Once (***)

A certifiable diamond in the rough. Once is a sweet, genuinely likeable little film about two musicians falling in love and making music. It's short (only 89 minutes) and casts a lovely little spell over the audience. The music is great (bought the soundtrack off of iTunes the minute we got home from the theater) and the actors are charming. If I have any complaints with the film, it's that it is so low budget as to look downright ugly at times. I wish the filmmakers would have had a little more money to throw at the screen and clean up the visuals. That being said, this isn't a movie about visuals. It's about characters, music, and emotion. And on that level, it totally succeeds.