Okay, this isn’t really a photo, but still it’s pretty cool. Crazy 4 Cult is an art show in LA, hosted by Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier. This cool poster was specially designed for this event; it’s full of cult movie characters and it’s one of those posters you can send hours looking at, yet still discovering new things. Now this isn’t even the full poster, just a snapshot. For the full version, head on over to /Film, it’s definitely worth a look. How many characters can you recognize?

I’ve been excited for The Dark Knight for months. Ever since the first Joker cards appeared at Comic-Con last year, I’ve wanted to see this movie. I loved Batman Begins and I just knew Christopher Nolan had it in him to make an even better movie. With all the origin story out of the way, he could focus on some more interesting plot lines and villains, like of course the Joker.

I’m not going to write a full review of this movie. By now you’ve already decided if you want to see The Dark Knight or not, and there are tons of reviews floating around the internet already. Instead I want to share my thoughts on a couple of things, some spoilerish, some not, some not even about the movie itself, but the circumstances in which I saw it. Don’t worry I’ll announce spoiler territory in a big and obvious manner.

Booking Tickets

Here in the UK The Dark Knight came out last Thursday and I had tickets for the IMAX on Friday afternoon. If you tried to book tickets last week, you would have noticed the next four weeks at the Imax are practically sold out. So how did I get such early tickets? I wasn’t lucky or extra alert or anything. Remember my great adventure with The Dark Knight ARG? The plan was to meet-up with all the people participating and see the movie at the IMAX together. A Facebook group was formed and one of the guys called the IMAX to see when the tickets would be released and if it was possible to book for 40/50 people. At the time they said we could, but somehow a day before the ticket release date, they pulled out, claiming they couldn’t do such a large booking. Bullshit, if you ask me. But anyhow, I got a nice reminder on the day itself that the tickets were released. Even then I didn’t book straight away, only to discover two days later that a lot of the tickets for the first four days were already gone. Eek!

Imax Experience

I managed to get tickets for the Friday showing in row L, seats 24 and 25 (check the floor plan here). I had never been to the Imax before, so I thought those seats would be too high up and you would look down on the screen. But they were perfect! We were bang in the middle, staring exactly at the center of the screen. And that wasn’t the only good part of the Imax. Back in January I wrote a post about 10 problems with today’s cinemas: bad projection quality, bad sound, too small relative screen size, just to name a few of the big problems. The Imax actually solves them all. You pay slightly more for a ticket than your average cinema, but it’s completely worth it. The quality you get in return is just so much better. From now on I want to see all the big movies in an IMAX theatre!

Then there’s of course the extra bonus of seeing the IMAX version of The Dark Knight, cause in total 28 minutes of the movie were filmed with IMAX cameras. So… what does that mean? Without getting into too technical terms, parts of the movie were filmed on a larger film, which obviously means a higher resolution and a bigger aspect ratio, but more importantly it actually results in a much better image quality, giving a clearer, crisper image. Those scenes that were shot with IMAX cameras are just plain gorgeous. Because of the different aspect ratio, you did notice when it switched from one to the other. The normal standard film has a letterbox size (2.40:1), while the IMAX scenes used the full screen (1.33:1). At the start of the film, it was a bit obvious; every single aerial view of Gotham City was IMAX, the standard plot and dialogue was letterbox. Later on in the movie though you barely noticed it. Most action sequences were filmed completely in IMAX and you really had the feeling it made a great difference.

Oscar Worthy?

You may have heard a lot of speculation on whether or not The Dark Knight should be nominated for any Oscars. The main buzz is about Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker (for Best Supporting Actor), but there are also some that find the movie itself should be nominated for Best Movie. You know my thoughts on the Oscars; genre movies never do well there and the voters are highly unappreciative of outstanding performances in genre movies, dismissing them almost always (I think Lord of The Rings is the last one that was nominated). Is The Dark Knight worthy of an Oscar? In my humble opinion, yes. But I don’t think it’s likely that it will get a Best Movie nomination; it was good, but I don’t think it will make such an impact (I’d like to be proven wrong though). Nominations for Cinematography, Visual Effects, Score, Make-Up (definitely) are way more likely.

