Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

GeneSiskel The Village Voice usually has good film sense, but Michael Atkinson's external review of Machuca is unduly snide. True, Machuca adopts some standard plot devices. The boy's-eye view of big events seen in this film is not much different from that of The Boy in Striped Pajamas, Dead Poets Society, or for that matter Huckleberry Finn. True, many of the characters -- the kids are uniformly adorable, the adults less so -- are painted in broad brush-strokes. Call them stereotypes if you must. What distinguishes Machuca, however, is that it is played out against the backdrop of Pinochet's 9/11/73 toppling, with the CIA's assistance and Henry Kissinger's fervent support, of Chile's Allende government. That was a real blow to democracy, real hypocrisy, and real terror, 3,000 Chileans were killed, and a quarter million Chileans were displaced.Director Andres Wood captures the sweep of the coup, some of it documentary-style and some of it dramatized, with real emotional power. He does so, not in spite of the production values, as Atkinson suggests, but because of them. Gonzalo Infante's upper-middle class bicycle gives him the mobility he needs to visit Pedro Machuca's shantytown, but it is also a symbol of private property in the military's battle with socialism, and it contrasts with the fighter jets which fly over Santiago at the end. Gonzalo's mother dresses in a Jackie Kennedy-like pink suit, parks her widely admired (and shared) culo on the door of a convertible, and bangs a pan in support of right-wing values. No wonder her son has trouble making sense of the scene. No wonder he forms his own pre-pubescent connection with a shantytown girl whose mother has also "left." The production values are what distinguish Machuca from mere agit prop such as The Battle of Algiers and give Wood's film depth.Enjoy it.

finn_ You know, best movies are so intense that you can even taste them. You sit there in the dark glued to your seat and you forget time, your popcorn and companion. This movie was definitely one of them.Machuca has a strong political undercurrent. We see how the tension between poor socialists and the wealthy right-wing nationalists accumulates to the violent outburst. The brutal coup d'etat was orchestrated by the CIA and the US foreign office and will always remain as one of the most shameful actions ever taken by the US government.However, for me the political circumstances were a setting for a story of friendship beyond boundaries of class, wealth or color of a skin.Now, Machuca is not the first film to depict friendship of two persons coming from different backgrounds, but it is astonishing in its honesty. Why did it feel so real? Not once it felt emotionally calculated nor pretentious. That's a sign of a great director. Also the young actors were very convincing. Actually, I can hardly believe they knew there was a camera around.Another amazing factor in this movie was the authenticity in which it showed us the complexness of life and relationships. It's not easy, growing up, and honestly we adults really often make it more hard than it ought to be. Folks, this ain't Disney. It's rough and tough movie (but not totally without humor). I felt sad and empty afterwards but I know for right reasons. 10 out of 10.

rafael-anschau The film is about children who get along, and then get separated. This happens because their families belong to different political sides, in a time and place where this was big deal.Spirituality unite us, politics divides us. I don't give the film the last star because it tends to biased towards the left(we have on bad leftist(the drunk) and a few mildly bad right wingers(a clueless semi-hippie, a crazy guy who thinks he's bruce lee, an adulterous mother and the wealthy guy who sleeps with her). Without the bias, the film could have been a much more profound tale of humanism among children, serving as an example to politically divided adults.Also, as a Latin American, I've always felt away from both the bully-like military backed right wing, and the hopelessly classist "it's not my fault" left-wing.So I strongly empathized with the story.

Donnie Zuo This is almost the first Chilean film I've seen, and I was totally blown away by it.Seeing the three children rejoicing in a parade, one may already know that it's a serious historical film --- at least I did, especially when I related it to "Turtles can fly", another historical epic from children's view in the same year. However, you don't need to know very much about Chilean history to enter this story --- as long as you are familiar with the universal phrase of civil war.The three children brought forward incredibly amazing acting, which is quite different from the way American young stars do. They are rawer, looser and more original. Also it's obvious that the makers put a lot of efforts in cinematography to show us surprisingly poetic and childish views of the period. The story, though full of twists and turns, is as natural and convincing as one can be. It doesn't force your tears. They'll just come unaffectedly.After all, the pain of war is universal, and so is the darkness of society. Those issues may be far beyond our concerns, but the way people dealt with it is still worth thinking twice.