{"id":1425,"date":"2019-04-23T15:00:03","date_gmt":"2019-04-23T21:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1425"},"modified":"2019-03-14T15:43:17","modified_gmt":"2019-03-14T21:43:17","slug":"movie-roma-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2019\/04\/23\/movie-roma-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"MOVIE: Roma (2018)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/thumb\/8\/85\/Roma_theatrical_poster.png\/220px-Roma_theatrical_poster.png\" alt=\"Roma\" width=\"220\" height=\"322\" \/>Roma<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\nYear: 2018<br \/>\nRating: R<br \/>\nLength: 135 minutes \/ 2.25 hours<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t get me wrong. I like Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n&#8217;s films. I liked his films before I even really knew who he was as a director. If anything, he&#8217;s shown that he&#8217;s the master of cinematography, especially in long takes that seem to pan through almost the entire film. He first showed this talent in <em>Children of Men<\/em> (2006) and continued to impress with this technique in <em>Gravity<\/em> (2013). While he&#8217;s shown he has mastered the long take, his signature style is still on display in <em>Roma<\/em> (2018) through its numerous pans. That being said, I found the content of <em>Children of Men<\/em> and <em>Gravity<\/em> to be much more interesting than that of <em>Roma<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Cuar\u00f3n pulls us into his Mexican roots in this film, choosing the early 1970s to set this &#8220;slice of life&#8221; tale. The problem is, while the film <em>looks<\/em> quite artistic, with the black-and-white aesthetic fusing nicely with the expert camera work (along with that weird costumed singer bit near the middle), there isn&#8217;t much substance there. Put in another way: I didn&#8217;t care for the characters. In <em>Children of Men<\/em>, humanity&#8217;s survival is on the line. In <em>Gravity<\/em>, the impetus to return to Earth safely drives the story. In <em>Roma<\/em>, events just happen, and life goes on.<\/p>\n<p>I understand that there are some broader themes likely present in <em>Roma<\/em>, but I didn&#8217;t particularly care about them, either. Perhaps it was the simplicity of its presentation that failed to grab my attention. Sure, I liked the little visual setups that led to somewhat amusing changes later on in the film. However, these felt more like a famous comedian winking at the audience without saying a word and expecting everyone to laugh. Perhaps I&#8217;m just not close enough to the culture represented here, but I didn&#8217;t particularly care for this movie, and I instead look forward to whatever Cuar\u00f3n&#8217;s next project might be.<\/p>\n<p>An artistic film that uses Cuar\u00f3n&#8217;s talents to say very little, I give <em>Roma<\/em> 3.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Roma Year: 2018 Rating: R Length: 135 minutes \/ 2.25 hours Don&#8217;t get me wrong. I like Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n&#8217;s films. I liked his films before I even really knew who he was as a director. If anything, he&#8217;s shown that he&#8217;s the master of cinematography, especially in long takes that seem to pan through almost [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,382,2,370,369],"tags":[1020,1715,1714,531,13,8,1713,1212],"class_list":["post-1425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-0-stars","category-foreign","category-movie","category-nominee","category-oscar","tag-1020","tag-alfonso-cuaron","tag-black-and-white","tag-mexico","tag-movie","tag-review","tag-roma","tag-spanish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1425"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1430,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425\/revisions\/1430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}