A Sidewalk Astronomer

As we learn, delightfully so, in Jeffrey Fox Jacobs' documentary A Sidewalk Astronomer, the Peking-born Dobson promotes the building and use of small, inexpensive telescopes to study the wonders of the sky.

A documentary that knows to sit back and listen as [Dobson] expounds on a variety of subjects.

Entertaining, painlessly educational documentary.

An amateur in the best sense of the word, Dobson is an engaging ambassador for a life of the mind lived firmly in the real world.

An unenlightening recitation of lay science and salad bar spirituality that could only resonate with those audiences who last year actually flocked to a movie called "What the Bleep Do We Know!?"

Some of his theories seem cockamamie compared with current intellectual norms, though, so it's too bad the filmmakers don't give him time to make a coherent case.

An entirely unconventional, hypnotic, meandering film.