Fernando Meirelles
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Connections, in both directions
A birds eye massacre echoes the finale of Taxi Driver, a 360-degree camera move borrows from The Matrix, and the messy, unpredictable violence is cut from the same cloth as Mean Streets and Goodfellas.
Consider that Goodfellas, the picture to which City of God is most often compared, presents a strong social context for its tale of violence and retribution.
Tarantino’s influence is all over City of God though the effortless grace with which the entire film is assembled more accurately brings to mind Scorsese’s Goodfellas.
The film has been compared with Scorsese's " GoodFellas ," and it deserves the comparison.
Rocket, who dreams of escaping from the City of God and becoming a photographer, is nominally the film’s protagonist, and he’s around to report on the big events and to fill the audience in on who’s who: He narrates in the breezy, info-laden style of Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990) and Casino (1995).
A master like Martin Scorsese pulls off just this sort of insular amoral universe in "Goodfellas," to which "City of God" owes more than a little.
The Young and the Damned (1950)
Directed by Luis Buñuel
influenced City of God (2002)
Themes Visuals
I was prepared to see something akin to Hector Babenco's "Pixote" or Luis Bunuel's "Los Olvidados", but was disappointed to discover that the film had more in common with Quentin Tarentino.
Age-wise, some of the killers are in the mid-single digits, but City of God isn’t played as a tragedy of lost youth, like Los Olvidados (1950) or Pixote (1981).
The filmmakers also texture the narrative with the same gritty documentary feel that Bunuel achieves in his devastating Los Olvidados by using many non-actors from the actual City of God neighborhood with hand held cameras while effectively incorporating better aspects of Tarantino's Pulp Fiction narrative structure.
Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
Directed by Danny Boyle
influenced by City of God (2002)
Visuals Themes Plot
“Slumdog” is every bit as stylized as Mr. Boyle’s early works, and the film’s theme and exotic Mumbai locale undoubtedly invite comparisons to “City of God.” Adapted from a Vikas Swarup novel by “The Full Monty” scribe Simon Beaufoy, “Slumdog” adopts a zigzagging, time-jumping narrative that lends itself to Mr. Boyle’s over-the-top treatment.
He combines the suspense of a game show with the vision and energy of "City of God" and never stops sprinting.”
Stylistically, Slumdog Millionaire explodes off the screen with a frenetic energy I haven’t seen since Fernando Meirelles’ City of God.
Like Fernando Meirelles' City of God, Slumdog Millionaire is at times guilty of aestheticizing the poverty that it seeks to critique.
Boyle's modern-day fairy tale -- part " City of God , " part " Forest Gump " -- is just that wonderful, that joyous.
When compared to an absolutely heart-wrenching work like Hector Babenco�s similar Pixote, City of God is quite obviously a minor work of a director that could possibly make major ones one day.
"City of God" takes you to a place that has only been explored in such harsh films as Hector Babenco's "Pixote" and the cult flick "The Harder They Come."
Hearkening back to another groundbreaking work of Brazilian social realism, 1981's Pixote, Meirelles cast real-life street kids for his movie and then developed their characters and naturalistic "nonperformances" in a series of extensive, improvisational workshops.
I was prepared to see something akin to Hector Babenco's "Pixote" or Luis Bunuel's "Los Olvidados", but was disappointed to discover that the film had more in common with Quentin Tarentino.
In a society of children and adolescents who have no homes and no money, crime is the natural way of survival, but they're not very good at it (the gangs in " City of God ," made 20 years later, are much more sophisticated).
Long before Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund made "City of God" in 2002, about Rio de Janeiro's youth-centric atmosphere of organized crime, director Hector Babenco set the bar for such explosive cinema with his brilliant 1981 film "Pixote."
And it is, for a while, as Uruguayan cinematographer César Chalone (City of God) lays on vibrant images to a golden oldies soundtrack (think "A Fifth of Beethoven" and "Hooked on Classics").
It’s an entertaining one, shot in a variety of textures by City Of God cinematographer César Charlone: Exterior shots often pop with saturated color, while interiors have the faded look of a CRT display.
Liman has more potent ploys at his disposal, like the cinematography of César Charlone, who shot “ City of God ” (2002), and who endows the new film, especially in its early patches, with the hot-but-faded glow that you get from an old transparency.
The visual structure of American Made is erratic, combining a warm colour scheme (the frame looks like it’s been rubbed in orange rind) with wobbly camerawork from Uruguayan cinematographer César Charlone, who shot the 2002 classic City of God .
Enlisting “City of God” cinematographer César Charlone proves a canny move, as the Uruguayan’s roving, agitated camera style (not to mention a perspiring, overripe palette, heavy on hot yellows) implies antsy tension even in comparatively banal domestic scenes.