And then we’ve got Heath Ledger. His performance as the Joker is exactly what Oscar voters like; it’s a real role you can disappear into and show that you’re “acting”. Think of Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man or Javier Bardem in last year’s No Country For Old Men; those are roles where you can show off your acting chops and become a completely different person. I think the Academy will love Ledger’s Joker and chances are high he’ll get a nomination. Did Ledger’s death have anything to do with it? I’m not sure, I think in part. I think a lot of people who would have previously dismissed this movie, now gave it a chance because it’s Heath Ledger’s last film, and they discovered it was actually good. Would The Dark Knight have been viewed so many times, if Ledger hadn’t died? It’s a ‘What if’ scenario, we’ll never know the answer to.

After the image: beware spoilers!

Argh, here be SPOILERS!

Random Thoughts

Okay, did anyone else think that the scenario with the two boats and two bombs would end differently? I seriously thought that the “normal people” boat would decide to blow up the convicts boat, only to discover pushing the big red button blows their own ship up. After the Joker’s Dent/Rachel mix-trick, it felt as if it would veer that way. It would have fitted with the dark tone of the whole movie, right?

Is Dent dead or not? Yes, there was a memorial service like speech, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he is dead. Three possibilities: a) it was a memorial service and Dent is dead, b) that wasn’t a memorial service, but something else, only to make the viewer believe Dent is dead (while he isn’t), and c) that was a memorial service, but Gordon (and Batman) want the people of Gotham City to believe Dent is dead. I think it’s the last option with Dent in somewhere in a cell in Arkham Asylum.

Was the name of ‘Coleman Reese’ chosen for a specific “deeper” meaning? Someone on a message board pointed out that “Mr Reese” is pronounced “misterees” as in “mysteries”. Hmm, a prelude to the Riddler? Or just coincidence?

Next Movie?

As I said in the previous paragraph, I think Dent is alive and I think he’ll be the main villain for the next movie. But seeing how Christopher Nolan rolls (he likes twos), there’ll also be another villain, but who? Following the line of thought from above, my first guess would be The Riddler. The character of Reese seems to be set up here with the potential of a fuller story. Personally I’d love to see the Riddler, but preferably someone else (not Reese, and not that actor). And just imagine what Nolan’s Riddler would be like… 

So people: have you seen The Dark Knight already? And if so, any random thoughts or musings about future movies you want to share with us?

A lot of trailers came out last week during Comic-Con, but almost none of them are available yet in a non-crappy-YouTube version. So don’t expect to find those here; I won’t link to that type of stuff. I mean: don’t you want to see a cool trailer as best as possible? Anyhow I’ve got a whole bunch of other trailers for you to enjoy:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
This looks like an amazing movie. Adapted from a short story from F. Scott Fitzgerald, it stars Brad Pitt as a man who ages backwards, starting his life as an old man and slowly aging back becoming a child. It looks beautiful and weird and magnificent all at the same time. [Trailer]

Bottle Shock
I hadn’t heard about this Sundance movie before, but it’s got a great cast: Chris Pine, Alan Rickman, Bill Pullman, Rachael Taylor, Eliza Dushku and Freddy Rodriguez. It’s about a small Californian vineyard who in the early seventies tries to compete with the snobby French wines. [Trailer] 

Transporter 3
I still haven’t seen the first two Transporters, but this looks like fun! Again it stars Jason Statham as Frank Martin, a guy specialized in moving “goods”. Expect a lot of fast paced action and bullet flying. [Trailer]

Death Race
Another Jason Statham movie. This time he plays a convict who is forced to compete in a deadly car race. I think the trailer gives too much away (although it was expected that it would be a predictable action movie). [Trailer]

Miracle at St. Anna
You know I’m not the war movie type; lots of drama, lots of dying, not my thing. But this movie looks unique enough to try out. Directed by Spike Lee, it’s about a group of black American soldiers who get trapped behind enemy lines in a Tuscan village during WWII. [Trailer]

Punisher: War Zone
Two trailers, two visions. The teaser is very mild; lots of people pointing and shooting guns at each other, but that’s it’s. The Red Band trailer is as gory as they come; heads exploding, impalement, lots and lots of blood. Question is: which vision will the movie take on? [Teaser] [Red Band Trailer]

RocknRolla
I don’t care that much for Guy Ritchie’s movies; even though I’ve never fully seen one of his movies, I just don’t have the patience to sit through something I know I won’t like anyway. RocknRolla seems more of the same. It’s about a couple of tough guys that get in a bad situation, who then have to find money to get out of that bad situation. Oh yeah, and there’s always some robbery of something valuable. [Trailer]

