Popular reviews

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★ 1

  Oscar-nominated actor Chiwetel Ejiofor originally planned to stay behind the camera in his solid but somewhat uninvolving directorial debut, but it’s easy to understand why felt he compelled to star: Trywell Kamkwamba is one of the more fascinating characters he’s ever played.

  An uneducated Malawian farmer who strives to provide schooling for his children, Trywell is too dignified to sell the family’s ancestral land to the tobacco business, and too savvy to think he can redeem his future by surrendering his past. He’s an honest man in a village that’s being choked to death by corruption, and — as a national food crisis takes hold — Trywell grows too desperate to see that his young son William (Maxwell Simba) might…

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  Review by Allison M. 🌱 ★★★

  This Netflix film is good: about a boy living in extreme poverty in Malawi, Africa. He creates a wind turbine and goes on to study at top universities.

  Chiwetel Ejiofor directs. The acting is especially good. Overall, it was pretty standard, but it's a heartwarming story and is easily found on Netflix.

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  Review by Two Cineasts ★★★★ 2

  Film reviews in 22 sentences (or less)
  Today: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

  "Think of your dreams and ideas as tiny miracle machines inside you that no one can touch. The more faith you put into them, the bigger they get, until one day they'll rise up and taken you with them."
  (William Kamkwamba)

  First of all you need to know that 80% of the spoken language is in Chichewa, so you probably need to read a lot of subtitles. So Chiwetel Ejiofors long film debut as a director is based on the memoirs of William Kamkwamba and his true story placed in the mid 2000s. It's the story of a boy who tries to save his entire village…

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  Review by Rafael Jovine ★★★★½ 2

  Coming into this movie, I was somewhat misled by the reviews and responses of people on the internet and my own mother into believing it would be a wholesome and somewhat inspirational film. Imagine my surprise when I was 80 minutes into a 110-minute film and all I got was something resembling a misery porn film. I wasn't expecting all of that hardship.

  However, when everything was said and done, I ended up really loving this movie. At the end of the film, I found myself smiling and cheering along with everyone else. As a result of Lemogang Tsipa's amazing performance, you always root for him and understand his hardships. When he and his family have to endure all this…

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  Review by Tasha Robinson ★★★★ 3

  This would probably look like a pretty standard real-life inspirational story turned fictional movie, except that it's so rich and well-realized. The performances are terrific, and there's a lot of passion and emotion to the story. But what impressed me more was how thoroughly this film sinks into a local culture, capturing everything from the shifting tides of politics in a newly democratic environment to the unspoken presence of a cult that appears at transitional rituals like funerals. This is a very lived-in film, a convincing portrait of a society rather than the kind of glossy abstraction that comes out of so many based-on-a-true-story situations, and as a first feature, it's just stunning.

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  Review by Graham ★★★½

  To set the scene, a quick geography lesson...

  Malawi is a landlocked country in East Africa bordered by Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique. Lake Malawi takes up about a third of the country, which is inhabited by about 20m people. It's known by the locals as "The Warm Heart of Africa", and is one of the world's least developed countries, relying almost entirely on agriculture.

  When weather, famine, war or shifts in population happen in the surrounding areas, Malawi is invariably impacted. In The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, we see the impact of stupid human decisions (brought about by other stupid human decisions!). When the locals allow the local forests to be chopped down in return for cash, it leads…

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  Review by Ian ★★★★★

  I had very low expectations for this film. Coz I thought it started off boring.

  But boy, Chiwetel handled this material like such a pro, you can't even tell it's his directorial debut. His eye for detail, subtle detail. And not to mention he learned to speak the local dialect, which he uses for a large majority of the scenes in the film. My respect to him as an actor was pretty much cemented after his dumbfounding performance in 12 Years a Slave. But now as a director? I'm truly excited to see where this road takes him.

  This was a beautifully done film that I not only believe every African filmmaker should watch, but hope that it'll give light to the VAST sea of stories that we have as a people - and not only from 'true story' literature.

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  Review by Z ★★★½ 3

  Decided to watch this last night because I forgot Ejiofor had directed a movie. The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind is a movie based on a true story about a kid who saves his town from a famine. It’s an amazing story with good direction and great acting. The only thing that would penalize this is the movie slows down at the ending which is supposed to be very emotional and it just let me down. I’m really happy the Ejiofor tried out directing and I do believe he could make it somewhere, just the ending didn’t stick it correctly.

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  Review by Austin Burke ★★★½ 8

  👍🏻70%
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  Chiwetel Ejiofor is one of my favorites in Hollywood (at the moment), so I was excited to see where he was going to go in terms direction. I really liked what I saw; both from an acting and directing standpoint. Ejiofor’s chemistry with his family was perfection and our lead, played by Maxwell Simba, is going to be a star. I can see so much potential in this young actor and I was impressed. The story itself is heartwarming and inspiring. It’s a story that needs to be told. It could have easily been botched. I was a tad hesitant going because of the fear that it would be. Thankfully the…

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  Review by Herb Gallow ½ 2

  Behold the latest exercise in the neo-mondo genre. Distinguishable from their grimy ancestors by high grade cinematography and Hallmark humanism, these films have adapted at the cellular level to the defenses of the enlightened 21st century mind and bypass that feeling of revulsion while still hitting that same mental sweet spot. That part of the Western mind that dumps endorphins into the bloodstream at the sight of people who are for sure worse off than you are, less civilized but only because no one has showed them how yet, and so you don’t have to feel bad for your internal chemistry hit because they’ll get there some day. See, even in humanity’s literal wastelands people are still people so they’ll…

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  Review by ardo ★★★

  While it captures the heart of a town fighting to prosper, a family struggling to survive, and a young boy willing to make the world a better place, Ejiofor's debut is more concerned with touching our hearts with immoderate melodrama than changing the tone that most of the true story based movies revolve around. Sure, the movie reaches some inspirational heights during its climax, but I can't help to not think how everything building to that part plodded at a snail's pace.
  Feeling a solid 6

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  Review by iklelele ★★★

  Chiwetel Ejiofor proves to be proficient in both in front and behind the camera. He might want to elaborate on the latter one, but I think for a directional debut, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is a strong way to start.
  Right from the get-to we are invited to the harsh living situations in Malawi without hardly any commentary. There are a number of gorgeous looking scenes, mostly utilizing zooming techniques which placed emphasis on crucial, emotional beats, indicating that Ejiofor is no stranger to film direction. The saturated, brownish color palette accounted for a sense of groundedness and was the right choice in my opinion.
  However, certain parts of the writing unfortunately lacked the richness of the visual…