Let me say it off bat...outside of a small handful of films I can’t stand musicals, so basically me giving a musical a 4 star rating is saying it’s monumental pretty much. And frankly this film by Demy in many ways is. 

The reason why it works is because Demy uses the musical format to highlight the irrational dream like nature of love so when the hard reality of life and the choices we make are forced upon the characters…

One of those “movies I don’t think are great or even good by any means but I can watch it” flicks. Why? Mostly cause of Pacino. It’s actually one his better performances and it’s the type of role he doesn’t get to play often, an underworld character who is not a top notch cat, and a rather sad sack. Al plays it perfectly, never a bad moment and truly some remarkable ones. But he’s really the only thing about the…

Nah bruh, this ain’t it. 

This cinematic trend to beautify Black struggle and minimize it narratively to some struggle of “self” rather than a real analysis of how Blackness always gets the short end of the stick by design is a horrible trend. This film attempted to use cinematic tricks and visual aesthetics to cover up for the fact it has nothing real to say about what has happened to Black people in gentrification despite its grandiose title. It hides…

So...political propaganda and manufacturing consent started with the 2016 election and Brexit? Could have fooled me. Guess they never heard of people like Edward Bernays and Henry Kissinger then. This doc is absurd in its presuppositions that private industry influence on national elections is some new phenomena, even the use of data (guess they missed Adam Curtis’s several docs on this subject over the last 20 years). No, it’s just more sophisticated now. The whole doc is a lot of…