sergiodibari It is truly interesting to have the opportunity to read all this disappointed reviews now, that the documentary has more than ten years. All the silly comments about the directing that wasn't enough "movie" and glamorous as expected. All the silly comments about the director that, in a "war" between the old world, European style of wine, and new world, Californian style, push for the first when it's clear that the winner is the second. Now history can tell us who is the winner...

quadi Did Beavis and Butthead make this movie? It is just that bad. Truly an uneven and unfair portrayal of "bad" vs. "good" in the wine world. Did you notice the filmmaker trying any of the wines from the featured protectors of individual wines and terroir. The camera work is dizzying at best while the content may put you to sleep before long. This is not insightful journalism. What I got from this movie was that the filmmaker was trying hard to make a point about the globalism of wine by showing, for example, that the Mondavi family owned wineries in all parts of the world. Okay, that is a good start. So, how do these wines compare? Does the Mondavi Napa cab taste like their Italian wines. We never find out because no one in the film comments on this. Instead, there is a lot of innuendo about Nazi's and fascism. Well, those things don't grow grapes. Hmmmm.

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.

Nog As noted in other comments here, the camera-work is laughably bad. I am tempted to say that the director of photography is a 7-year-old, but that would be mean -- to 7-year-olds.Okay, but what about the subject? I was looking for some insight into the state of the wine industry worldwide, you know, Mondovino. What the film is about is a very narrow view of one intrigue in that world: the struggle between Mondavi and the French and Italian wineries that they would like to buy. There is no enlightening narration that would put the whole deal into context, so we are left with the selective process of the director and the interviews with the various characters in this little psychodrama. There's no shortage of despicable characters, or even despicable dogs, in sight. There is a shortage of evenhandedness, however. Is the director a Marxist? I wondered as I tried to maintain some semblance of focus as the camera dipped, swerved, zoomed in a chaotic flourish. Small grower in France: good. Huge grower in USA: very, very bad. Forget about the hundreds of small wineries throughout North America, Australia, and South America. There is a dead horse to beat here for over two hours.To learn about the intrigue more, you are better off reading about it elsewhere. And you will be able to sample your favorite wine without feeling sick while doing so.I suggest a new award at Cannes for Best America-bashing Diatribe.