my best. Utama follows an elderly couple, Virginio and Sisa, who belong to the Quechua people, an indigenous people of South America. They occupy a little hut in the Bolivian highlands—Virginio wakes up at dawn and grazes his llamas, Sisa makes sure their bowls are filled at dinner time. They have most likely lived there all their lives, so when the rain doesn’t fall and the land remains a dry patchwork of cracked earth, they firmly insist that “the rain will come.”…

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  Review by Robert Daniels ★★★★

  Score: 🦙🦙🦙🦙/5

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  Review by Frances Meh ★★★★

  I’m not denying climate change is man-made, I’m just saying those fucking llamas were up to no good.

  
  
  

  
  ~ Seattle International Film Festival #3 ~

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  Review by Jack Moulton🗽 ★★★★

  Literally gasped in awe at the opening shot

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  Review by Jesusmary ★★★★

  Warning: Spoiler(s) ahead!

  For so many generations, the Andean traditions have been as stark as the Altiplano itself and the interplay between life and death has always been ingrained in the lives of those tilling their arid foothills. But alas, came the yearlong drought that brought alongside it an antithesis to the timeworn Quechuan norms. If the good ol' emissary of death swooped in with a white neck ruff and coal-black wings, his foil, the bringer of change and young ideas came revving on wheels one hot afternoon with a smartphone on one hand and a headset around his neck. Moreover, the film had this panoramic shot at one point where it occurred to me that the old couple are…

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  Review by BrandonHabes ★★★★½ 4

  More than two miles above sea level, crusted out over barren soil, cracked-earth, and drought-ridden topography, the arid highlands of Bolivia form a heritage and community for those too stubborn to ever leave it. For the Quechuan few who remain behind, there’s a feeling of desperation now, a desire for water and heavenly downpour. It hasn’t rained in the region for almost a year. The wells have run dry. The heavens have turned to brass. And the search for water grows desperate as we follow the decline of a poor, rural, elderly couple’s struggle to stay alive.

  This is slow, hypnotically paced cinema with echoes of Ozu and Tarr, but is utterly distinctive in its vision of a dying world…

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  Review by Corwyn 🇵🇸 ★★★½

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  Sundance 2022, #19

  You're dying. You're dying.

  Methodically paced story about an old couple who struggle when their grandson appears, trying to convince them to move to the city. But as the grandpa becomes beset by illness and drought, it becomes harder to justify the stubborn refusal to embrace change - before it's too late.

  The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of llamas.

  Drama - 7.75/10

  ➡️ 2022 Ranked

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  Review by cinema_made ★★★★

  The lives of Bolivian llama farmers make for a spellbinding experience in this poignant and transporting drama. The impact of climate change on those it hits first, and hardest, is gently yet starkly illustrated in the story of Virginio and his wife Sisa, played by real-life Quechua couple. The movie’s cast members also bring such authenticity to their roles, Utama could be mistaken for a documentary.

  The title translates as our home, as the film studies the meaning of home, our attachment to it, our stubbornness to leave, and our loyalty to whatever we consider home. As a matter of fact, the film portrays the effects of global warming on a small, remote Bolivian community and how its members have…

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  Review by Terence Ang 洪偉凱 ★★★

  Kim, people are dying of drought all over the world and you're worried about the bird app shutting down? Okay, but how many likes will this review get?

  < Ang Ranking: Best International Feature Film submissions to the 95th Academy Awards >

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  Review by joshrowley ★★★

  Authentic; bleak; interesting; sad; short; simple; slow; understated; underwritten; well-shot.

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  Review by {Sammy G} ★★★★

  I heard a little about this upon its festival release(Sundance I think) and I finally got a chance to watch it. 

  Didn’t disappoint either. I mean it depends on you, how much you’ll get outta this, but for a family drama with the setting coming in to play as a character itself, I enjoyed what this had to say. The acting and dialog are great. It’s a slow paced/chill movie, so the visuals get amped up quite a bit and I loved the cinematography here. The situation at hand drew me in further and the family dynamic, made it even more engaging. Safe to say, it won me over emotionally and hit home. 8.2/10🦙

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  Review by Nathaniel ★★★★½ 2

  Not once is the phrase climate change uttered in this film—in fact, it might not even have a counterpart in the lexicon of the locals in those remote Bolivian highlands where the story is set—yet somehow it is part and parcel of the expansive tensions that we observe: that between man and nature, and that between man and himself.

  In showcasing those tensions, ‘Utama’ expressly makes us aware of the things that we take for granted—water, food, doctors, opportunities—and impliedly interrogates what responsibilities we think we have for the people we’re inadvertently depriving in our not-so-innocent act of taking. Do we just go on living our lives in the cities? Or do we, from time to time, look back to…