Dir. Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Starring: Ron Perlman, Daniel Emilfork, Judith Vittet, Dominique Pinon and Joseph Lucien etc.,

This is the story of a sometimes circus strongman, a band of miniscule thiefs, a league of extra-ocular gentlemen, and a mad scientist.

It doesn’t say much does it? As with many good movies, the storyline in The City of Lost Children makes little sense in abbreviated form, and I’m not gonna go into too much detail. In short, it’s a steampunk Oliver Twist. That’s right, you get the ill-treated orphans adopted into street gangs, stealing seemingly thousands and thousands of moneys (francs? euros?) from any vault and pocket that their tiny hands can get into. You also get all sorts of (not so) high-tech gadgets created out of all sorts of trash.

Warning: minor spoilers ahead.

It’s pretty much a DIY-world, where everything “thrown away” is picked up and recycled, including children. The man behind the abductions is a self-imposed scientist (who’s actually an experiment gone bad himself), who kidnaps the city’s little ones in order to harness their dreams for himself. He cannot dream you see, so he’s getting prematurely old.

Ron Perlman is in this movie, and no, it’s not a repeat of his role in The Name of The Rose, but it’s not far off. As the strongman with an “accent grave”, he adds a sense that the grown-ups in the world of the movie are as lost as the kids are. He’s looking for his little brother who was kidnapped by the mysterious “cyclops”-people. It gets weirder than all of this of course, but it’s something the movie will have to say for itself. Tiredness may not be a good thing, since this movie demands your attention, there’s so much detail to look at. See it with someone who eats quietly.

This is His review, you can read Her review here

Keywords: Clones, Surreal, Amelie

Dir. Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Starring: Ron Perlman, Daniel Emilfork, Judith Vittet, Dominique Pinon and Joseph Lucien etc.,

Although this has nothing to do directly with the story, I thought I’d let you know that I really had no preconceived notions at all before viewing this movie and you may find it mildly amusing why. I had somehow gotten into my head (how and why, I don’t know) that we were going to watch some sort of Japanese saga probably about some kids that were going to be whisked away from their parents and brought to a Buddhist monastery in Tibet to see who their future “from God’s mouth to their ears” semi-deity would be. Well, I was completely wrong, of course, because this movie is nothing of the sort. It’s a mysterious, very creative and wonderfully bizarre adventure.

The movie starts off like a dream that quickly turns into a nightmare where orphan children are taught and used to do robberies, and where Krank (Daniel Emilfork) kidnaps children to try and steal their innocent dreams as he has none of his own and is aging prematurely because of it.

Ron Perlman plays One, a retired sailor (who couldn’t catch another whale after he heard one sing) who with the help of Miette (Judith Vittet) tries to find Denrée (Joseph Lucien), aptly named because he loves to eat , who has been taken by Krank’s goons. Although blind, they have electronic night-vision goggles attached directly to their brains which seem to have some sort of radar that points them towards vulnerable children. They sweep them up into a weird and wild looking car that has, on each side, an eye within a pyramid, the “all-seeing eye”, that is used to help capture and entrap the children that are stolen. This movie is full of whacky and eerie characters including Krank’s 4 cloned brothers, Siamese twins and a brain suspended in an aquarium.

The elements in this movie are incredibly marvelous and it probably needs to be seen more than once to appreciate all the oddball apparatuses and quirky little details especially if you do not understand French and have to keep your eye on the sub-titles.

I thought the casting in this movie was exceptional. Krank’s smile could easily strike terror into anyone and Miette made me think of a young Amélie Poulain, not surprisingly, as she’s also the brain-child of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, co-writer and co-director of this movie.

This movie is very different from the fairytale fables typically spewed out of Hollywood (althought there a few great ones) that we are used to; instead it is magnificent, melancholic, dark and unforgettable.

This is Her review, you can read His review here

Keywords: Clones, Surreal, Amelie