Mondovino

Ok, most people liked this documentary on the global wine business, and I expected to but didn’t. I guess this is the new style of documentary filmmaking: hand-held, whimsical cinematography; impressionistic and understated but insinuating interpretation. Not everyone can pull it off. This film is tedious and mainly incoherent, visually and narratively. It’s always fun to watch rich people and corporate lakeys lying and saying outrageously stupid things on camera, but I didn’t learn anything new about wine and precious little new about the industry — and I really love wine and have a good general base of knowledge. It’s a great film for dog-lovers, though; the cameraperson seems to have a fixation.