Roma As In Coma

I first want to call your attention to the ad above.   Look at all those magnificent reviews.   You can add to these that the New York Film Critics have called "Roma" the Best Picture of 2018.   Plus it is up for both Best Picture and Best Foreign Film at the Oscars.

Makes you want to see it, right?  Guilty as charged.

And, because "Roma" is a Netflix production, you can currently find it at both your local theater and on your Netflix queue (which is how I watched it).   

Better that you don't find it at all.   "Roma" is another in an increasingly long line of superlatively reviewed and lauded movies that I just don't get.

This whole concoction comes from Mexico and writer-director Alfonso Cuaron.  Can we look up the translation for "overrated" in a Spanish dictionary?   You may remember that he was the guy who brought us "Gravity" a few years back and, in a terribly clever move, he has the characters in "Roma" going to see the old movie "Marooned," which also features astronauts stuck in outer space.   Wink, f-ing wink.   How damn obvious can you be, Alfonso?

If you want to know what this movie is allegedly about, read on and beg me forgiveness for divulging some spoilers.  At the end of the day, you will thank me.   "Roma" is set in 1971 Mexico and we meet Cleo, a bargain basement Mary Poppins to a dysfunctional family....a bunch of unruly kids led by a philandering father and a mother who can't park their Ford Galaxy in their narrow garage without scraping the sides of the car.   From what I can see, Cleo is only so-so at her job.   She can keep up with the kids, but falls miserably behind picking up the family dog's shit.

Cleo also has a Mexican martial arts specialist (???!!!!) for a boyfriend.   He promptly knocks her up and then leaves for parts unknown.   She walks around for three months not even knowing she's pregnant.   Eventually, she goes out to buy a crib in the middle of some street anarchy.   Her water breaks and we go through the lengthy and excruciating ordeal of watching her baby be stillborn.   

Eventually, her family of charges is left adrift by Dad who has run off to be in a better movie.   The remaining family goes to the shore and Cleo saves one of the kids from drowning.  

End of movie, thereby concluding 135 minutes of virtual nothingness.

See, I told you.   Indeed, there are some very interesting camera angles, including one in the ocean as the little girl almost drowns.   But, with no plot afoot, all of the nice set pieces just qualify as eye candy.   If only this Mary Poppins came with some music.  Chim Chim Churro?

For some reason, Cuaron shoots "Roma" in black-and-white.  Don't get me wrong.   I like a film in just two shades, but the use here strikes me as a trifle pretentious.   Maybe it's done to cover up the ugliness because everything looks dirty.   The muddy streets.   The dog shit on the floor.   The starkness of the maternity ward which looks overcrowded.

I am once again mystified by a film that is getting raves.   Am I missing something?  Cuaron is riding his Mexican roots all the way to the Oscar diversity bank.   But there is this interesting note...Cuaron has lived in England since 2000.  Phony bastard.

The one thing I am sure of is that "Roma" won't be screening in a Trump White House.   Unless he wants to tweet about it as a validation for his wall.

LEN'S RATING:  One-half star.

Dinner last night: Hamburger.