Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Chantel Contreras It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Jemima It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Michael Mendez If it is one thing I really love, it is being in a state of PARANOIA. In Yorgos Lanthimos's Alps, we follow a group of individuals, mainly gymnastic instructors, who basically began a business where they act as someones recently-diseased loved-one in order for the family (thinking of parents) cope with the grieving process. Sounds like a wacky story. Well, it is :).As I like to mention before all my reviews, I have seen the previous work of Lanthimos. Mainly the very successful Greek film, Dogtooth, which is a dysfunctional family with the kids being taught the wrong things in order to be safe from the outside world. That one I loved.BUT I ALSO LOVED THIS ONE! The small things that they do with the camera-work blows my mind. There are a lot of times where our main character, or so I think, simply named Nurse (played by Angeliki Papoulia who was in Dogtooth) speaks with another individual where we cannot see their face. It is either cut-out, blurred, or even covered by shadows. I love this. I have seen Kar-Wai Wong do it in a couple of his films. It adds a little mystery and confusion to the story. Do these people not matter? Will they matter? What have you!The tone of the film is pretty much the same throughout it all. Some little indents here and there, but in my opinion, it is worth the watch, regardless how slow you think it is.I just find it very fun to watch these type of people (broken) living there lives on a day to day basis. Not the major things they do throughout there day that effects them, but the small things that we rarely take notice of. Like small chit-chat with someone else, etc.I must say, that as much as they seem they are pushing it away, I find this film very touching. The way they have to impersonate a family member who is dead makes up for the abnormal conversations. You can tell that when they are going through this process that they are acting; very badly, too. But that is how it would go. That is not something you can enjoy, nor hate. Nor will you think it's a good idea or bad. It just feels as though it is something to do.

Edgar Soberon Torchia Two years after his international hit «Kynodontas», Yorgos Lanthimos released «Alpeis», which is as good as the previous, winning the Best Screenplay award at the Venezia film festival, as well as other distinctions in Sydney and Sofia. However the film was unjustly appreciated: as people say, "comparisons are unfair" and the reception of «Alpeis» proves it, as audiences and film critics were expecting another portrait of canine confinement. This time the filmmaker opted for theatricality, games of appearance and perception, he opted for a tale that fluctuates between drama and comedy, inclined to the absurdist aspects in the representation of reality. «Alpeis» is more realistic than its predecessor, but not because of this it lacks images expressing "artistic flights". On the other hand, Lanthimos touches death, a subject that frequently frightens people, when it is one of the few things we humans can have for sure. The story though does not present descriptions of demises, but a group called "Alpeis" that offers a peculiar service to mourners: a temporary substitute for the deceased, with a fixed fee, while the grievers adapt to the loss of their loved ones. Their varied clientèle includes the parents of a young tennis player, a blind and cuckolded old lady, a local man that communicates in English, a naval officer… At the same time the same personnel conforms a small group of gymnasts and trainers that gather in a sports hall. However the plot is built around a young nurse (played by splendid Angeliki Papoulia, who was the older sister in «Kynodontas»), her tribulations and twisting. The social and economic crisis of the country does not have a central place in Yorgos Lanthimos' cinema, as in the movies of other of his compatriots, but for the stories he tells Lanthimos vividly suggests that something is rotten in the state of Greece.

zetes Giorgos Lanthimos wowed critics with his somewhat entertaining freakshow Dogtooth a while back. This is his follow-up, and it represents all of the aspects of Dogtooth I hated and had none of the (very minor) strengths. It is, first and foremost, an enormous bore. The actual content of the film is negligible and it's absolutely full of pregnant pauses and unnecessary bits. What content there is is awful. It's a film about people who do things that real people would never do and acting ways people would never act. I frankly just don't see the point in any of this. The story revolves around a group of people (calling themselves the Alps) who will, for a fee, take the place of deceased loved ones. Like Dogtooth, there's a lot of nudity and humiliating sex, but there's nothing salacious or shocking here. It's all very clinical. About the only good thing I can say about the film is that Lanthimos definitely has a good eye for visuals. Really, though, I'd rate this as the worst movie I've seen from 2012 so far.

oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx The title Alps refers to a fairly mysterious secret society of the same name in Yorgos Lanthimos' follow up to the hugely successful Dogtooth. I entered the film not knowing much about it, and I think that's the best way for the movie to unfold for you, as a mystery. I think mystery in general is Lanthimos' best gift here, Alps is a movie that really lets you take your own view, leaves pieces of the jigsaw out and sparks all sorts of different thoughts. I think I also felt that there's a seedling of hope and compassion in the movie amongst an existential debris of pragmatic, valueless and selfish individuals, which to my mind makes it a lighter experience than Dogtooth (although most critics have said otherwise). I think it's sad that, what I think are quite serious films, are mainly sold by relating to their shock or comedy value. The sequel-itis contagion requires a sequel to be darker, so to some extent people have spun this film as Dogtooth 2 - RABID! There's an aesthetic inversion in the sense that Lanthimos has Dogtooth containing characters trying to escape from an artificial environment, and in Alps characters are trying to create them. They're both about "existential malaise", but other than that, perhaps should be treated quite separately."Winter swimmers never feel the cold." is a phrase that comes up in the movie. I think that a lot of folk here have got inured to soulless living. The people who the society focus on live out the past, and only value others in terms of what they can give to them, or how they make them feel, they're devoid of altruism. As in Dogtooth there's scenes of characters apeing iconic dream factory roles, the folks here are small compared to the objects of their obsession. People are trying so hard to be better than others, that they end up alone.Difficult to talk exactly about the movie without spoilers, but I think my take was that the main message is that redemption comes via self-sacrifice, that people should grow up and be adults (western societies have pushed back the assuming of adulthood later and later). As in Dogtooth, there's a specifically Grecian comment about the old feeding off the young (though perhaps this will resonate elsewhere).The character that I want to hug is Monte Rosa (Aggeliki Papoulia), I think she takes a beautiful journey, the journey to altruism.