The Spirit
I want to like this movie, but this just didn’t look impressive at all. It’s written and directed by Frank Miller, who also wrote Sin City and 300, but I think he should have stuck to just the writing. At the moment it all seems a bit artsy and awkward and some of the characters seem off. I mean, I love Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson, but here they both looked cheesy. And what’s with those sideburns?! [Trailer]

Mirrors
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to watch Kiefer Sutherland again and not think ‘Jack Bauer’. Here he plays a security guard who has to deal with a mysterious evil force that’s coming through mirrors. Ooh, spooky. I haven’t actually seen the Red Band trailer; Cristiano saw it and said it was revolting, so I haven’t had the nerve to watch it. [Teaser] [Red Band Trailer]

Bolt
This Disney animation looks okay, but it will never be the movie it was supposed to be. Chris Sanders (from the brilliant Lilo & Stitch) wrote and created the plot of this movie (a dog who stars as a superhero in a TV show and thinks it’s real), but got thrown off the project. His version would have had a one-eyed cat and a radio-active rabbit! The basis remains the same, but the two side characters have been replaced by a “standard” cat and a cute hamster. [Trailer]

The Tale of Despereaux
Despereaux is a mouse that’s brave instead of frightened of all the usual stuff: knives, mousetraps and even cats. This animation looks kind of sweet, but would it ever have been made if Ratatouille wasn’t a success? Plus it’s a clear case of “let’s cast famous people with recognizable voices that don’t fit the character whatsoever”: Matthew Broderick, Dustin Hoffman, Christoper Lloyd, Sigourney Weaver, Kevin Kline, William H. Macy, Emma Watson, the list goes on and on. [Trailer]

The Princess and The Frog
I love the old school Disney 2D musical animations and I applaud Disney for attempting to bring it back. But this trailer? I’m not really impressed by it yet. [Trailer]

Disaster Movie
Why oh why do they keep making these type of movie? And who keeps on going to the cinema to watch this crap? [Trailer]

Visioneers
I’m not sure what to make of this movie; I think it’s supposed to be a comedy, but it’s got a weird depressing vibe going on. The trailer goes on for more than 3 minutes and leaves you kind of uninterested. [Trailer]

Not Quite Hollywood
Not Quite What I Expected. This is a documentary about the Ozploitation movies, the weird violence-sex-horror exploitation movies that were made in Australia in the 70s and 80s. [Trailer]

Quantum of Solace
I loved Casino Royale and Daniel Craig as James Bond. This trailer promises more of the same type of action, grittiness and romance. I’m still not convinced by the title though; I keep imagining ‘James Bond and The Quantum of Solace’, feels very Harry Potterish or Indy-ish. [Trailer]

Episode 74: “He big in nothing, important in good elephant”

I discovered this a couple of years ago, but it remains hilarious. A guy bought a dvd of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, while in China and it wasn’t completely what he expected. It contained English subtitles, but they were translations of the Chinese interpretation… and sometimes they were way, way off:

If you don’t want to watch the entire thing, the guy who discovered it has got a blog post up with the most hilarious translations.

I’m not the type of movie geek that’s desperate to collect autographs of all my favourite actors, but I do like to get a glimpse of them once in a while. So yesterday I made my way to Leicester Square for The Dark Knight premiere, not realizing the freneticness and busyness I was getting myself into. People are pushy! I got squashed and crushed by all these fans wanting their favourite star to see them. Okay, okay, I was one of those fans, but I try to respect other people’s personal space and not bug the person in front of me. Plus I wasn’t yelling hysterically for them to come over, while in the midst of an interview.

Anyhow I did get to see some stuff and Cristiano managed to make some beautiful photos. Here are some great shots of fans who were dressed up as Batman characters (I think I actually met the two in the right photo during the Dark Knight ARG):

After standing there for almost an hour the fun finally started; accompanied with flames and ominous music, the Tumbler Batmobile was brought out:

And then all the actors arrived… Michael Caine:

… Aaron Eckhart:

… Maggie Gyllenhaal (these photos are just gorgeous):

And of course… Christian Bale:

Unsurprisingly most people didn’t recognize Christopher Nolan, director of The Dark Knight, Batman Begins, The Prestige and Memento (tsss, and they call themselves fans):

There were also other non-Dark Knight actors, like Forest Whitaker (didn’t manage to get a photo of him), Peter Sarsgaard (Maggie Gyllenhaal’s fiancee) and John Simm:

After that we had been standing for almost two hours and our legs were killing us. It didn’t look like anybody else would show, so we struggled our way out of the crowd. Check out all the photos on Cristiano’s Flickr page, there are a lot more up there.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve seen a huge bunch of older (as in not in cinemas) movies and I’ve been trying to figure out how to blog about them. I don’t really want to do my standard type of review, cause most people have seen those movies. I just want to let you all know what I thought about them. So I’m doing a long post with short pieces about each movie I’ve seen, thus Mini Movie Reviews.

