criterionforum.org

Raves (of the A-plus, 5-star variety, with a couple saying it may be Cuaron's best film):

https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/roma...40.article
https://www.indiewire.com/2018/08/roma-r...201998623/
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/au...nso-cuaron
https://www.thewrap.com/roma-film-review...n-netflix/
http://time.com/5378254/venice-review-al...aron-roma/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/roma...ckeningly/
https://lwlies.com/festivals/roma-venic ... al-review/
https://theplaylist.net/alfonso-cuarons ... -20180830/

More mixed:

https://variety.com/2018/film/reviews/ro...202919033/

bdsweeney wrote: Sat Aug 25, 2018 1:39 am Give me the prize for most obvious post of the year, but jeez ... why is such a seemingly visual film getting largely a TV-only release?

Plenty of ways to watch Netflix releases on anything but TV. Look forward to projecting this one.

New entry from Thompson & Bordwell's blog: "At the end David asked if we had just seen a masterpiece. Again neither of us had any doubt that we had."

There were a couple surprise screenings this weekend at Cine Tonalá, a famous art-house theater in Colonia Roma, the neighborhood where the film is primarily set (hence the title). Having now seen it, it pleases me to report that I found Roma easily the best film in the whole of Alfonso Cuarón's oeuvre to date and a genuinely great picture, something I've never been quite able to say of his past works. I've always found him a remarkable technical director who had a lot to offer in terms of cinematic language and yet I could never fully invest in his films because of a certain tendency to sentimentalize, whether in Children of Men's absurdly optimistic ending or the schmaltzy main character's backstory in Gravity. Until now, Y tu mamá también had been the less cloying entry in his filmography. However, his decision to present the deeply felt events in Roma from a distance, with honesty and without compromise, finally grants him the maturity of his cinematic idols. A lovely, seriously monumental picture in all respects.

Also, if this is what shooting on his own looks like, maybe he should permanently forego working with a director of photography from now on. It's well known that he started off in film school as a director of photography major before switching to film direction but, based on this, you'd never know he'd switched at all. The images are simply beautiful to look at.

Chaw is one of my favorite critics so I was waiting for this one

Also love this pull quote from Jennifer Barker for Cinema Scope:

"Cuarón impeccably links the personal and the political into dense scenes that reproduce the sudden yet inexorable nature of trauma; through his use of plans-séquence, he interweaves the individual and the collective, the private and the public."

Perhaps someone could enlighten me about this matter. Is there some concern that Netflix will release Roma theatrically only on a very limited basis? I recall a posting here from someone who seemed to reside in the provinces and feared that he/she would not be able to see Roma on a big screen. And somehow I have gotten it in my mind that we should not automatically expect a blu-ray of this film, that Netflix will keep it available only on some kind of streaming basis. Which doesn't make any sense, to me at least. So could someone tell me what the current thinking is on this?

Apparently Netflix will release Roma on about 100 screens on Dec 14th.

I certainly didn't expect to walk away from Roma thinking (in just as complicated a way as one might expect) about Robert Zemeckis' flawed 2012 film Flight, but they are both instances of filmmakers who have done all the big stuff and then feel a bit as though they're wearing clothes that don't fit when they try to scale things back down. After literally taking people to outer space, Cuarón has proven that he has the capability to do it all, and I couldn't shake the feeling during Roma that he's just driving a lavish sports car at 55 MPH. Roma is an art film, and a deeply personal one at that, but made with all the resources and sensibilities of someone who can do quite literally anything he wants. So is it a little odd to have what I can only assume is a full-on Dolby Atmos multi-channel sound mix for a small film like this - or planes flying overhead, or earthquakes and fires? No, not necessarily - but it's a reminder of the extent of Cuarón's powers, like the plane crash in Flight was a reminder of Zemeckis'. So when Cuarón slows things down to a meditative crawl in Roma, takes a break from little moments of flexing his filmmaking muscle (like a bizarre cameo

Spoiler

George Clooney had to be superimposed into that cutaway of an era-appropriate film set in space? Really? Come on, man. We get it, we know you just made Gravity.

midway through the film that I'm still sort of angry about)*, it never quite feels right. There are heartbreaking and stunning vignettes within Roma, including one true show-stopper to kick off the third act, but outside of those I couldn't shake the sense that Cuarón had just sort of lost the ability to just make this kind of a film without becoming restless and losing his rhythm, and falling back into Big Dick Filmmaker territory (like a contrived million-to-one coincidence during the aforementioned show-stopper of a sequence that might be more unwelcome than the cameo). Roma is a very good film with some moments I will never forget, but I just don't see the masterpiece that I've read so much about. Maybe it plays better on the small screen!

*Read on to see how I found out that this was, in fact, an incorrect sighting. Leaving it as is above, but would be remiss not to note that I'm a dolt and now realize I didn't see what I thought I had.

I’m fairly confident that cameo doesn’t actually happen? I didn’t clock it and from what I can see on Twitter no one else has made note of it either?

Couldn't be more surreal than seeing him in that cappuccino commercial

He has a cameo of almost that exact nature that is described in Machete Kills. Is it possible you somehow saw that instead?

