Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma is everything everyone says it is. Gorgeous and formally flawless, the director’s precision and meticulous craft is unmatched, and his deep, personal connection to the story readily shines through. Yalitza Aparicio delivers a wonderful performance. The milieu is layered, thematically dense, and someone much smarter than I am will have a field day unpacking relationships between the lower class maid Cleo and the wealthy family she works for. (THIS ARTICLE examining how poor people’s stories, especially those of domestic workers, are always told from the perspective of the rich, with a special eye on current Latin American cinema, is a good place to begin.)
If you read this site on any regular basis, you’ve likely encountered me ranting about ranking movies, grading movies, and basically comparing works of art to one another as if there’s even a grain of objective truth to be found. I dislike it, quite a bit. But that’s a conversation for another time and place, and because of the whims and wills of writing on the internet, it’s never stopped me from assigning scores to a movie, writing “best of” lists, and all the rest. Nor has it stopped me from voting for end-of-year awards for a number of critics groups I belong to. One of these, the Seattle Film Critics Society, solicited input from our members and just revealed the 2018 Seattle Film Critics Society Awards.
We could sit here all day and argue about our own personal
definitions of science fiction, especially in regards to Alfonso Cuarón’s
latest offering, Gravity. While the film does lack some of
the traditional speculative hallmarks of the genre, like a futuristic setting,
technology run amok, and pushing the present bounds of science, the action does
go down in space. For all the flashing lights, fancy NASA equipment, and mind
boggling cinematography, this is a story very much rooted in the current age,
in the here and now. But doesn’t matter what the hell label you settle on,
because regardless of what you call it, Gravity is an
incredible movie, and the best reason this year to drag your ass to the theater
and drop the extra cash on an IMAX ticket.
