It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

I enjoyed this movie, as it humanizes both side of a conflict I knew very little about. The movie has a pretty direct and clear message, but it makes sense within the story. Social media being important, people banding together to stop oppression, these are all things that actually happened. The focus on popular culture being imported into Iran was a nice touch, reminding me of the book (and movie) Persepolis. The movie is also a good portrait of Bahari, who deserves recognition for what he does, and what he has been through.According to Stewart and Bahari, the movie has taken some artistic licenses. For some reason this bugs me more than it usually would - as this movie seems to do everything it can to put itself in the real world. Real life footage, some people playing themselves, etc. I do trust Stewart to take some "honest" artistic licenses though, and not misrepresent the underlying stories, or give a too unbalanced look.Sadly, Jon Stewart did not go for authentic language use, opting instead for "all English", meaning there does not have to be subtitles. The actors he found all did good jobs, but I wish he instead would have gone with Iranian actors and made it all in Persian.

This was a good directorial debut film. Good dramatic beginning, great acting by Bernal, good cinematography. However, it loses momentum and intensity once he's imprisoned. It does show how ridiculous and ignorant the Iranian interrogators were, but does not really adequately reflect what Bahari was no doubt going through emotionally. It was a dispassionate.The characters, even including Bahari, could have used more depth. We glean that his father and his sister were true freedom fighters, that his co-workers in other countries don't really understand all the nuances of what's going on in the country, that his wife and mother love him and that Bahari prefers the safe path of reporting over the path of freedom fighter, but without sufficient depth. As a result the film was more interesting than it was moving.

Given the importance of a free press and the direction of the much- loved John Stewart, you just wanted this movie to be more entertaining or, at least, thought-provoking. Unfortunately, it produces both in somewhat limited quantities. Stewart, who clearly does snark on an Olympic-level does excel here at showing the ridiculousness of the Iranian charges against the Time reporter they imprison, beat and torture. He shows the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regime to be petty, out-of-touch and trying to stay in power by fighting the previous overthrow of the Iranian government which did involve the involvement of the West to install the former Shah of Iran. Of course, covert CIA operations have long since been replaced by the coordinated actions of ground-level young people using Twitter and the deep web to coordinate. Stewart demonstrates these realities well and provides a realistic portrayal of the tactics used by these particular torturers (which resemble those used by torturers through history and geography). The movie just feels more like reportage than drama and the reporters eventual release isn't quite the end of "Shawshank Redemption". In short, still worth seeing if you enjoyed "Syriana" or a have a particular interest in global politics or history.

How do you tell the story of interrogation, the breaking of the spirit, the finding of resistance and the desire to survive? Rosewater is a good answer. John Stewart the satirist and news anchor to a generation of Americans makes his serious film début by walking away from the usual balloon bursting of his show to take the bull by the horns and show us through imaginative devices like the deceased family of the journalist,flashbacks, a particularly moving moment with Leonard Cohen and straight narrative, how the mind is the strongest muscle in the human body if we allow it.Modern journalism and the politics of dictatorship clash briefly to set up the main story, a two man play starring interrogator and prisoner. This is not a documentary about the Green revolution, nor is it a touchy feely film about family. John Stewart takes the book Then They Came for Me by Maziar Bahari & Aimee Molloy and focuses on the core material around the detention of the journalist by Iranian authorities. If you compare Rosewater to any number of films that focus even a little bit on interrogation, even in the recently democratic central and eastern Europe, the film stands up well to stories done often by the tortured themselves. Physical brutality is rare in this film and if we are to believe the writers were prepared to make Iran look bad they could have really laid it on thick, yet unlike some US film makers who sacrifice the basic facts for a bit of gore and propaganda, John Stewart stuck to the head games and did it well.I suspect doing the Daily Show might be getting a bit old for him what with the recent reaction to his material on Gaza. I hope he makes the transition full time soon, he'll be a great addition to the pantheon of directors tackling issues with the same razor sharp intellect he uses in his comedy.