Requiem For A Dream

This movie kind of stumped me at first; I wasn’t sure how to describe it. I tend to like movies I enjoy (don’t we all?), but Requiem For A Dream isn’t enjoyable at all. It’s a great movie, but it’s as if it chews you up and then spits you out, leaving you feeling like utter crap. And yet still you can appreciate the film, cause it’s beautiful in it’s own twisted way. I loved the music before I watched Requiem, but now I’m not sure I can even listen to it, without feeling a little bit disturbed. Don’t watch this movie if you’re feeling depressed, cause it’s only going to make you feel even worse. 

2001: A Space Odyssey

By saying this I might just be confirming I’m a product of my generation, but for me the pacing of 2001: A Space Odyssey feels way, way too slooow. Some scenes just drag on way too long with nothing substantial happening. And then that ending?! this doesn’t happen to me often and maybe I’ve got some more reading to do, but I didn’t get it. I do see why people think so highly of this movie, but (and please don’t kick me for saying this) for me it feels a bit outdated. Not the story, but the look and feel of it, and that just doesn’t help for me to get into the movie.

Atonement

I now understand all the Oscar talk surrounding Atonement last February; it is a good movie, if you can keep your eyes open and watch the entire thing. I had to rewatch the first half an hour 4 times, because I kept getting distracted and lost track of the story. Especially at the beginning the movie jumps back and forth a couple of times to repeat events from multiple view points. I only don’t get all the excitement about Keira Knightley’s green dress. It’s a pretty dress, I’ll give you that, but I don’t see what’s so special and amazing about it.

Little Miss Sunshine

I was disappointed by Little Miss Sunshine, but then I was expecting quite a bit from this movie. I somehow thought it would be more funnier and less serious than it actually was. I thought it was a feel-good movie and instead you just get one bad event after another. I liked the ending, but still wasn’t completely what I expected. 

Southland Tales

What a mess of a movie! It’s from the same director/writer of Donnie Darko, but fails completely where Donnie Darko didn’t. Southland Tales has too many plot lines and too many characters for you to fully invest and care about them. You don’t give a shit about what happens to them, but that doesn’t really matter: at most times you don’t even know what or why things are happening to them. Too many things are going on in this movie and it doesn’t take time to explain itself properly (and that with a running time of 145 minutes). Apparently there’s a comic book prequel which in fact is half of the story and clears everything up, but that just sounds like too much homework for a simple movie like this.

Michael Clayton

You could sum up the events from this movie in a few short sentences (I won’t, cause I’m not in a spoilery mood), even though the film is 2 hours long. Again like Atonement, I understand why it’s an ‘Oscar‘ film, but it’s just not my type of movie. It’s all about the grey areas of life and the decisions people have to make. Expect a lot of talking, not a lot of action.

Unknown

I had never heard of Unknown before, but it’s got Jim Caviezel, Greg Kinnear, Joe Pantoliano and Bridget Moynahan. And it’s an interesting little movie. Five men wake up in a locked warehouse, all with no memory who they are and why they’re there. Some of them are tied up and it seems a fight just went down. The five are forced to figure out who among them are ‘bad guys’ and who are ‘good guys’. It’s a cute idea, and while not without it’s faults, it was a nice little surprise.

Typically I would never go to the cinema for the likes of a movie called Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging. But (as my previous posts can tell you) my sister was in town and she read and adored the books this movie’s based on. I managed to get some free tickets exactly when she was here, so there I was in a cinema full of teenagers (my sister’s 19), wondering who Angus was, what he’s going to do with thongs and who he’s gonna snog. Turns out Angus is the cat. 

Georgia Nicolson is a 14 year old girl living in Eastborne. Just like every other 14 year old girl, she thinks she’s not pretty enough, thinks her parents don’t understand her and doesn’t understand boys. She’s not the most popular girl at school, but has a close group of three friends (they call themselves the Ace gang). When two new boys start at their school, Georgia and her best friend Jaz desperately want these two sex gods to like them (their words, not mine). What follows is a lot of scheming, blundering and snogging.

