SONG OF SPARROWS ★★★ OUT OF FOUR STARS
Rating: PG for adult themes; subtitled. • Where: Edina.
The first and last images in this spiritual fable by Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi ("Children of Heaven") show a single ostrich, which becomes a symbol of the majesty and mystery of the natural world. Over the course of the story, Karim (Reza Naji), an impoverished farmer who lives in a rural village with his wife and three children, loses his soul, only to regain it after a season in hell during which he succumbs to the temptations of the material world.
Although unabashedly sentimental at times, "The Song of Sparrows" has the force of conviction. And the scenes of rural life are quite beautiful. In the film's happiest moment, Karim, surrounded by children on the back of a truck, sings, his eyes half closed, a smile on his face. "The world is a lie; the world is a dream," he chants. His ecstatic fervor reaches into your heart.
STEPHEN HOLDEN, NEW YORK TIMES
ADORATION ★★ 1/2 OUT OF FOUR STARS
Rating: R for language. • Where: Lagoon
The latest cool blue puzzle-box from Canadian writer/director Atom Egoyan has a lot on its plate -- terrorism, adolescence, racism, mixed marriages, the sins of fathers, the anger of children and tow-truck ethics just for starters. That the movie doesn't quite topple over like a wedding cake is tribute only to Egoyan's rigor and skill.
A lanky, brooding Toronto high schooler, Simon (Devon Bostick), presents a monologue to his class about his Lebanese father using his Canadian mother as an unwitting airplane bomber. The boy's story gets out to the public and controversy erupts. Except that none of it may have happened. Watching "Adoration" is like juggling three tennis balls, a porcupine and a graduate thesis, but eventually it finds a unifying theme, that of tolerance melting away racial and intergenerational hatreds.
TY BURR, BOSTON GLOBE