Ribs wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 5:05 pm I’m fairly confident that cameo doesn’t actually happen? I didn’t clock it and from what I can see on Twitter no one else has made note of it either?

Ribs wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 5:19 pm He has a cameo of almost that exact nature that is described in Machete Kills. Is it possible you somehow saw that instead?

Spoiler

Unless I was completely imagining it, in which case I should probably see a neurologist, characters in Roma go to see a film (there are two scenes in the movie that take place within a movie theater, one where we see the theater itself and one where the frame is entirely just footage of the film they went to see, this is the latter) and it takes place in outer space with two astronauts floating toward each other and one grabbing the other. This is likely footage from an actual film that I'm just unfamiliar with, but it looks very similar to a scene from Gravity. After we see the face of the one actor who is being held, we get a quick flash to the face of the astronaut that has held onto him, and that warm smiling (superimposed?) face is George Clooney's - then cut to the next Roma scene entirely. There were some chuckles in the theater I was in when it happened, too. Cuarón's inclusion of that film footage in particular was definitely a nod to Gravity, and I figured he just decided to go all the way with it? Now I am completely fascinated, can someone else who saw this confirm?

Ribs wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 5:19 pm He has a cameo of almost that exact nature that is described in Machete Kills. Is it possible you somehow saw that instead?

How do I not remember this? That movie has a lot going on, granted, but still!

mfunk9786 wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 5:21 pm

Ribs wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 5:05 pm I’m fairly confident that cameo doesn’t actually happen? I didn’t clock it and from what I can see on Twitter no one else has made note of it either?

Ribs wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 5:19 pm He has a cameo of almost that exact nature that is described in Machete Kills. Is it possible you somehow saw that instead?

Spoiler

Unless I was completely imagining it, in which case I should probably see a neurologist, characters in Roma go to see a film (there are two scenes in the movie that take place within a movie theater, one where we see the theater itself and one where the frame is entirely just footage of the film they went to see, this is the latter) and it takes place in outer space with two astronauts floating toward each other and one grabbing the other. This is likely footage from an actual film that I'm just unfamiliar with, but it looks very similar to a scene from Gravity. After we see the face of the one actor who is being held, we get a quick flash to the face of the astronaut that has held onto him, and that face is George Clooney's - then cuts to the next Roma scene entirely. There were some chuckles in the theater I was in when it happened, too. Cuarón's inclusion of that film footage in particular was definitely a nod to Gravity, and I figured he just decided to go all the way with it? Now I am completely fascinated, can someone else who saw this confirm?

I did not catch the supposed cameo at all, though people did chuckle at the reference; I have a hard time believing that everyone — especially industry people and critics/journalists — from all of the festivals missed it or failed to allude to it somewhere! Given that you imagined this and somehow didn’t catch that Roma was a masterpiece, I’d say making that neurologist appointment might be a good idea.

A Google search of the actor in question and this movie turns up nada, for what it's worth

Well now I cannot fucking wait until this comes onto Netflix, or I die of an impending brain hemorrhage, whatever happens first. In my defense we are talking about something that was substantially less than a second long, and it's possible I just mistook a similar face considering all the other context. Oh who am I kidding, if I'm wrong about this I am genuinely humiliated to have brought it up. The spirit behind his winking choice of footage for that sequence peeves me just as much, though

IMDb says the movie featured in that scene is

Spoiler

Marooned from 1969. Is it possible you actually saw James Franciscus? He seems the most Clooney-like of the three astronauts in this clip. And obviously it doesn't require you to like the scene, but FWIW, searching for this information also led me to a 2013 interview with Cuaron in which he says he watched Marooned over and over as a kid.

It is incredibly probable that you have solved my conundrum, and I'm going to leave my original review in tact even though it's really embarrassing. He's a dead ringer though, and I'm sure your explanation is exactly what sparked my confusion. D'oh. And I still think it's a little on the nose since the aesthetic of the scene has so much in common with his prior film, but I think I just have less tolerance for meta masturbation than most. Doesn't impact my overall opinion of the film, which is very good but falls short of great.

It makes me like Gravity even more though, if that were even possible! Bumping Marooned up on my to watch list.

I'm confused--he's scoring a film that's already screened?

The film suffers from the lack of a score. The surround sound mix of urban noise is often jarring - if Cuaron is adding a well-written score at the last moment it's unorthodox but could be a major + for the final product.

I don't get why Nutfux is so afraid of cinemas. If their streaming service is so great, and so many people are using it to actually watch movies, then why is even a proper limited engagement so difficult for them to achieve? Hell, why be afraid of even a wide cinema release, since the movie is going to be exclusively on your service for years after, right?

I mean, I don't remember HBO or Showtime having these problems, either decades ago or recently. Amazon has fully embraced all aspects of distribution for its major films, too. But for some reason, Nutfux is so staunchly opposed to showcasing its films outside of itself, that it can't get a buzzed-about Alfonso Cuarón film into an Alamo Drafthouse?!

Don't get me wrong, I love that Nutfux will throw money at stuff, and by all means, make a project there, and I'll see it at some point down the line in a cinema, on home video, or on television, but the mentality of these people, at least when it comes to their films, is truly bizarre.