Peereddi I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

tagheue I watched this documentary because it said that it is about the globalization of wine and how this is impacting different wine regions of the world. My interest in wine is rather new and I am still in the initial research phase, so I thought that this would be something educational for me. Instead, it brought me mostly frustration.Basically the movie is about this: in Nappa valley there is this guy named Bob Mondavi, a real power player in the wine world. He tried to buy in his way into a french wine producing village to extend his "domain". He failed. He goes to Italy instead where he has more success. Oh, and he has set up shop in other parts of the world as well, mainly south America.In detail, 3/4 of the documentary is about the french affair, where the locals are presented, the small players, the big players, Mondavi is being presented, some fancy wine consultant is presented and a guy named Parker who is a wine critic that can make or brake wine companies worldwide. The french bicker amongst themselves and lament about how Mondavi, Parker and the consultant has changed the way of doing business and these 3 in return say that there is nothing wrong with their way. In the last quarter of the documentary, the focus is shifted towards Italy, how they came in contact with Mondavi and have found that everything is OK. At the very end there is about 10 minutes of shots from south America, not that it matters anyway.This documentary bothers me. First, it doesn't knows what it wants to be. It is not about globalization, because it covers only one business deal and its consequences (barely). Its scope is not global, it doesn't even mentions the emerging Asian markets, hell, it doesn't even covers Europe, just some parts of France and Italy... Also, it tries to give an insight into the way of life of the wine makers, on a personal level, but does so in a manner that is totally distracts the focus about the main theme of the documentary. However, the main problem with this documentary is the low technical quality, that make its weak substance even worse. Whoever shot the movie had no idea what it is doing. The camera shakes, the angles are all wrong and the focus is all over the place. Some wine maker is being interviewed and the camera just zooms in on hie eye, or his mouth so I can see how bad his teeth are. Or it zooms in on the fat old guy in the background that is going down a latter. The dialog still goes on but all I can see is Santa coming down from the roof. The editing is also abysmal. Every dog that the crew encountered during the making of the documentary gets a good 5 seconds of close ups in the movie. I know now that the worlds most influential wine critics french bulldog farts... Why is this important? Why was this not cut out? I know that the wine consultant sends out his driver to buy him newspapers and cigars. The maid comes in, sees the camera, gets shy but eventually asks if anybody wants to have a drink or something. Some guy passes trough the room where a woman is being interviewed, than passes back a moment later, both times they have a brief chat that has no value to the documentary whatsoever, yet everything makes it into the documentary. Some kid is being washed in a sink, on a porch in south America, I can see clearly that its a boy. An ugly/old piano player woman puts up makeup at a dinner event.There are countless such distracting elements that have no relevance, no added value, no contribution for the subject whatsoever. They should have been cut out. High-school kids could achieve better production value with their cell phones. And even if this movie is from 2004, I expect better quality from somebody that has the budget to travel around and the access to talk to VIPs. Over all, this is a mediocre at best, shoddy, narrow view documentary that does not worth your time and effort.

humanitarione Brilliant film, shows how far greedy men go to create illusions and magazines and clowns that dictate "taste" as if it can be dictated, it shows so well how greed and abundance of the cheesy gets to destroy "craft" and "beauty of making" is the Wallmart of wines against small true wine makers, David vs Goliath A true inside story into the world of wine, loved the tone, the real style that reveals men's intentions and puts a face to greed. From Italy to France you see the real deal, you discover so much in this documentary, like the racist Argentine who talks about natives in the most disturbing way but excuses how he is part of the big global cheap crafted wine making

Joel Howard I've heard people compare this movie to Sideways. How this comparison was made, I'll never guess because this movie was in no way comparable to Sideways.These 2 films were as different as Star Wars and the Thornbirds. The only thing they had in common at all was they both had wine as a subject.Though the interviews in this documentary were semi-interesting, they were ruined by the absolute worst camera work ever...attempted. I've never seen worse camera work in my life and I'm comparing it to home videos accidentally taken by 5 year olds.I give this two stars, ONLY for the interesting interviews with French wine types and for showing how pushy and corrupt the American wine companies are (Aren't all companies pushy and corrupt?) I'd give it -10 stars (Yes, that's NEGATIVE 10) for the deplorable, terrible, horrible, awful, VERTIGO-INDUCING, 5-year-old-could-do-better camera mess.

legalerien I was expecting a lot from this movie, and I can say I haven't been disappointed. First of all, this movie, as a world tour of wine making, let the spectator enjoy beautiful places. The people interviewed are really interesting and funny too, in particular Hubert de Montille. The shooting may be confusing, the camera always being unsteady and often focusing on secondary elements in the backgrounds. You may not like it, but I don't consider it as a defect.The themes raised in the movie may be kind of confusing as well, since globalization isn't the only issue discussed. But Nossiter managed to give his movie a consistency all along. A great achievement of this movie is revealing all the characters involved in the wine industry as they really are, avoiding a cliché "Good against Evil". This could be the main difference between "Mondovino" and Michael Moore's documentaries; Nossiter's point of view appears in a subtle way, through opinions expressed by his favorite characters. The richness of this documentary relies mainly upon the characters, the history of long-time wine-making families, such as the De Montilles, the Mondavis, the Antinori and the Frescobaldi. Nossiter lets the spectator discover that wine is somehow related to families, rather than just being a business and an industry. This movie doesn't make you want to drink wine, but certainly make you want to discover vineyards and wine-makers.I watched this movie as a student in Enology, and let's just there are many ways to learn. I give this documentary 10 out of 10, despite his technical particularities.