Best movie ever!

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The acting in this movie is really good.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This film reflects its international pedigree. Canadian films are wonderful when viewed in their "language" and film syntax, kind of a cross between French & English & Australian films in caprice, intelligence, plot development, and subjects. American movie goers and film watchers (and Reviewers here) find something missing or too over-the-top in Canadian projects, wherever they're financed. "Snow Walker" was good but not "Hollywood." "Battle of the Brave" was good; not exactly Hollywood. "Map of the Human Heart;" very, very good in its own vernacular. Very good - and moving and thought-provoking, and so on ..."Map..." has a love scene that could have come from the mind & imagination of Spielberg. Though not long or overly explicit, it may be one of the most unique and remarkable and perfectly contextual in all of film. Beautiful. Watch and see, near, or in, the 3rd Act.Annie Galipeau is young here, and good, and presages her role in "Grey Owl" with Pierce Brosnan.Thanks MIRAMAX for putting money into risky, off-the-worn-sprocket-hole projects.

There is a special category of very bad film that usually originates from a director with a story, that is to say, they have no understanding of narrative and how to build and develop narrative, or simply how to make a story. This film is one of them in that it has absolutely no story to it at all. A series of scenes that evolve to nothing in the first thirty minutes do not make a story.It also lacks plot but that is because it has no story. Now a lack of story is not a problem per se, but to make the piece work one has to be very good in another way, typically stylistically, or with the construction viz. Godard, or Beckett.This film however is pretentious and superficial because it relies on the formulas of gesture and moment. With gesture the director takes a key moment and makes it a metaphor, or rather the pretense of a metaphor, for a deeper significance. It looks good but is empty of real meaning to the overall narrative because the narrative does not exist and so on to a infinite regress.In like manner the use of a moment – a key scene – is used to show some deeper though wholly ridiculous scene to make a magical moment in an otherwise idiotic film. This film has those two tactics in several scenes: the objects thrown on the principal; the hot air balloon scene; the bombing scene is the ultimate and there are two more.A special note has to be made about the variant grammar of the title: dropping the indefinite or defiant article before a noun does not make it memorable or special (a gesture again to draw attention to the title by not using the normal form but still be utterly ignorant about how grammar works) because it defaults to the indefinite article.In all, a vapid and adolescent waste of time and materials; the cost to the inhabitants of the region and to the environment for disturbing the region should be paid back somehow.

In "Map of the Human Heart", a down and out middle aged Eskimo man recounts his life story to an Arctic cartographer (Cusack, who has only a few minutes on screen) which constitutes the bulk of the film via flashback. His story begins with his puppy love relationship with a young half-breed girl in a hospital. From there the adorable child couple are torn apart only to have fate bring them together again as adults under the less than idyllic circumstances of WWII. The film meanders from the dramatic to the poignant to the romantic to the horrific and back to square one where it continues the story in present day. Beautifully filmed and well executed though a bit clumsy at times, "Map..." spackles up its many plot holes and provides a thoughtful fantasy camouflage for its lack of resolution in the end while serving up very pretty Kodak moments such as making love on a barrage balloon or dancing in the rafters high above an orchestra. "Map..." is sweet stuff for romantics and sentimentalists who can overlook it continuity and credibility issues in the interest of the human heart. (B)

I found this to be the kind of movie even a hardcore male ego could love. It touched on that immortal love that even the most macho of men could go for. This is a tear-jerker that is well worth watching with the one you love. Watch it on Valentine's Day...it will move you.