Review of City of God (2002) by Alison C — 20 Oct 2012

I'm revising my previous review of this. I appreciate this movie but I think its overrated. This movie is very stylized and usually, I'm all about stylized, but I don't feel like it suits the content of this movie. In fact I think the style distracts from the points this movie is trying to make. Maybe I just don't get it. Most of the brutal moments of this movie fall flat because some happy/up-beat music starts playing. I can't think of a good reason for why the director would want you to feel nothing. The constant jump cuts give me a headache. And there's all this "cool" editing techniques going on that are done "because I can" and that annoys me. Make it mean something! For instance, the scene showing the history of the apartment is done in an extremely cool way. but so what? the history of the apartment has nothing to do with anything going on in the story. the information it gives is just like the visuals. Pretty cool but doesn't matter. Another thing that bothers me about this movie is that its full of the scary tense movies that build up to a "wa wa waaaaa" moment of nothing. I can respect that its not predicable but I don't like being led on like that with no pay-off. The characters are pretty one-dimensional and frankly, pretty stupid. I don't understand how Rocket is totally okay with Benny stealing Angelica from him. Also, I'm still not sure what I'm supposed to get out of this movie. I understand the whole thing about destiny but I feel like a movie like this should have some kind of call to action or motivation about the slums. Eh.

Okay. The story is extremely well told. I love the flashbacks, I love how its scenes flow so seamlessly conceptually. I love its use of music. the editing is amazing (when its not trying too hard). The opening with the chicken is great and (thank goodness) actually means something. I just with it was more profound.