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

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Scotty Burke It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

jaded_viewer I must say I am a minor fan of Sayles, having enjoyed several of his movies (Lone Star in particular). And when it comes to creative endeavors, I'm all for people wearing multiple of hats - singer / songwriters have my deep respect, as do writer / directors. But the editing of this film should have been left to another person, as Sayles was most likely too close to see it objectively by the end of filming, and consequently the film suffers. Case in point: watching the DVD extra features, I was introduced to the background motivation for the various characters via the interviews with the actors. Too bad that background didn't actually MAKE IT INTO THE MOVIE! Is it on the cutting room floor somewhere? Who knows.This film is a mish-mash of characters, situations, and locales - NONE of which are developed in a satisfactory manner. As a result we are left to watch a variety of bland scenarios involving people we don't really know doing things we don't fully understand or really care about in a country somewhere in South America. The side plots, not being fleshed out, are more of a distraction than anything, which is a shame. The intersection of adoption, first vs. third world economics, capitalism, etc. would seem to be a fertile one, but the movie for some reason doesn't employ this to anywhere near full advantage. If being boring is the cardinal sin of movie making, this film will probably pass purgatory altogether and go straight to hell.As for the acting, It was a real treat seeing Rita Moreno after all these years. Marcia Gay Harden was terrific as the ugly American (I really hated her). Daryl Hannah was so-so as the new age health nut suffering in silence (though not quite enough silence for me - I started to wonder when she would whip out the chicken gizzard in the "psychic surgery" scene - can Hollywood please stop validating new age BS please?). Mary Steenburgen is always welcome, though she played a rather low-key role here. Lili Taylor seems doomed to play Lili Taylor for the rest of her life: outspoken, brash, self-assured to a fault, and a bit too quick on the snappy reply, though she did have some of the best lines. I had the feeling Susan Lynch was cast in order to relieve some of the white breaded nature of the US cast - she was generally fine, but her scene with the maid struck me as insensitive and self-indulgent (not what Sayles intended, I'm pretty sure). But the real sore thumb here was Maggie Gyllenhaal who played a weak, weepy, superstitious, infantile character that seriously grated on my nerves. The movie would be 10% better if her character were just somehow cut out.I just about fell off the sofa when the character played by Susan Lynch was relating her fertility surgery - paraphrasing: "they did a tubal ligation or something on me along with other things I can't even begin to understand". Earth to Susan's character: no wonder you are having fertility problems, you were freaking sterilized! Here's a tip: you might want to spend two minutes Googling your medical issues before someone starts carving you up like a thanksgiving turkey. Why the hell didn't one the actresses pick up on this and have Sayles fix it? I was struck dumb by this glaring technical idiocy, and it took me a while to come to my senses and get back into the movie (such as I was able to) after that.And when did it become OK again for movies to portray women as total flitty morons? Haven't we as a people progressed beyond this point over the last couple of decades or so? Some of the dialog was embarrassing close to "I don't know nothing about birthing no babies" - and these are supposedly women with fertility issues, who I would expect to have at least a passing knowledge on the subject. I'm aware that people like this do exist in real life, but can they not be rubbed in our noses as some kind of example of normalcy by Hollywood quite so much? Am I asking for too much here? My rating: 4/10

elicash3363 Apparently I'm the only person to have seen this movie applied any kind of critical thinking skills. This movie was incredibly bad; the story was muddled, the acting was vapid, and I've seen aborted second trimester fetuses better developed than the characters. What a bunch of touchy-feely mindless vaginal trite. To all you fools with your threads who claim this is a "tapestry" or "commentary on Mexican-American relations", you must be easily baffled and find hidden meanings in your alphabet soup as well. This movie should shoveled steaming into a rocket and sent into space where it can live out its half life with the smoking remains of Lenard Part 6.

jfdelgadoinsc No resolution, no real conflict, or at least not one whose solution we see; enormous talent wasted by appalling direction: Marcia Gay Harden works too hard, ironically unconvincing. The dialogue, a few memorable lines, all derivative ("Pray for Rosemary's baby"?) Instead of a series of visuals leading to something, it was a moving slide show (with terrible camera work) without any development. Some of the situations are confusing and contradictory: when the attorney, Buendía (Armendariz), talks to his sister the motel owner (Moreno), we get the impression he is going to give Nat the baby just to get her off everyone's back. When she leaves, he states she is not getting a baby. At the end, there she is, receiving one. Uh? And Rita Moreno should never again do Spanish dialogue: she sounds as if she is reading and her punctuation is terrible, breaking up phrases at the wrong point, very disconcerting if you speak the language. She also steals scenes like a pro. In the scene where we are trying to focus on the plight of the unemployed man, she keeps tapping her fingers together, thus removing all attention from the poor sap (I wonder what he did off-camera to earn her ire, as she must know exactly what she was doing). If the point is to see the backbiting, it lacks true bite; if the point is to see what these women's lives are like, it's not deep enough. Sayles drags us in all directions and then bounces us off the wall in a dead end. 3/10

Red-125 Casa de Los Babys (2003) is another exceptional film from writer/director John Sayles. Seven extraordinary actors interact in a natural and realistic fashion: Daryl Hannah,Lili Taylor, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Marcia Gay Harden, MarySteenburgen, Susan Lynch, and Rita Moreno. The first six are mothers waiting in a Latin American country for childrenthey plan to adopt. Ms. Moreno plays the owner of the hotelat which the women live. Vanessa Martinez--an extremelytalented young actor--plays a maid at the hotel who is trying to support two younger siblings on her meager salary. Not only does the movie provide a picture of the livesof these women, but we also are shown local people whoselives are more desperate than the North Americans--threehomeless boys, the hotel owner's revolutionary--but lazy-- son, and an educated man who is looking for work--any workthat will allow him to support his family.Sayles is a genius, and he is able to make the life of every character dramatically and emotionally meaningful. This movie has neither violent action nor a melodramatic ending. Instead, the film is so finely crafted that every scene proves an emotional climax in its own way.Casa de Los Babys will surely be considered one of the finest independent films of 2003. Don't miss it!