Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Purely Joyful Movie!

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

Blistering performances.

You might think the movie is about wine but it's not. It's about the transformation of China and it uses the dusty old traditional wineries of France to highlight just what is going on. The Chinese became obsessed with fine vintage wines, in particular the Rothchild Lafite Bordeaux wines. You don't have to be a wine lover to enjoy the movie. The one quote I will always remember, that the Chinese have endured the cultural revolution which is like going to hell and coming back alive. They have endured living like peasants for decades and now that they are not, they want to live it up like a sir. The picture of China that is presented in the film is one that is super modern, trendy, and really fast paced. Money is everywhere. But this is a double edged sword, as you will find out in the movie. They could have swapped Lafite for BMW's or iPhones, but the Lafite is an excellent symbol of fine old stuffy European tradition coming head on to the Chinese economic juggernaut. This movies picks a single story to convey the seismic shift in economic pull that has happened in the last decade.

I'm a wine person. I have consumed, studied, taught and debated the topic for almost 30 years now. I love the stuff. But... watching this film reminded me how wound up we wine-people are in our own world. Although I found the documentary interesting and important to know, I also recognise that this film grossed less than US$10,000- at the box office. Now, I don't know what the budget was to make this film, but who in their right mind thought that this would be a good idea for a theatrical release? I'm guessing that enough people got together and convinced themselves that this would work. And secured enough funding from (almost surely) a wealthy wine-lover. No rational film producer would ever have looked at the script and gone 'Yeah, images of French châteaux, and celebrities in the wine field will be a huge hit! Let's get Rusty to narrate and we've got it made!!!' If you're just starting to develop an interest in wine, this should be mandatory watching. Enthusiasts already know most of the content, and will probably bemoan the lack of further detail. But if wine isn't your thing, you'll really wish you'd spent the 75 minutes on another film.

This is a documentary for wine lovers. Beer drinkers need not apply.The film is tastefully done, great photography, beautiful soundtrack. Needs to be watched with a glass of red wine in hand, as it really whets your appetite.Should it go deeper into the subject? Should it explain that the great French Wine Blight did NOT make the 1855 classification obsolete, because the vines were grafted to Chilean roots (resistant to the phylloxera) imported hastily in thousands, to save them (not only in France, but in other parts of Europe too)?Maybe. That would have made for a slightly longer film, perhaps more thrilling (Will the vines be completely lost? Who could save them? Wait! Up in the sky: it's a bird... it's a plane... No, it's super-vine! Actually, it was "la super viña", from Chile).But it would have been a different film, missing the elegant balance of this one.Perhaps this film's success will spur a sequel: "Red Obsession 2 - Attack of the insects from Hell". It will need a different soundtrack (by Hans Zimmer?) and a different narrator; Russell Crowe is too mellow for that!

This is an Australian-produced doco, looking at the history of wines from Bordeaux.It is 75 minutes long.After 75 minutes, I was aware that they have been making wines in Bordeaux since the Romans brought the vines; that Napoleon III had the wines graded in 1855 and the grades given remain to this day; that conditions come together for a great vintage about every 20 years; that wine is bought as an investment; that Americans have stopped buying it but the Chinese now do; that some French are sniffily xenophobic about dealing with the Chinese and that if the Chinese ever stop buying, the market may collapse.Those facts took 75 minutes to explain. 75 very long minutes.Some nice aerial photography. And looking at beautifully designed and constructed French chateaux is always easy on the eye.The film had a nice, laconic commentary from Russell Crowe whose smoky, tobacco-enhanced voice fitted the subject well.But it was all just too superficial, too under-researched with not enough of interest to fill the film's time span. Some more history would have been welcome; the Great French Wine Blight of the late 1850s post-dated Napoleon III's gradings – didn't the blight make them obsolete? This question wasn't addressed but would seem fundamental to an evaluation of Bordeaux. Still, I'm sure had I gone to France's bucolic beauty spots to research such a film, I too would have been so distracted drinking the stuff I'd have forgotten the reason for the visit.