Liman writes each change in location, alliance and job across cinematographer César Charlone’s (Oscar-nominated for City of God ) warm-lit frames, or tasks editors Saar Klein (After the Fall), Andrew Mondshein ( The Mummy ) and Dylan Tichenor ( Triple 9 ) with keeping things snappy.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
Directed by Robert Aldrich
influenced The Two Popes (2019)
Characters
Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins deliver a sit-back-and-marvel double-act masterclass that will be spoken of in the same breath as Travolta and Jackson in Pulp Fiction or Davis and Crawford in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins deliver a sit-back-and-marvel double-act masterclass that will be spoken of in the same breath as De Niro and Pacino in Heat or Davis and Crawford in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
A birds eye massacre echoes the finale of Taxi Driver, a 360-degree camera move borrows from The Matrix, and the messy, unpredictable violence is cut from the same cloth as Mean Streets and Goodfellas.
Given that Amores Perros was routinely referred to as ‘the Mexican Pulp Fiction’, it might seem a little disingenuous to refer to City of God as ‘the Brazilian Goodfellas’.
This ultra-realist MTV-style spectacle has the style and urgency of Amores Perros but none of its moral ambiguities—every other line of Rocket’s more or less throwaway voiceover makes gratuitous reference to the holiness and irony of the film’s title and everyone’s not-so-divine function as god, devil or angel of vengeance.
In 2001, Alejandro González Iñárritus Amores perros made use of Pulp Fictionesque skewed chronology, hip, lowlife heroes, kinetic camera work and editing, glib cynicism, and lurid violence in a redolently squalid Mexico City setting.
Like the similarly potent Amores Perros and Black Hawk Down, City of God is not merely a rubberneck tour of an urban underbelly or war zone.
Cut from the same glossy mold as Alejandro I��rritu�s Amores Perros and Alfonso Cuar�n�s Y Tu Mam� Tambi�n, City of the God, despite its myriad flaws, gives the impression that it�s going to be similarly well-received and viewed by many as the arrival of a major international talent.
Like Fernando "City of God" Meirelles, Gavin Hood is definitely a filmmaker to keep a close eye on.
What does it say that this South African export won the 2006 Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film when the similar but more shattering City of God didn't even place back in 2003?
Director Gavin Hood keeps the movie moving at a breezy, unsentimental clip with a fast-paced, gritty style similar to City Of God, while energetic Kwaito music blasts throughout the picture.
A widescreen wallow in socially enforced slum nihilism brought to you by Miramax, Tsotsi could be pegged as City of God relocated to the Soweto shanties, but it eschews the ironic swagger and strobe-speed action of Fernando Meirelles's lurid jigsaw for a more conventional arc: the tough guy humanized by a cute kid.
Writer-director Gavin Hood easily could’ve stripped down Athol Fugard’s novel of personal responsibility and cultural empathy into a Hallmark-esque distillation of “City of God.” Instead, Hood retained this redemption song’s minor key — bullets, blood and beatings meant to illustrate a descent into dangerous living.
With its unflinching look at impoverished youth running rampant, brandishing handguns and attitude in equally volatile amounts, "Tsotsi" invites comparisons with the brilliant Brazilian film "City of God" ("Cidade de Deus").
Ralph Fiennes stars as a mild-mannered member of the British High Commission in Kenya whose radical activist wife (Rachel Weisz) is brutally slain; investigating her murder, he gradually pieces together a tale of corruption involving the pharmaceutical industry that's every bit as horrific as (and much more timely than) Harry Lime's killing of babies with diluted penicillin in The Third Man.
It was the classic The Third Man that showed that such films succeed by relying on well-defined, intriguing characters who drive the story so that message (in that case, the evil of black-market drug dealing in post-war Vienna) simmers in a back seat.
Fiennes proves why he’s one of Hollywood’s best, Weisz earns that Oscar nomination, and Merielles gives some utterly amazing direction in a truly worthy successor to “The Third Man” with a sad, taut, and excellent global mystery.
A birds eye massacre echoes the finale of Taxi Driver, a 360-degree camera move borrows from The Matrix, and the messy, unpredictable violence is cut from the same cloth as Mean Streets and Goodfellas.
It seems wearily inevitable that comparisons will be drawn between 7 Prisoners , the newest drama from rising star Alexandre Moratto, and City of God , perhaps the defining film of 21st century Brazilian cinema (that multi-award-winning drama’s director, Fernando Meirelles, is on producing duties here, alongside Ramin Bahrani of The White Tiger fame.)
