Jonestown is a somber and non-exploitive reconstruction of the events that led the members of the Peoples Temple.
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04/01/07
Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (2006)
83
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:18
Fresh:15
Rotten:3
Average Rating:7.2/10
Consensus: Director Stanley Nelson avoids editorializing and sensationalizing in Jonestown, letting the CIA photos and film speak for themselves, and giving a voice to the surviving victims.
Theatrical Release:Oct 20, 2006 Limited
Synopsis: With previously unseen footage and interviews with former members of the Peoples Church, this documentary explores the events leading up to the Jonestown Massacre in 1978. A cult which developed a... [More]
Director: Stanley Nelson
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Reviews for Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple
1 - 18 (sorted by date)
Top CriticStanley Nelson revisits the 1978 mass suicide of Jim Jones and his flock in Guyana, savoring the horror but offering no new insights.
04/01/07
Top CriticA somber, solid documentary [parading] the whole bleak tale before us again, complete with those disturbing scenes of hundreds of corpses in their tees and shorts and flip-flops strewn about facedown in the mud of Jonestown, Guyana.
02/01/07
Top CriticThe last half hour of Jonestown is almost unwatchable. Video footage of the assault on the congressman's delegation gives way to audio of Jones exhorting people to 'die with a degree of dignity' as children shriek in the background.
01/12/07
Top CriticJonestown is not an easy movie to watch. But it's a solid presentation of an important chapter in American and religious history. Haunting is the only word that truly fits.
12/08/06
Top Critic... riveting documentary ...
11/30/06
Top CriticJonestown is a thoroughly conventional documentary...But this familiar format also emphasizes the movie's universality.
11/24/06
Top CriticOne of the year's most important documentaries, a real must-see.
11/03/06
Top CriticThis calm and thorough film has just the right attitude and tone to deal with a most incendiary story.
10/26/06
Top CriticDirector Stanley Nelson goes beyond those outlines... to give us a measure of Jones' appeal and surprising power.
10/25/06
Top Critic...Collects declassified CIA photos, film and audiotapes made by Jones' followers to form an astonishingly complete picture of what happened.
10/20/06
Top CriticJones was a charlatan who faked healings, demanded sexual favors of members and committed all sorts of criminal acts.
10/20/06
Top CriticWith such a wealth of documented footage and firsthand testimony, it is unconscionable that Nelson should leave us with more questions dangling than answered.
10/19/06
Top CriticThis film paints a portrait of Mr. Jones, who died with his flock in Guyana, as a man with two faces.
10/19/06
Top CriticWhen it comes to how those followers turned into a zombie Kool-Aid death cult, Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple leaves you with more questions than you went in with.
10/18/06
Top CriticEnding with mass suicide in deepest Guyana, the story of Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple is both the death rattle of '60s utopianism and -- predicated on the desire to found a New Jerusalem in the wilderness -- a very American saga.
10/17/06
Top CriticAn unforgettable historical portrait.
07/10/06
Top CriticAn unflashy, straightforward account of Jim Jones and his great social experiment -- which notoriously culminated in the largest mass murder/suicide in modern memory.
05/06/06
Top Critic1 - 18 (sorted by date)
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