Roma (Alfonso Cuaron)

[Ezee E]

IMDB

[Henry Gale]

*waits impatiently to see this but realizes how lucky he still is to be able to do so in a week's time*

[Ivan Drago]

I get Tabu and Güeros vibes from the trailer. Can't wait for it, and crossing my fingers for a reasonable theatrical release.

[Ezee E]

Full thoughts to come tonight, I hope.

[Pop Trash]

I really hope Netflix gives this a wide-ish theatrical release since I've heard the cinematography is amazing. (I mean it's Cuaron, so that's a given)

[Ezee E]

I really hope Netflix gives this a wide-ish theatrical release since I've heard the cinematography is amazing. (I mean it's Cuaron, so that's a given)

It IS amazing. There's apparently a good amount of green screen in there that we just don't know about either. Lots of stuff happening in all parts of the screen, just like in Children of Men. It had a little art gallery of shots in Telluride too.

[Philip J. Fry]

It IS amazing. There's apparently a good amount of green screen in there that we just don't know about either. Lots of stuff happening in all parts of the screen, just like in Children of Men. It had a little art gallery of shots in Telluride too.

Pretty much any shot could be hanging on a wall. It is great.

[Peng]

Glad for a chance of its Thai press screening a day before Netflix release, because I would be tempted to stream it out of convenience otherwise. The images of course look gorgeous and pristine on big screen, but the real reason to see it that way is for the sophisticated sound design, working in concert with its remarkable long takes and pans to envelope us in Cleo's routines, actions, and environment. This may be the technical achievement of the year.

However, I get the nagging feeling that Cuaron may be too close to the subject here, so much that he is too busy crafting an exact replication of his devotion to a person and place, becoming a portrait of high reverence rather than nuance. Thus it's affecting in broad scope, but not shattering in its details as I had hoped. There are some powerful images and stretches, in which the stressful, everything-goes-wrong day of the birth is a standout. Overall though, I feel like I was being led through a museum hall of extraordinary history rather than having a full cinematic experience. Its beauty awed me, and its tribute of faith to this woman's life impressed and occasionally moved me, but I was never deeply engaged by the time it ended. 7.5/10

[Weems]

I was thoroughly bored through most of this. This might be even worse than Gravity.

[Rico]

It's too cold. So when we get to the scene that should absolutely shatter the viewer, I felt nothing. There was no connection there.

[Ezee E]

Was watching at home yesterday, and this doesn't play nearly as well with it's very slow-paced first hour.

[Pop Trash]

There's already a backlash a brewin' for Roma which is more boring and predictable than anything in the movie. Anyway, I wasn't fully on board for the first hour or so. I liked it but my mind started wandering away from the upstairs / downstairs dynamics... but the last hour is really great. I love how Cuaron will stage a scene in the common areas with everyone together, but his camera will eventually get bored of the bougey happenings and follow Cleo around instead. Is there anyone better at lateral pan shots than Cuaron right now?

[baby doll]

For me, this is a good film almost ruined by the camerawork, which I found intensely distracting. I kept trying to get involved with the story, but Cuarón does this irritating thing where he pans independently of figure movement, which repeatedly drew my attention back to the camera, and a lot of the time, I simply didn't know where I was supposed to be looking. And it's not as if he were doing this for some analytical Brechtian purpose; in the last half-hour, the movie turns into a full-bore melodrama, with the heroine going into labour in the middle of a Tiananmen-style crackdown on student protestors. Watching this just a few days after the new Yamada Yoji film (which is not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination) makes me all the more appreciative in retrospect for Yamada's unassuming mastery of blocking actors in long takes, which doesn't call attention to itself.

[transmogrifier]

Cuaron has almost built his entire career on drawing attention to the camera and reminding the audience how much work must have gone into any one particular shot. It's quite irritating a lot of the time.

[Dukefrukem]

Cuaron has almost built his entire career on drawing attention to the camera and reminding the audience how much work must have gone into any one particular shot. It's quite irritating a lot of the time.

Is this what you think about in real time?

[Dukefrukem]

Mini-MC announcement in my mini-review. But as an expecting father, I lost it during the earthquake scene and then again in the delivery room and then again in the finale. This movie fucks.

[Spinal]

This is an extraordinary movie. I'm really not sure what some of you are talking about. The camerawork is gorgeous and non-obtrusive. The pacing is exquisite, with gentleness giving way to moments of fierce intensity, as in life. The personal and the political intersect in meaningful, resonant ways. There are so many moments and images that remain vivid in my mind. I'm really glad I watched this in a movie theater instead of on a television or laptop.

[transmogrifier]

Is this what you think about in real time?

I don't understand the question. Everything I think is in real time?

[Ezee E]

This is an extraordinary movie. I'm really not sure what some of you are talking about. The camerawork is gorgeous and non-obtrusive. The pacing is exquisite, with gentleness giving way to moments of fierce intensity, as in life. The personal and the political intersect in meaningful, resonant ways. There are so many moments and images that remain vivid in my mind. I'm really glad I watched this in a movie theater instead of on a television or laptop.

Exactly this. I want to rewatch in a theater or a big, big TV, which I don't have the privilege of.

[Pop Trash]

Cuaron has almost built his entire career on drawing attention to the camera and reminding the audience how much work must have gone into any one particular shot. It's quite irritating a lot of the time.

Holy shit, you could say the same thing about Scorsese, PT Anderson, Orson Welles, Kubrick, Renoir, Hitchcock, and Max Ophuls.

[Pop Trash]

I don't understand the question. Everything I think is in real time?

I think he means reel time, as in while you were watching the film.

[Dukefrukem]

I think he means reel time, as in while you were watching the film.

Don't explain it to him. If he doesn't understand the question, his answer is just going to be some deflection or attitude stricken retort that neither propels the discussions or makes for an interesting dialog. I've just given up trying with him.

[baby doll]

Holy shit, you could say the same thing about Scorsese, PT Anderson, Orson Welles, Kubrick, Renoir, Hitchcock, and Max Ophuls.

Except all those directors subordinate their camera movements, however virtuosic, to the narrative. When Welles cranes his camera in Touch of Evil, it's to show us something, whereas in Roma, Cuarón moves his camera to make us aware of the camera. I'll have to rewatch Y tu mamá también to see if it holds up, but my memory is that the camera movements in that film are much more purposeful, pulling away from the characters sitting in a cantina to show us the people working in the kitchen--though even so, it could be that the film is simply inflating the significance of its story by situating it in a larger sociopolitical context, as I think happens in Roma, where the allusions to state violence and indigenous land grabs function as a kind of virtue signalling.

[Pop Trash]

Except all those directors subordinate their camera movements, however virtuosic, to the narrative. When Welles cranes his camera in Touch of Evil, it's to show us something, whereas in Roma, Cuarón moves his camera to make us aware of the camera. I'll have to rewatch Y tu mamá también to see if it holds up, but my memory is that the camera movements in that film are much more purposeful, pulling away from the characters sitting in a cantina to show us the people working in the kitchen--though even so, it could be that the film is simply inflating the significance of its story by situating it in a larger sociopolitical context, as I think happens in Roma, where the allusions to state violence and indigenous land grabs function as a kind of virtue signalling.

This is some Armond White levels of cognitive dissonance. Here's the trailer to remind you.

[Pop Trash]

I don't think the camera is anymore obsequious in this scene...


... than in this scene.


Honestly, I might be more aware of the camera in Touch of Evil than in Roma.