Release your inner 14 year old! I think anybody who ever was a 14 year old girl can somehow recognize themselves in this movie. I mean, even I, who never was that much of a girly girl and barely even dared to talk to boys (the ones I liked, that is) in high school, felt myself grinning and cringing at the situations Georgia got herself into. In the first quarter of an hour alone she shaves off half an eyebrow (which of course magically grows back) and that’s only the beginning of her (mis)adventures. It’s been resembled to Clueless and Mean Girls, which is a good comparison, but to me it looks most like a teenage Bridget Jones’ Diary. 

Georgia is an unlikely heroine, but I think she’s a perfect role model for young girls to look up to. She’s not some blonde superskinny supermodel teenager, but an actual normal girl; not drop dead gorgeous, but beautiful in her own way. The plot is a bit predictable and cheesy, but what did you expect from this type of movie. Just like the book (according to my sister) the movie is full of slang, like nunga-nungas (breasts), I had never heard before (not sure if this is slang specifically from the book, or just slang from the UK I haven’t come across yet). 

The best friend Jaz is great; at times infuriatingly oblivious to things going on around her, she messes up Georgia’s plans quite often. There’s a great scene where while talking to one of the “sex gods” for the first time, she puts on a Keira Knightley voice, trying to be mature and sophisticated. The “sex gods” are not what I would call sex gods, although if I was that age, chances are I would have been crushing on them.

And then there’s Angus. And Libby. Libby is Georgia’s 5 year old sister, who thinks she’s a cat and loves dressing Angus up. Angus alone is already as cute as can be, but dressed up?! Even more adorable. There’s one scene where Angus is dressed up in something ridiculous (like a pirate or princess) and Libby is decorating him with cooked pasta. This is all just going on in the background while Georgia and her mother are discussing something. It might sound weird, but it’s so sweet on screen.

Teenage girls are going to love this movie, grown-up girls could love this movie. Guys, avoid this at all costs; there’s a sliver of a chance you might enjoy this, but it’s more likely you’ll find it boring and annoying as hell. Girls, do your boyfriends (and yourself) a favour and don’t drag him to this movie. Instead, take a bunch of good girlfriends, who you know you can giggle and laugh with. Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging is a perfect girls night out or dvd sleepover movie; it’s cheesy and predictable as hell, but that’s not what it’s about, right?

I sometimes manage to get free tickets to pre-release screenings, but rarely get to share this with my friends. With Wall•E though I was able to get about 20 tickets and with a lot of coordination via email and Twitter, I got a great repsonse of all the people willing to go. So last Saturday morning a huge group of geeks gathered together at the Vue cinema in Shepherd’s Bush to watch the wonder that is Wall•E.

Wall•E is a small waste allocation robot, left behind on Earth to clean up the mess humans made. It’s been a couple of hundred years, since the humans left, and he’s the only one of his kind still working. Wall•E fills his lonely days with compressing trash, building large towers of processed waste, while collecting little treasures, like christmas lights and Rubik’s cubes. His whole life changes when Eve, a shiny white robot, arrives on Earth with a important classified mission.

I don’t want to give any more than that away of the plot, cause I think the less you know, the more you’ll enjoy it. I for one loved Wall•E! It’s definitely my favourite Pixar film now and I guess it may even be my favourite film of this year. So many things just work and it’s just this little perfect gem of a movie. As with most other Pixar movies, Wall•E is a true family movie, that everybody any age will enjoy. And it’s timeless. In 20 years time, people will still look back at this film and laugh at the same moments. While some may say that is true for previous Pixar animations, I truly think Wall•E will be the one to go down in history as a classic.

You may have heard there is no dialogue in Wall•E and that is only partly true. There is some dialogue, but none from our two main characters Wall•E and Eve. They largely communicate through beeps and body movements, with the occasional robotic “Wall•E” or “Evah” thrown into it. Any other studio might have messed this completely up, but in Pixar’s competent hands it works. The noises the robots make convey their meanings perfectly; every beep, rattle and ting feels like a sentence, as if they’re just talking some language you don’t understand, but do comprehend. It shouldn’t be a surprise though. Pixar didn’t just get any sound effects editor, they got the best in the business: Ben Burtt, who was also responsible for the sound effects in all the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies. Besides that, Wall•E and Eve are animated brilliantly, expressing their emotions through movement. Anger, shock, fright, happiness: it’s all conveyed through wonderfully choreographed motions. This and the sound effects together help describe a relationship that should be recognized across language barriers.

