Reviews of the Liz Garbus documentary Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech are starting to trickle in. From Popmatters.

Here the film deploys a strategy it repeats throughout, which is to bring in a right-wing representative or two in order to seem even-handed. (Another strategy, inserting choice bits of popular cultural illustrations, likeMr. Smith Goes to Washington, the animated Animal Farm, and The Big Lebowski, is more distracting than pointed.) David Horowitz argues against Churchill and other liberal professors who reportedly dominate university campuses, saying he means to “protect conservative students” from exposure to left-wing radicalism. But the case against Churchill quickly veered into hysteria (“Can he be tried for either sedition or treason?” asks Bill O’Reilly), and his dismissal, based on a committee investigation that found him “professionally disqualified” rather than liable for this single utterance, looks especially shady, as the school was able to preserve its apparent support of free speech but eliminate the free speaker who brought such grief.

And, from the New York Times.

Ms. Garbus’s premise is that the guarantees of the First Amendment have been under siege since 9/11. Wars, the film notes, have always made the government skittish. She begins with the case of Ward Churchill, a University of Colorado professor who found himself facing an inquiry after his strong remarks that the United States brought the Sept. 11 attacks on itself. (In a film in which the phrase “free speech” is heard a lot, Mr. Churchill gives the best assessment of it: “If it comes at a price, it’s not free.”)