A fascinating subplot involves the slow but steady evolution of the female members' sense of their power.

Full Review | May 21, 2020

Kinda down-to-earth comments make Commune kinda intriguing.

Full Review | Mar 1, 2007

Commune channels a bygone era of drop-outs living an American dream on the Free Love frontier. This is the happy alternative to the apocalyptic California sub-cultures of Charles Manson and the Rev. Jim Jones.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 23, 2007

Watching Jonathan Berman's affectionate documentary, Commune, about the influential establishment in Siskiyou County, brought to mind the recent documentary Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 23, 2007

Commune gets at the central, seductive paradoxes inherent in so much counterculture belief and practice.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 22, 2007

Examines what life was like at an idealized, hippie oasis back in the Sixties. Not exactly groovy, or anybody's idea of nirvana, dude.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 28, 2006

An intriguing, entertaining and engaging documentary. My only criticism -- I simply wanted to know so much more.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 15, 2006

Fitfully interesting, but would have benefited from tighter focus and finer detail.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 9, 2006

It's good to hear people talking about openheartedness without irony.

Full Review | Nov 9, 2006

It's fascinating to see how the Black Bears got onto their current path, but we don't see enough of the journey.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Nov 3, 2006

If not a social history of the '60s, it's a close examination of a quintessential '60s phenomenon that speaks volumes about the attitudes and experiences that shaped the decade.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 3, 2006

Berman blends home movies of ranch life with interviews with former residents, their now-grown children and neighbors of the ranch.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 3, 2006

Jonathan Berman's documentary about California's famous Black Bear Ranch is a trip.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 3, 2006

Commune, a breezy, informal history of a long-running California commune begun in the summer of 1968 and still in existence, offers the fascinating spectacle of observing people then and now.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 2, 2006

Berman captures a way of life that has been curiously influential -- has been imitated, ripped off, ridiculed and demonized -- ever since.

Full Review | Nov 2, 2006

Celebrating the desire to immerse oneself in a collective, world-changing enterprise, Commune is unavoidably nostalgic.

Full Review | Oct 31, 2006

The documentary is loose-limbed and not at all artful--which is to say, it's scarcely bourgeois and just as the Black Bear Ranch people would like it.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 19, 2006

What is fascinating about Berman's Commune is how well it captures the passage of time and the life lessons learned from the commune experience.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 6, 2006

A keen vet docu-maker's eye and a chronicler's compassion lends pic real resonance.

Full Review | May 5, 2006

In its own quiet, revealing fashion, Berman's film explores the folly and faith that characterized much of Black Bear's early existence.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | May 5, 2006