I think that relationship is one of the main reasons I like Wall•E more than other Pixar movies. Wall•E is first and foremost a love story, and the romantic in me just resonates better with this movie than the previous ones. There’s more to the movie than only the love plot though and to some that may be Wall•E’s only pitfalls. I can’t go in to it, cause I don’t want to spoil it for you, but for me it fitted perfectly as part of the story (cut it away and the movie just wouldn’t have worked). 

I already said a bit about Wall•E’s and Eve’s animation, but I should also highlight their designs. Wall•E does look a bit like Johnny 5 from Short Circuit, but it doesn’t feel as if they were ripping that off. It seems to me that if you want a robot that is similar to the human form (that doesn’t have legs), you’ll quickly come down to a comparable design. And Wall•E feels much more functional; all his parts are integral to do his work. Eve on the other hand does look as if she’s been designed by Apple; she slick, white, shiny, round and everything (like her arms) clicks away to form one smooth object.

If I haven’t made it clear already, Wall•E is visually stunning. Besides the design and animation of our two main characters, the rest of the world is also as amazing. Earth is just how you imagined it could be if trash was overflowing so much (although I hadn’t expected the towers of processed trash) and it serves as a great desolate backdrop to our lonely protagonist. Other scenes are jaw-droppingly beautiful and I can only imagine the amount of work that must have gone into creating them. Even if the story and characters hadn’t been this great, I still would have recommended this movie for the visuals alone.

Wall•E may be the most perfect movie of this year and I don’t think anybody could dislike this movie. If you could only see one movie in the cinemas this summer, go see Wall•E (although The Dark Knight might give it a good run for it’s money). I have a feeling this will remain one of Pixar’s greatest movies and it’ll go down in cinematic history.

Episode 67: “We deserve fans, man”

I hate trailers that give too much away and if possible, would rather forgo them completely. That’s why I love these type of promotional videos for movies; they show the spirit of the movie without spoiling anything (the Wall-E and the vacuum cleaner/magnet/etc set is another good example). The video shows Hellboy (the titular character of the upcoming movie) and Chuck (from the tv show Chuck) together playing a video game:

I love how they combine these two worlds! There’s also a second one:

About a week ago Sizemore twittered he was organizing another bloggers screening, this time for the Brazilian movie City of Men. I was interested, but I hadn’t actually seen the critically acclaimed sort-of-prequel to it, City of God. Although I had heard a lot of good things about it, I didn’t feel it was my type of movie and had avoided watching it. Now with this screening of it’s sequel coming up, I finally sat down and took some time to give it a go. And I am so glad I did.

City of God is a Brazilian drama directed by Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund. It’s an adaption of the novel of the same name (by Paulo Lins), which in turn is based on a true story. The Cidade de Deus is a slummy lower class neighbourhood, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, teeming with drug dealers and gang members. Rocket is a teenager who lives in Cidade de Deus in the seventies and the movie opens with him caught in the middle between a gang and police shoot-out. It then jumps back to ten years earlier (the sixties) and Rocket tells us how he got into that situation, which includes tales about his family, friends and neighbours.

I hadn’t expected to like this movie; I thought it would be all dramatic and serious because it’s about the slums and drugdealing. I’m not saying it isn’t (cause it is), but Meirelles and Lund manage to embed an unexpected lightheartedness in how the movie is told. There’s a weird light black comedy vibe going on, making you laugh one moment and shiver in shock the next.

The movie is about the slums and drugdealing, but most of all it’s about kids growing up. Yes, they have to deal with guns and drugs and death, but they also have to deal with the standard stuff: figuring out what to do with their lives, overcoming their insecurities and how to get that first crush to finally kiss them. But they’re doing this all while trying to survive in this gang ruled world, full of both ruthlessness and humanity.

The look and feel of this movie is superb. Initially, the story flashes back in one big jump of ten years, but after that Rocket gives little glimpses of stories he will tell. For instance, at one point he introduces a character briefly, who’s not that relevant to that scene, only to say he’ll came back to that story later. It gives a great dynamic to the film, eluding to future events and giving the viewer something to wonder about. The cinematography is beautiful; it’s gritty and harsh, but that all contributes to the bleak realism of the movie. There are a couple of wonderful camera pans and freezes, highlighting key moments.

City of God is a film you have to have seen. Not everybody may think this film will be for them, but even then I recommend giving it a try, you may be surprised. There’s a very good reason why this film is so high in a lot of “Best-Of” lists and I imagine it’s going to stay in those lists for a very long time.