Beystiman
It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.
Huievest
Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.
Aneesa Wardle
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
ma-cortes
Rare fairy tale not- far -the -kiddies finds nutty scientific named Krank, Daniel Emilfork , abducting children helped by his one-eyed minions , the Cyclops , so that he can steal their dreams because Krank himself is incapable of dreaming . The lastest victim is the tiny brother of a single-mindedly hunk called One , Ron Perlman , a fairground strongman who sets out in rescuing him . One was a former whale hunter who along with a little girl , Miette : Judith Vittet , pursue a way to to get his brother back . Meantime , they are pursued by the Cyclops , the deadly automatic flea , the mad deep-sea diver and the evil Octopus siamese sisters , conjoined at the leg . The insane scientist Krank lives at a sea platform along with a dwarf woman , six cloned descendants : Dominique Pinon and a brain .This is a grotesque , gross, gruesome and overlong fantasy with nice moments here and there . Although far too long , though , for its content, an extremely fantastic flick from start to finish with some situations full of fascination and charm . Interpretations from the French cast are pretty good , but extremely rare ; as Daniel Emilfork as a mad doctor who abducts kiddies to harvest their dreams and hoping they slow his aging process . Pitted against him is One well played by Ron Perlman , Guillermo Del Toro's regular player , he was the only American actor on set ; Ron plays as a honest and simple bouncer , as strong as a horse . Other actors appearing and giving freak acting are the followings : Dominique Pinon, Jean Claude Dreyfuss, Mapi Galan , Jean Louis Trintignant , Ticky Holgado and Rufus .This one results to be a strange , bizarre , surrealist and haunting film set in a dystopian society in which several fantastic incidents take place . This peculiar movie has freaks galore , avant-garde costumes by Jean Paul Gaultier , breakgrounding special effects in charge by Pitof , and state-of-art production design by Marc Caro , all of whose function seems chiefly to be as bizarre as possible .Exceptional photography by Darius Khondji , a prestigious cameraman with known titles as Seven, 9th door , The beach , Wimbledon , Funny Games , The immigrant , Z lost city . It contains a magic and mysterious musical score by Angelo Baladamenti , David Lynch's usual. This is a French/Spanish coproduction financed by notorious producers as Elias Querejeta , Maria Victoria Herrero , Jose Luis Lopez and Claudio Ossard . The motion picture was well directed by Marc Caro and Jean Pierre Junet , though hard to follow . Caro has directed a few shorts , documentary and films as Dante 01 , Delicatessen . While , the successful director Jean Pierre Jeunet has realized prestigious movies such as Delicatessen , Alien resurrection, A very long engagement and Amelie played by his fetish actress Audrey Tautou . Fantasy buffs may enjoy total or partially of this , others will struggle to understand the half of it . Rating : 6/10 , acceptable and passable . Well worth watching .
leplatypus
this movie succeeds in the most difficult artistic field: inventing a world. Most of the times, when authors try it, we stumble always on Middle-earth... But here, it's really an original place, between Brazil and Peter Pan… This city looks like a foggy Montmartre at sea and the visual impact is wonderful: the cast has a jewel with the girl playing Miette: she acts like a pro while she is a kid. Maybe her friendship with this big dumb guy could be commented but this exploited kid as a thief and later dreams maker is thrilling and for sure, everything is sublimated by the wonderful sad, melancholic haunting score of Badalamenti as well as his song with Faithful! So it's a real masterwork of french imagination, worthy of Melies and sadly not praised enough in my country!
SnoopyStyle
The evil Krank (Daniel Emilfork), his dwarf wife and his clone minions children (Dominique Pinon) have a machine to steal the dreams of young children because Krank can't have dreams himself. One (Ron Perlman) is a strong man performer whose little brother Denree is kidnapped by Krank's underlings, the Cyclops. Miette (Judith Vittet) is a young street kid who ends up helping him.This has a lot of weird concepts on display. I can only describe this a outlandish mix of Dickensian poverty and a french grimy Jules Verne sci-fi with a good helping of weird surrealism. The visual is a good unique grim fairy tale but the story drags a little too much. It meanders and is confused. It is in love with its visual surrealism more than trying to make sense with the story. It should be a lot more simpler than what it is. It spends a lot of time luxuriating in the weirdness of the world and the villain.
Red-Barracuda
The City of Lost Children is the follow up to French directors Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's popular and critical hit Delicatessen. It wasn't as successful as that earlier movie though. But despite not connecting with a wide audience it almost immediately became a cult movie. To date it is the last film that these two cinematic stylists have made together.To be honest, it isn't necessarily surprising that this one didn't do as well commercially as Delicatessen. Despite sharing a lot of visual ideas and having similar humour and general setting, the story by comparison is quite messy and not necessarily clear for a lot of first time viewers. The set-up is considerably more expansive than in Delicatessen though; where that one was almost exclusively based in a single tenement block, this one incorporates many locations – in the city, under the sea, on a converted oil rig – and this is really the chief strength of the film. The sets, props and costumes are all very well designed indeed. The look has that quite specific retro-future styling that Caro and Jeunet are so fond of. The detailed set-design, stylised gloomy colour scheme and controlled lighting really works well and creates an atmosphere and tone all of its own. It's the visual ideas that are definitely the real draw here.The story is somewhat less engaging. It's about an evil scientist called Krank who cannot dream. He kidnaps children in order to steal their dreams. He sends out his henchmen, the cyclops, to carry out this evil task. One day they steal the brother of a circus strongman called One who then, with the help of a little girl thief, sets out on a rescue mission. There's a few other things going on in the story but it's not especially brilliant and seems more like a means to an end; a framework that allows the directors to create their visual artistry. Having said that there are individual scenes that are well worked out such as the whole sequence down by the harbour. There are some interesting characters too such as the evil Siamese twins, known simply as The Octopus. Ron Perlman is good enough as One but better is the young performer Judith Vittet as the little thief Crumb, while Dominique Pinon is excellent in the role of the clones – he is so convincing you really do forget that it isn't four different actors on screen.For me this is not as successful as Delicatessen but it's certainly an extremely worthwhile film. It's a very interesting blend of sci-fi and fantasy and at times it does look quite gorgeous.
