City Of God

Year: 2002

Grade: B+

Country: Brazil

Director: Lund

Review

stylistically it’s a cross between tarantino and amores perros, thematically it’s along the lines of menace II society. roger ebert called it one of the best films you’ll ever see…i don’t know about that, but i do know that the academy was smoking some wacky shit when they gave “master and commander” the best cinematography award over this film. it probably also should have beaten return of the king for best editing, but that award was more for the entire trilogy than it was for that single film so that one was acceptable. it’s a very good looking film – not in the cinemascope sense, but in the sense that it perfectly captures a feeling and atmosphere. the film almost sweats at times because the cinematography is that good. it’s a very stylistic film, but it never trips over itself or comes off as being about style over substance. which brings me to the story…it’s great story that plays with time in an effective way, rather than doing it merely for the novelty of doing it. the first scene hooks you and then the narrator pulls you back several years to tell the story chronologically (more or less). you find out things as you need to know them and it works better than telling you things as they happen, hoping that you will remember them when you need to. one thing i didn’t like about the film was near the end when there’s sort of a surprise with a kid killing someone to avenge his father’s death. i don’t want to give it away, but there’s no way the audience could have known about the kid’s motives, so i felt it was a bit cheap of the film to use that a surprise. for me a good surprise is when i could have figured it out if i had really thought about it, but when the film doesn’t give you any chance to figure it out on your own then it’s less rewarding for me. it’s like watching an episode of scooby doo or something. really though it wasn’t that big of a scene or that big of a plot point by the end of the film so it didn’t weigh into my grade much at all.