Popular reviews

• 

  Review by Graham Williamson ★★★★ 12

  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…

• 

  Review by Siegel™ ★★★½ 3

  An eclectic and kinetically paced visual feast, this is a film about nightmares, itself resembling a nightmare with its dirty dystopian setting. The world in which it takes place is dark and shadowy, full of devilish characters, garbage, and rats; yet at the same time it feels like a peculiarly beautiful dream, with unique visuals, oddly likeable and sensible characters, and a spectacular maze of seemingly disconnected events that are intertwined to both dramatic and comedic effect. The narrative is a bit loose but the film is always exhilarating and follows a path of consistent surrealist logic. It's kind of like if Terry Gilliam directed a Guillermo del Toro film. I saw somewhere that someone called this "Blade Runner made by circus artists" and that's a pretty good description.

  Side note: I didn't know that Ron Perlman was French so I looked it up and he's not. He doesn't know a word of French. Now I'm even more confused.

• 

  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!

• 

  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…

• 

  Review by Sally Jane Black ★★★½ 1

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

• 

  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.

• 

  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.

• 

  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…

• 

  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…

• 

  Review by Mondo Cinema ★★★★½ 1

  Visually stunning.....

• 

  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…

• 

  Review by ratbastard ★★★★

  ‘Krank’ is an intelligent being created by a scientist. Krank lives on an abandoned oil platform with an array of weirdo characters, also created by the scientist. Unable to dream, Krank begins to age prematurely. To alleviate this, he uses a dream-harvesting device to steal dreams from children abducted from a nearby city. Among the abducted children is ‘Denree’, whose circus strongman brother ‘One’ sets out to rescue Denree with the help of orphan ‘Miette’.

  Stylish sci-fi / fantasy spectacle. A dark, dazzling, bewildering, inventive, hugely imaginative, entertaining, macabre, nightmarish and resonating piece. Directors Jeunet and Caro crafting a beautiful and bleak dystopia littered with bizarre and unique characters. Evoking the styles and sensibilities of Tim Burton and Del Toro.…