The City of Lost Children

Rating:
Summary: jacque le blew- this blew!!!!!!!!
Review: i take back my title , maybe this movie just wasn't for everyone. the dubbing was awful, and story just dragged on for too long. but all isn't lost........ the movie is visually stunning!! thats it take it or leave it!

Rating:
Summary: Homebrewer
Review: The City of Lost Children gets two platinum stars and also moves up to one of my top ten favorite films of all time. This is a confusing story, from beginning to end it expands your mind, reaches into your nightmares, and creates a story that is part Dark City and part of a novel called "The Golden Compass" by Phillip Pullman.

Yes, this film was everything and more. Not only visually beautiful, but the creative and symbolic meaning of the actions and words of the characters are "jaw dropping". Also, there are so many sub-stories in this film that reminded me of the style that Run Lola Run was done. This is the style that due to a connection of unrelated events something extraordinary happens. Let me give you an example from this film: There is a scene where the girl and One (Ron Pearlman-also a very biblical name) are trying to escape from the two women who want their jewels. There are events that lead from a dog finding its female companion to a boat almost hitting/splitting the women in half. Wild coincidences...imagine this times ten, and you have this film.

Keep in mind this is a French film with English subtitles, so you are not only getting the true voice of the film, but seeing the darkness of the cinematography without any American input. This really shows the purpose behind making this film, it really takes you to a new place so dark and dreamlike that you the viewer actually feel like you are in the picture itself. A movie about dreams and nightmares that takes place in a world of dreams and nightmares.

The story centres around a mad scientist, Krank, who is unable to dream, because of this he is aging quickly and is old beyond his year. He grows insane and has developed a technique to view and capture children's dreams so he can thereby inject them into his own mind. He kidnaps children from the nearby village and brings them to his lair, a king of oilrig in the middle of surrounding sea. He is aided by his brothers who are four identical clones of each other, unfortunately they all suffer from narcolepsy. Krank himself is a clone. His father who created them is now merely a brain in a tank and Krank was an unfortunate mistake who doesn't dream. The only clone who was right is an enigma called the original who has long since escaped the insanity of this evil lair only to be living underwater and is kind of an insane junk collector. One day strong man, One (Ron Perlman), and his little brother are ambushed by Krank's men and One's little brother is kidnapped. Thus far Krank's captives have proved unsuccessful in his quest for a cure, because they all suffer terrible nightmares, partly due to his own nastiness. All One's little brother responds to is food, he seems to have no fear and it seems he could be the one, just as long as Krank keeps feeding him. One sets out on a quest to find his brother meeting Miete, a young a troublesome orphan girl in the process. It's all good fun this film and while the story is simplistic it's a kind of delightfully Grimm fairytale sort of story that keeps your interest.

The cast are great. Ron Perlman is one of those cult actors who everyone seems to like and he has hit it big with the recent success Hellboy. He is a strong presence and unlike many musclemen of his stature he can act, something which has held him back somewhat,is because people have never really cast him as a leading action man, although in truth he's not blessed with good looks. The interestingly named Rufus, a Juenet stalwart is also very good with the clones, while Daniel Emilfork is excellent as Crank. Also good and a charming innocence is Judith Vittet as Miette.

Anyone who loves a visually stunning movie should watch this film it looks amazing. The sets, the impressionistic and exaggerated designs are brilliant. It is typically French in it's verve. This is a fantasy fans wet dream, believe me! ****



Rating:
Summary: Whimsical Nightmare
Review: If Toulouse-Lautrec and Hieronymus Bosch were trapped inside each other's nightmares, it would look like this film. From its first scene, City of Lost Children plunges the viewer into a whimsical nightmare then leaves him immersed there through the closing credits.
French duo Jeunet & Caro (Delicatessen) used their unparalleled film sorcery to create this haunting, dark fairytale of dread and longing, innocence and innocence lost. Krank, a sinister madman is stealing children to take their dreams, and One, child-like strongman, and Miette, young thief, nine going on too old, together face the perils of rescuing them.
Visually, City of Lost Children is a masterpiece. Its performances are universally superb, making singling out any particular one superfluous. Its score, composed by Angelo Badalamenti, is eerie, haunting, beautiful.
As the credits finally role to a close, the viewer feels that he has just awakened from an incredible, bizarre, frightening but amazing dream, with one difference; he can hit play and dream it again.



Rating:
Summary: Vivid, Wild and Intriguing - A Truly Unique Urban Fairytale
Review: I would call this a fairytale before it is a comic-book-like adaptation or a science fiction tale simply because of its specifically magical quality. Though dark and perhaps somewhat disturbing because of how warped the graphics can be, it presents its audience with a circus of both crazy and endearing characters. An orphan girl who is tough as nails and a circus strong-man who is soft as a marshamllow take us on a wondrous journey in search of the city of lost children. There, orphans are taken hostage and their thoughts stolen by a mad scientist who is no longer able to dream.

The special effects and cinematography are so unique and effectual, it's like nothing I've ever seen. And though the dark, swimming and quirky quality was engrossing to me, it made my roommate nauseaus.

For some it may be too weird to convey a poignant message, but ultimately its strangeness makes it more effectual as it demonastrates how the absence of childlike wonder can corrupt a mind, yet maintaining youth's optimism can set free the child in us all.

Rating:
Summary: A Totally Stylized, Created World Of Dark Fantasy Imagery
Review: A dark tale of a simple man whose young brother has been kidnapped by a madman who attempts to steal the dreams of children because he himself cannot dream.

