Area 77

Cidade de Deus or City of God is one of my favorite movies of all time. I remember watching it in 2004 but I don’t remember how I came across it or if someone recommended it to me. All I know is that it sparked my interest in foreign movies.

This time, Netflix recommended the movie based on my ratings of a huge list of movies of all genres. Amores Perros or Love’s A Bitch is a movie set in Mexico City. Just like that Brazilian movie, it was heavy. I really don’t know how to explain it actually. I think most foreign films are like that because the filmmakers don’t have to follow the Hollywood formula of making a movie. Basically, it isn’t clean cut. The focus of the film was to tell a story and using all aspects (picture, sound, direction, filters, etc.) to tell the story, and not just using “good actors.”

The plot structure is very similar to Crash (made four years later) in which multiple stories and people are linked together. The height of each story line is a single car crash and a dog. You actually see the crash about three times in the movie at different angles.

The movie first introduces us to a young man who is in love with his brother’s wife. He uses the family’s Rottweiler to make money in dogfighting so he and his sister-in-law can leave town. But he faces trouble with a rivaling dogfighter. Then there’s a well-off family man who leaves his family to be with a top model, but the glamour doesn’t last very long when she faces every model’s worst nightmare. Finally, the movie ends with an aging ex-guerilla fighter who decides to end his pathetic way of life and literally clean up.

This movie is great because, again, it’s not what you usually see in movies produced by the major movie studios. Good people don’t always do good things. When someone falls there usually isn’t a triumphant rise back to the top. Second chances come more often than you know but having the guts to take them is rare. That is life and life’s a bitch.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 11:46 am and is filed under TV/Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.