Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Tyreece Hulme One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Roedy Green This is a seriously depressing movie. I had to stop the film half a dozen times and do something else, because it was so grim. The family loses mother, then father than oldest daughter. Oldest son Ayoub (maybe 14) tries to carry on looking after the family. Others do their best to help, but everyone is so poor there is not much anyone can do. Everyone has to work so hard for so little wage. On top of this they have a crippled brother, Madi, who can barely walk, and is only about half normal height. He needs an operation, but even if he gets it he will die in a year. Soldiers attack. Employers refuse to pay. Rescuers renege. The whole film gives a feeling of impending doom to innocents. Then suddenly the movie ends without resolving anything, as though the ending had been trimmed off. Some exotic script flows by for a minute, without subtitles. Perhaps that explains what happens.Often in movies when terrible things happen to people, I don't care. I have developed no connection with the characters or I don't like them. In this movie, I cared so much about the characters it hurt. It grabs your emotions, but without the usual corny tricks.There is a scene with animal cruelty I do not think was simulated where they slapped and kicked mules. The whipping I think was simulated.The hardship is not supernatural or overstated. It feels like a realistic portrayal of being a child truck tire smuggler in Iran-Iraq.This is not an enjoyable movie, but it is a good movie.

valadas The documentary style of this movie doesn't put us away from the drama of life in this Kurdish village in Iranian soil but on the border with Irak. People there make a living by smuggling goods over the border subject to the constant risk of mines and ambushes. This involves children as well as adults. Life is particularly hard for children who have also to work for a living either wrapping up objects in the towns or carrying heavy packages on their shoulder or conducting mules carrying them across the border in the middle of the harshest weather conditions and a hostile landscape, to be sold on the other side. This is also the story of a family of orphan children, one of them being a crippled boy whose siblings treat with extreme care and tenderness, trying to earn money enough to take him to Irak to be operated otherwise he'll die soon. The image style is simple and unadorned. The images speak indeed for themselves. This story tells us not only how people live in that region of the globe, showing their customs and culture, but also how poverty and hardness cannot untie there the bonds of love in the bosom of the family. Maybe something we could learn in our western societies.

katydid4819 First off, A Time For Drunken Horses is a movie that I enjoyed, but I would not call it a good movie. Shot in the documentary style, it feels more like a documentary than a fictionalized film. It portrays the hardships of the Kurdish people and one family as they try to survive in a world that the American viewers have no concept of. A film generally does tell of hardships such as these but the difference between A Time For Drunken Horses and other films is that the others create a story that makes its subject matter more understandable. That's the point of a story; to explain things we can't know otherwise.Directed by Bahman Ghobadi, the shots are set up with expertise and the snowy landscapes are very impressive. Visually, this film is a masterpiece with its style and cinematography. Ghodabi's actors, all amateurs, don't display the same raw talent as their director but will suffice and must be forgiven, as they are only amateurs playing themselves. Perhaps the subtitles make it harder to gauge their abilities but no matter what, their facial expressions don't amount to enough to garner the emotions that the scene requires.Emotions, though, are not in short supply. This situations here become so extreme and never redeeming that it is hard not to view the whole film as a ploy to garner cheap tears from its viewers. It's analogous to American directors who add unnecessary nudity to their films just to get the few extra dollars from the demographic that pays just to see Angelina Jolie naked, not caring what the movie is actually about. There comes a point in A Time For Drunken Horses that you have to ask what the point is. Yes, this is educational for those of us who don't live like this but what about those that do? Imagine this: a car wreck, a bad one with blood, death, and visible pain. That is what this movie is similar to. An event that you see every day but don't directly relate to. It's horrible and you know it, so why watch a movie about it. Would you want to watch a car wreck happen for eighty minutes? Where's the redemption? There is nothing to be gained from watching this. There's nothing that Ghodadi says with his film that the evening news doesn't. I see hundreds of films a year. I find that people often feel required to say that they enjoyed a foreign film. Perhaps they don't want to seem ignorant about what they are watching. For example, in Ebert's review he accuses those who don't like this movie of lacking in empathy. A well made foreign film has a great chance to make it to the American film market but that doesn't mean that it is a good movie. Just because a book is grammatically correct and follows the required structure to a T does not mean it is enjoyable. It's all about content and the conviction the writer has in what they are saying. With A Time For Drunken Horses, I felt more like I was watching an educational piece the History Channel had produced more than a story someone had put their blood and tears into. I would say it is a good movie but I probably would not recommend this. I think A Time For Drunken Horses has more political message than heartbreaking conviction. **/*****

jowang Iranians really know how to make unique movies without being polluted by the capitalistic dominating western cinima. The respectable Abbas Kiarostami has opened the eyes of the world cinima viewers.And now Bahman Ghobadi follows by his outstanding "Time for the drunken horse". It's low budget, simple story, amateur actors, real persons...and it's a great cinema. There're a lot for the western film industry to learn from the iranian films.