This movie is like an even darker version of the "Child Catcher" character from the film "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" made a movie (I also kept expecting him to cameo). It is a totally stylized, created world filled with dark fantasy imagery, a madman (Daniel Emilfork), silly clones (Dominique Pinon), orphan thieves, evil conjoined twins (Genevieve Brunet & Odile Mallet), mechanically altered religious fanatics, poison carrying fleas, and the notion that a tear can cause a shipwreck and save two lives. It also has one of the most disturbing openings I have ever seen (it involves Santa so be prepared for another childhood memory to be flushed down the toilet of life). Dark, unsettling, twisted, to the point of almost defying the ability of description, yet also touchingly beautiful in it's portrayal of the spiritual nature and devotion of unrelated people who become family.

Ron Perlman has the male lead, a circus strongman named One, who's three year old adopted brother Denree (Joseph Lucien) is kidnapped. Innocence is tough to pull off. Most actors come across looking stupid and that's not the same thing. The character of One isn't bright but he's also not stupid. Simple, yes, but that's also different. It's fine lines and Ron Perlman does a great job walking those subtleties and capturing innocence.

The nine year old female lead, Miette (Judith Vittet), an orphan thief who helps One, has the look of youthful, lovely adulthood and the attitude of a child who has had no childhood. A great, character defining moment is when she is being carried on One's back and tries on an earring and checks herself out in a mirror. A telling juxtaposition of "father/daughter" and "blossoming woman" imagery.

Perlman and Vittet have lovely screen chemistry. The spiritual connection that develops between their characters is the beating heart of this film.

Favorite line(s): "Does it hurt?" (asked of a woman with a metal arrow through her body) "Yes. I'm allergic to steel."

Favorite line spoken by Ron Perlman: "After I heard them sing (whales), I always always missed target (harpooning them)."

The DVD has an excellent audio commentary with director Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Ron Perlman.

Rating:
Summary: A French Fantasy Feast For The Eyes! From Amelie's Director
Review: Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen, Alien Resurrection & Amelie) and his 1992 directing sidekick from Delicatessen, Marc Caro brings the dark, dank, rat-infested "City Of Lost Children" to life! All with the likes of one side-show travelling troupe strong-man, Mr. One played excellently by Beauty & The Beast's Ron Perlman, evil, pilfering, child corruptors and Fagin-like Siamese sisters joined by a third leg affectionately referred to as "The Octopus", and a manmade man who lacks the ability to dream called Krank who kidnaps the toddlers and smallchildren of the fictional city to hook them up to weird and wild machines, all to steal their dreams and make them his own.

Mix these colorful characters in with a band of homeless, criminal children a la Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist style, pet fleas that inject drugs, a talking brain in a tank named Uncle Irvin, a midget named Mademoiselle Bismuth and her six cloned sons, and finally a group of blind people called Cyclops who eat children and you have a marvelous mixture of fantasy, horror, sci-fi, comedy, action & adventure all rolled into one strangely odd film.

The visual effects are stunning and the costumes by Jean Paul Gauthier are breathtaking. The young, Judith Vittet turns in an especially wonderful performance as Ron Perlman's sidekick and heroine of the story, Miette! Incidentally, Ron Perlman was the only American in the cast and spoke all of his french lines expertly!

This film is subtitled in English or you may choose to listen to the English dubbed version on the menu of available audio tracks.

I highly recommend this film! I have never seen anything like it before!

Happy Watching!





Rating:
Summary: SUPERB AND COMPELLING FILM !
Review: A mad scientist has lost the power of dream and kidnaps children in order to steal their dreams.
Once more the innovative minds of Marc Caro and Pierre Jeunet could make it possible this weird but poignant story .
You may consider this movie extremely fantastic , only if you watch it with rational eyes abandoning the dark poetry involved in it .
A triumph of the fertile imagination of these two creative authors . If Hans Christian Andersen lived in this age, perhaps could not make it better. Bravo for this team who, six years later would produce that one thousand million carats jewel : Amelie.
Inmensely entertaining and visually stunning!


Rating:
Summary: The Best Movie I've Ever Seen!
Review: After seeing all the glowing reviews on this site, I checked this film out immediatly. I definitely enjoy more esoteric movies, rather than mainstream films, and I did enjoy Amelie, so i was expecting to like City Of Lost Children.

But unfortunately I was wrong. Though the production is wonderful, everything else seems so thin. The dialogue is wooden, the acting is very straight, the story is slow, etc. I couldn't finish the movie, which I rarely rarely do, because I found some of the parts to be so irritating. It almost seems as if the director was trying too hard to be creative and weird, because they're annoyingly weird. In particular, the cloned sidekicks were incredibly ingratiating, with the way-overdone quirkiness, stiff but overacted dialogue, and the way they dominated every scene they were in, due to their sheer numbers and presence.

I liked the movie's cinematography and production, and the opening nightmare was stunning. But I simply could not stand this movie, outside of those positivies. Don't raise your hopes too high.

Rating:
Summary: Swiss Army Knife of Movies
Review: Sci-Fi, action, adventure, horror, suspense, comedy, drama & fairy tale...who knew one movie could encompass so much, and do it so easily?

I have to say this is my favorite movie of all time. It's perfect in every way. Even the french dialogue just melts away while you're engrossed in watching the film.

For me, what put it over the top, among so many other great things, was quite simply the girl. She pours out every scene like I thought only adults could do.

To recap, since I don't need to actually EXPLAIN the movie :), before this movie, I'd never seen a foreign film...that was years ago, and MANY foreign films later, and it's still the BEST movie, foreign or otherwise, that I've ever seen as a single piece of cinema (that rules out the LOTR trilogy)