Popular reviews

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  Review by Graham Williamson ★★★★ 16

  So, look, I'm not going to budge from my position that nostalgia is the prion disease of culture. So many controversies over revived, rebooted or recast franchises have made the subtext text. You don't have to stretch to see a link between nerd culture fetishising its childhood as a lost arcadia and reactionary politics any more, you can just find a Facebook page for the latest franchise whose latest incarnation has dared to cast a woman or a POC or - horrors - a WOC and read the comments. When people are complaining that the casting in a new series of Star Trek - Star fucking Trek! - is too diverse, you know you're dealing with a mentality that has…

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  Review by Naughty aka Juli Norwood ★★★★★ 5

  A grotesque and dark adult fairy tale featuring nightmarish freaks preying on children of the streets!

  A stunning visual feast for the eyes! Creativity and imagination are above and beyond my wildest dreams!

  Jaws drop! Hearts skip a beat!

  As this magnificent masterpiece reveals its fascinating and intricate attention to details that will leave you wide eyed and reveling in the rediscovery of your sense of wonder and unbridled imagination!

  Naughty Approved!

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  Review by DirkH ★★★★ 6

    The City of Lost Children is a wonderfully dark fairy-tale, spiced up by the visual flair of Jeunet and Caro.

  There is something inescapably alluring about a dark tale that is about children but perhaps isn’t suitable for them. Stories like this often reside in between dark fantasy and light-hearted morality tale and this one is no exception. The conceit is rather classic, evil man tries to steal dreams from children. It is therefore not so much the content of the film that makes it so enjoyable, but most definitely the approach the pair of directors take to present it. It is visually as rich as it is grim.

  Like their previous collaboration Delicatessen this film has a lovely…

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  Review by Sally Jane Black ★★★½ 1

  This film makes colors swallowed in shadow look better than most films make brightly lit colors look.

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  Review by benhack ★★★

  Retro futuristic aesthetics of a nightmare in total peril. Idle and abstract thoughts linger in dirty steampunk passages among rats and trash, a reverie of pensive agitation and isolation. An odyssey for a warped dream in beguile as they pursue such a phantasm of the core to the nightmare, every unique frame manifests of horror and an anomalous light of empathy. An insidious presence he reigns, a malaise for inept dreaming, a childish immaturity that spells doom in the realms of nonautonomy - one final dream to bring rapture.

  It's no Delicatessen or Amelie, but it's surely still something very idiosyncratic!

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  Review by solharv ★★½ 2

  This is like playing Bioshock at Terry Gilliam’s house

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  Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★★★ 9

  I'm in awe of the crazy production design of The City of Lost Children. It is an original slice of surreal cinema that oozes creativity in every scene. The beautifully stylised fantasy world is the effort of unique filmmaking that embraces all kind of weird. The grungey look and odd shots (including loads of angled close-ups) contributes to a kind of adult fairytale. Which is strange as the humour is rather childish and part of the film seems to be that we are all children on some level. I think that's a weakness really, because The City of Lost Children has such a special style with horror inflections but the story is trope-heavy and feels mismatched for the dark, adult…

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  Review by {Todd} ★★★★ 1

  "Quiet! You vegetable!" -Krank,

  Don't you just want to give Ron Perlman a big hug? Imagine a Ron Perlman hug!

  What a delightfully weird story from a visionary director. On more than one occasion I had to rewind a minute or so because I was so mesmerized by the visuals that I sort of lost track of the dialogue. That's not to criticize the story, which is bizarre and wonderful, it's just that the film looks that cool. The sound design is really fantastic, and the casting is well done as each of the performers brings a unique look and eerie vibe to the film.

  BURP...yeah you should check it out.

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  Review by Kaijuman ★★★★ 2

  Birth Year Challenge 12/22

  “Who has stolen the child’s dream? The mad genius Krank in his evil scheme. To what vicious depths will he not descend? Will the tale turn to tragedy... or have a happy end?”

  A beautifully unsettling fairy tale brought to life before your very eyes. Childlike in its simplicity and masterful in its subtlety. Eerily sepia and rusted landscapes filled with wildly memorable characters with names like “The Octopus” “The Cult of Cyclops” “One” and “The Diver”. A visual treat of matte paintings, marvelous set design, practical machines, early cgi, fisheye lens, all within a unique and frightening world.

  The perfect dark fairytale for burgeoning young fantasy/sci-fi fans.

  Avant-Garde Expressionism through a child’s eyes.

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  Review by evilbjork ★★★

  This is just plain weird in a way only the French can make.

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  Review by Mr. DuLac ★★★★ 11

  When you're born in the gutter you end up in the port.
  -Miette

  A long time ago, in a movie theater far far away, the only film I had seen from director Jean-Pierre Jeunet was <a href="http://letterboxd.com/mr_dulac/film/alien-resurrection/reviews/"Alien: Resurrection. It didn't exactly ignite a desire in me to pursue anything in his filmography. Although my opinion on the director was dramatically changed after seeing Amélie for obvious reasons, it took over 15 years for me to finally see what I believe is the film that got Jeunet the Alien sequel... for all the wrong reasons.

  The City of Lost Children is a dark and disturbing fairytale. I could easily see why a Hollywood studio would drool over the thought of getting…

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  Review by Mark Costello ★★★★★ 4

  The pinnacle of gothic grotesquery, this takes everything that is wonderful about French film (the romance, the humour, the lack of a need for straightforward explanation, the pure joie de vivre) and wraps it into a fantastical fairy tale for both adults and children.

  The production design is utterly stunning - every location feels tangible and lived in, anything that can take a rivet has a rivet in it, rendering the whole environment hugely tactile and real; which when added to the overall design (the kind of steampunk gothic whimsy that Tim Burton never got anywhere near even in his finest work) gives the entire film a dreamy/nightmare feel that actually could have come from your own imagination.

  All of…