Nonureva Really Surprised!

Brightlyme i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

leplatypus this movie succeeds in the most difficult artistic field: inventing a world. Most of the times, when authors try it, we stumble always on Middle-earth... But here, it's really an original place, between Brazil and Peter Pan… This city looks like a foggy Montmartre at sea and the visual impact is wonderful: the cast has a jewel with the girl playing Miette: she acts like a pro while she is a kid. Maybe her friendship with this big dumb guy could be commented but this exploited kid as a thief and later dreams maker is thrilling and for sure, everything is sublimated by the wonderful sad, melancholic haunting score of Badalamenti as well as his song with Faithful! So it's a real masterwork of french imagination, worthy of Melies and sadly not praised enough in my country!

InsideABanSheesMind The story is both very simple and so complicated at the same time, set in a steam punk city with no name a mad scientist named Krank has set up a lab on an oil rig on the outskirts of the city. Krank has a gang of Cyclops men. A gang who are blind in one eye and use the aid of a machine to enhance their sight and hearing to kidnap children as young as possible but old enough to dream so that he can steal them and stop him aging, currently Krank is unable to dream and believes stealing the young kids dreams will make him live longer. What Krank doesn't understand though is that because the children are being stolen and scared the dreams they are having are only nightmares. A carnival strong man with a young mentality called One played by Ron Pearlman (Hellboy, Drive) goes searching for his brother Dunree and happens across conjoined twin sisters known as la Pieuvre (the Octopus in English) who send young kids of the city to steal what they can in dead of the night. One joins the thieves and in particular a young girl named Miette for a big steal, he spies his little brother amongst the Cyclops gang and attempts to steal him back. Everything soon changes though the night one of the dreams escapes and enters the city…There is a lot that goes on within this film and I haven't yet mentioned the Midget woman or the clones who constantly bicker about who is the original or even the brain in a box that tends to manipulate everyone it can or the music box that controls fleas. This film is so dark in nature and so amazingly beautiful, the directors took 14 years to bring this idea to film so they have had a lot of thought go into it. It's one of the first films to make full use of CGI as well which is very apparent in some amazing scenes. The unnamed city the story is set in is a very dark and twisted place but again so magnificent in its landscape, the way the city comes together can only been seen to be believed. The score really helps the film along as well, the right music is played in the right places and never gets in the way of anything. City of the Lost Children is filled with wonder and amazement from its opening scenes to its last it's a world within a world where escapism is only limited by your own imagination. The characters that have been developed are intense and so very well played and lastly I'll mention the beautiful cinematography without the close ups, unusual angels and filming techniques this film would most likely be very ordinary its these amazing sequences of footage that really help the film become what it is.Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro not only directed the film but also helped script it as well. The City of Lost Children is a French spoken film but those desperate enough should be able to find an English dubbed version without having to look too hard. Again I will say… Don't bother with the dubbed version you need the actual spoken word to her all the film has to offer within even though it is written words on the bottom of the screen, the language spoken and its tones is gorgeous especially during the sentimental moments.

writers_reign This makes Delicatassen - from the same writing-directing team - seem like Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm. It's been heavily reviewed on IMDb, well over one hundred posts and all those I read were favorable in the extreme. Alas, it didn't do anything for me but then grotesque fantasy isn't my thing and Jeunet and Caro clearly 'speak' to a lot of people. If you're prepared to put the hours in there's probably a plot of sorts to be unravelled but you need to suspend disbelief on Industrial strength. There is no suggestion from beginning to end of anything remotely resembling life as we know it and/or a recognizable landscape. The main setting appears to be something akin to a North Sea oil rig peopled by fugitives from the Weimar Republic crossed with the Stasi from post-war East Germany crossed with Cyborgs from Star Trek. Apparently the Head honcho is unable to dream for himself so his solution is to kidnap children and snatch their dreams. One muscle-bound circus strong man takes objection when his brother is a victim and goes in pursuit, picking up along the way a street-wise girl lately in the employ of a couple of Siamese Twin Fagins. Dominic Pinon, who is a regular in Jeunet movies, is on hand again. Weird? Check. Wacky? Check. Wonderful? Ah, there you have me.

augurar This movie is visually rich and fairly engaging, but some key element is missing to tie everything together.The movie's narrative structure is fairly simple: Krank, the evil creation of an anonymous mad scientist, is kidnapping children to steal their dreams for himself. Krank's henchmen kidnap Denree, adopted younger brother of One, a slow-witted but good-hearted circus strongman. One bands together with pristine street urchin Miette to bring Denree back and defeat Krank in the process.However, the plot, when examined more closely, is full of implausibilities and inconsistencies. Taken together, these plot holes comprise one of the film's major flaws: the whole universe seems to exist solely for the purpose of supporting the story. Sadly, this makes it seem very contrived and one-dimensional. For example, the "cyclops" people, who are seen as a formidable force at the beginning of the film, completely vanish from the story midway through. Miette's fellow orphans seem much more like a band of ragtag adventurers out of some Disney production than real street kids. The villainous conjoined twins are plenty villainous, but they don't seem to have any real motives, making them pretty bland, predictable antagonists. And so on.Another issue I had with the movie was that a love of spectacle seemed to subsume a sense of balance and pacing. There were plenty of visually interesting moments, but they typically flashed past once and then vanished, never to be seen again. Examples include the carnival seen at the beginning of the film, the stronghold of the Cyclops-men, and the underwater home of the bearded inventor. Each of these settings suggested an interesting world in themselves, but the movie only paused in each location long enough to show us the most interesting visuals, then resumed its relentless march onward. This gave the movie a somewhat scattered feeling, as though it couldn't ever really commit to its setting.Oddly enough, this rapid stream of visuals was accompanied by a rather slow-moving plot. There are basically three phases to the movie: the call to adventure, a series of advances and setbacks, and the final confrontation with Krank. Unfortunately, both the challenges the protagonists face and the corresponding resolutions of those challenges are caused by forces entirely beyond the characters' control. Everything is external to them -- they basically bumble through the plot without ever making significant choices. Thus, the monomyth is crippled, there is no fatal flaw that the hero must confront, and the "climax" feels weak and pointless. The characters undergo no changes over the course of the film. There is no real progress, just a lot of aimless wandering.For all its shortcomings, the movie does have some good points. For the most part, the acting is good, with particularly strong performances from Judith Vittet as Miette and Ron Perelman as One. Jean-Claude Dreyfus also did a great job in his supporting role as Marcello. I didn't really care for Dominique Pinon as the unnamed creator ("The Original") and his assorted clones, but maybe that's just me -- I tend to find his exaggerated grimaces disagreeable rather than funny. As I mentioned earlier, the movie does a great job creating rich visual environments. It sort of reminds me of a concept painting for some post- apocalyptic video game - full of grimy textures, well-lit interiors with dim backgrounds, and highly saturated lighting. I actually saw this in a fairly low resolution on the internet, but the visuals still drew me in to the world of the story.In conclusion, I'd say this film is worth watching for the interesting visuals – but don't expect much more than that.