as good as they say?

Yep. It's actually an extraordinary directors achievement. Very harrowing, yet emotionally fulfilling. It's winning the Oscar for Foreign Language Film.

It is. Definitely. It's so interesting, new, dense and intense. A real shock.

It's a breathtaking masterpiece, and from a first-time feature director, no less. Extraordinary acting, camerawork and sound design.

It needs to be seen, first, on a purely emotional level (like all great films), and to be dissected later for the brilliance of its mise-en-scene. A future Criterion release, I hope. And definitely an Oscar contender.

Without you, today's emotions would be the scurf of yesterday's.

It's an Oscar movie in one sense but very intimate and artistic (some might say claustrophobic). Oscar films tend to be feel-good productions.

I'll be pleasantly surprised if it wins the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

Too many film goers can't begin to connect with the idea of a film that attempts to give you the experience of the main character, rather than observing everything from a neutral POV. And while the Foreign Film Oscar will go to great films that are somewhat harrowing in subject matter (A Separation, Amour), there also seems to be a line that the voters aren't willing to cross (Incendies). When you add in the difficulty that the hand-held camera, single POV, low depth of field combination presents to the average movie goer (and the desire for the voters to reward a film with some commercial chances), I see Son of Saul as a longshot.

I hope I'm wrong.

Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.

Yes, the direction was great but I think the lead actor made it amazing.