Produced by renowned Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Meirelles, known for his iconic, Rio-set film City of God and whose latest film The Two Popes was also on Netflix.
As far as texture goes and ambition goes, this isn’t “City of God” and Moratto isn’t Fernando Meirelles.
Two of the producers, Ramin Bahrani and Fernando Meirelles, have made a fair number of these films, including “99 Homes,” “The White Tiger” and “City of God” between them.
Filmmaker Fernando Meirelles, director of “City of God,” is a producer here, and “7 Prisoners” shares that Oscar-nominated gangster drama’s cinéma vérité sensibility.
Like White Tiger , another foreign-language exploration of class released on Netflix earlier this year, 7 Prisoners was produced by Ramin Bahrani (along with City of God director Fernando Meirelles and others) and finds a tidy metaphor for capitalism in miniature.
The two new Israeli co-directing filmmakers, Yaron Shani, a Jew, and Scandar Copti, a Palestinian, surmount the Crash-like coincidences through the realistic improvised dialogue and interactions of the many nonprofessional actors whose life-stories were matched to the characters, creating a similar feel to how Fernando Meirelles and K�tia Lund integrated their nonprofessional cast�s experiences into City of God.
Indeed, comparing it to some of Amos Gitai's better films ( Yom Yom , Alila , etc.) it feels rather graceless, and compared to something like City of God , it feels practically inert.
Set in the multiethnic city of Jaffa, this Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film is like an Israeli Amores Perros crossed with City of God.
By showing how people fail to live together – in a film you could call Israel’s City of God, with its sectarian-feuding story lent power and immediacy by improvisation and non-professional casting – Ajami shows how they might or should live together.
“City of God”-like, agile camerawork by commercials cinematographer Richard Careaga is smudgy yet breathtaking, and combined with a pumping score that mixes electronic music and local, traditional instruments it delivers, well, the goods.
A cat-and-mouse thriller imported from Paraguay, "7 Boxes" evokes the developing-world amorality and senseless crime caper of "City of God," the 2002 Brazilian sensation that earned four Academy Award nominations, including one for Fernando Meirelles' slick, hyper-stylized direction.
Children of Men did it with infertility.
Julianne Moore (2006's " Children of Men ") is remarkable, sometimes a one-woman show in the way that she stands apart from the others and tries with all her might to keep a brave face.
Like 2006's Children of Men, the story functions within a palpable reality, but unlike that superior film, its message is emphasized over that story rather than the other way around.
But compared with more successful examples, such as "Children of Men," "28 Days Later" and even the spotty "I Am Legend" (which also featured Braga as a mother-surrogate leading an orphaned boy through the apocalypse), "Blindness" feels stilted, claustrophobic and more stylish than substantial.
Itâs an adaptation of the 1995 novel by Nobel Prize winner José Saramago, and at first blush it seems to fall into the same mold as Children of Men: a serious film that uses the sci-fi premise of a near-future dystopia to comment on the modern-day dystopia already upon us.
The Two Popes is a far cry from critical Peter Mullan’s The Magdalene Sisters or Pablo Larrain’s The Club, but it benefits from tackling difficult subjects, but packaging them in a manner that will have broad appeal.
The Two Popes is a far cry from the deconstruction of the institutions of the church seen in films such as Peter Mullan's Golden Lion winner The Magdalene Sisters or the Berlin Grand Prix laureate The Club.
At least, that’s what should be frightening about the “Bird Box” premise, which author Josh Malerman hatched in novel form, where readers’ imaginations were free to fill in that unseen terror as they saw fit — a device that he may as well have lifted from Stephen King’s “The Mist” or José Saramago’s “Blindness.”
This is a lightweight family cartoon, not City of God or something.
Clearly, Blue Sky Studios (the team behind the “Ice Age” movies) were merely looking for as colorful a setting as possible but anyone who knows the real-life story of Brazil (or has seen “City of God”) may think that this was an unusual subject matter.
It's not exactly "City of God," but there's at least some acknowledgment that life's not all about samba and sunbathing in Rio.
So Blu and his human, Linda, do like Fred and Ginger and fly down to Rio, Rio by the sea-o, where they run afoul of some "City of God"-inspired thieves and their murderous cockatoo henchman ( Jemaine Clement ) and spend most of the picture searching for each other.
City of God in a kids’ movie?
Brazil, of course, has a strong movie past with City Of God among the many stories to have used the country as a backdrop.
At first, the scene recalls the ruthless killings by the child gangs in 2002's "City of God ," but unlike that scenario, these boys aren't murdering for power or acclaim.
Like Altman's "Nashville", the city itself is a character in the film, with its broken housing, dirt parks and rampant crime.