Occupation: Dreamland Reviews
Filmcritic.com
Aside from the year it was made, there's nothing that Dreamland adds to a very, very full genre
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Top CriticThe occupation may have settled into grim, bloody drudgery. But if we're going to learn anything about the place and our involvement there, films about it can't join suit.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Orlando Weekly
More sympathetic and interesting than the stars of Gunner Palace, these fellas are both a microcosm of society and individuals in their own right.
Arizona Daily Star
Could be the poster film for the protest-the-war, support-the-troops mentality.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Deseret News, Salt Lake City
It's frustrating to see these filmmakers continually lobbing softball questions at their subjects.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Salt Lake Tribune
If you saw Gunner Palace, there's not much fresh or insightful here.
| Original Score: 2.5/4
St. Paul Pioneer Press
Lets the soldiers speak for themselves in a series of interviews that reveal wildly divergent political stands, although pretty much all the soldiers voice doubts about why, exactly, they are there.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Quad City Times (Davenport, IA)
Regardless of your views on the war, this documentary will create stirring portraits that you'll long remember.
Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4
Austin Chronicle
The thoughts and experiences captured in this film reveal much that we haven't seen in all the action-oriented news footage and short-term embedded correspondence from the war.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
TheMovieChicks.com
The enlisted men speak frankly of their feelings about the job that they signed on to do and carry out their missions even though they don't have the big picture information.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
One Guy's Opinion
Serves a useful public service; more important, it's an engrossing film in its own right.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
It offers a look at the kind of Americans not often put on movie screens.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
A compelling mosaic of voices, some discouraged, some enthusiastic, all aware that there's a job to be done and that they must do it to the best of their abilities.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
L.A. Weekly
Without resorting to the steroid-pumped aggro flash of Gunner Palace, Occupation: Dreamland reinforces the impression that the American rodeo in Iraq was always a murderously pointless self-security op.
Cinema Signals
It vividly conveys a threacherous war in much the same way as a recent predecessor, "Gunnar Palace" which, through a more artful presentation is the better for it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Boston Herald
Watching Occupation: Dreamland, which was directed by Ian Olds and Garrett Scott, anyone old enough to remember news footage from Vietnam will experience a powerful, dismaying sense of deja vu.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
I think Gunner Palace was in some sense a fairer film.
A grunt's-eye view of the current conflict that needs to be seen, regardless of a viewer's political persuasion.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Occupation: Dreamland presents a compelling study of composure and decency in the midst of overwhelming pointlessness.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Straightforward and immensely powerful, the movie offers a blunt assessment of the war from soldiers currently fighting it, and their perspective is not pretty.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
