Nos âmes d'enfants

Don't know about you, but i can only say "i love cinema" after watching movies like this. Mike Mills, whom i loved with 20th Century Women, is now one of my favorite directors. Joaquin Phoenix is back to his roots after Joker. Well done. Robbie Ryan has done an amazing cinematography. Woody Norman isn't just a good actor, he's like God's gift to Hollywood. I hope A24 releases this movie on 4K Blu-ray.

Roma, US Version? No thank you. I know it got huge praises but if you check the negative reviews it's people writing they can't get through it, it's all arty to hide the fact that there is no real story. Same here, again. It all looks like a documentary about regular people in black and white. No thanks. I don't need the social commentary in a movie, that's why I want to watch a movie in the first place. If I want social commentary I would switch on the news. Glad I only spent 15 minutes on this dreck, although I realized my mistake of even trying to watch after 2! High rating with only ~5k people voting doesn't mean it's actually good. Don't be afraid to regard it as negative just to fit in!

I loved it. It's a beautiful film. There aren't many films made like this today. Probably why this film stands out so much. The dialogue in the screenplay is very organic and realistic. I could almost swear it was improvised. Joanquin Phoenix and Woody Norman (boy) gave great performances and they both have a lot of chemistry together. It's good to see a film that portrays a positive adult male image in film with children. The black and white cinematography makes the film timeless. Joanquin Phoenix it's one hell of a great actor.

Seriously, two people came out of the early matinee as we arrived and we found ourselves alone when the movie started. For most of it I fought to stay awake. It thought this movie might be a joke, really are they serious? Most of the dialogue (and it's all dialogue) could have been cut out of one piece of the movie and pasted into another part of the movie without making a noticeable difference to anyone. Beyond boring.

A well acted depression fest where 3 people from one of the most privileged countries in the world drown in their own misery making life difficult for each other for what seems like the sake of it. If you're looking for something to lift you for a few hours away from the hard work of the real world, this probably isn't going to help much at all, but then nothing much in American cinema gives you that at the moment. It was a beautiful shot film really well crafted and acted about one generation of messed up people creating the next generation of messed up people and making it ok to be that.

The interaction & conversation between him & the boy are so natural. I didn't feel like I was watching a movie. It was so real. I was even wondering if they really used a "script" because it didn't look like acting at all. After watching the movie, I started to think kids are more than just innocent. They have concern, worries & struggles. Parenting is such a difficult course. The communication skill is so important when it comes to parenting. I am sure many parents would relate when they watch this movie.

Firstly, it's simply... swell to see Joaquin Phoenix in a role like this. And it doesn't mean this man Johnny (or Uncle Johnny as his role here) has all his crap together emotionally or knows totally what he wants out of his life, or that of course he has a good bit of grief over a dead parent (mostly alluded to but we get enough of the gist to know there's pain there, as if the sad beard wasn't enough). But compared to his more recent work (we know the one), here he gets to vibe for a while with a totally delightful kid via Woody Norman, the kind of role that I hope is just this but I doubt it, he has too much natural charisma and forgive the wording spunk, and that's enough really to make it a worthwhile and even in its narrow ambitions kind of special. It feels perhaps slightly, uh, twee or somewhat precious in those documentary snippets with Johnny asking the Big Questions of What's the Future and What about Nature and so on, like I'm seeing snippets from one of those New York Times Shorts that plays before movies at the IFC Center (that's not meant entirely to be a put down, just what it is), but even that makes for fairly interesting additions to the main meat of the movie which is watching this man and this child bond and sometimes bicker and sometimes grow closer and then apart and then have moments where Johnny gets the kid to yell out his feelings, and it's all presented in this lovely, semi-poetic stream of scenes as opposed to a traditional narrative. This doesn't mean there isn't a strong emotional throughline due to the mom and her back and forth with her brother (Gaby Hoffman, who I can't recall in a movie in a long time and is absolutely wonderful and moving and is acting her tuchus off and matching Phoenix and possibly besting him as he coasts on the sad beard, sorry I can't help but bring it up again), or what the past, present and future of the kid's father, mom's bi-polar husband, dealing with all his mental health, and all of that baggage in the mix. In short, Cmon Cmon I can see being the sort of film you do need to be in a certain mind frame for, with its luscious black and white cinematography and Mill's knack for juxtaposing moments with the voice over and then Johnny's own reflection on a day's events by himself with his microphone (basically doing a slightly more clever form of voice over) and all of the feelings being wrestled with. What I responded to was just how pure and simple and yet not so simple this relationship is shown, and that it can be difficult to make a child be endearing in an adult drama and Mills even passable pulling it off feels like a miracle. It also has a good sense of depicting how a family tries to deal/be OK with someone so close with mental health disease (spoiler, it's hard and "better" never means over). And I can't stress enough how nice it is for Phoenix to have this guy to be in and all the time with this kid - it's almost like a vacation into semi-normalcy before he goes back to Ari Aster and Ridley Scott's Napoleon and all that jazz. It's not a great film, but a very good one that's like a comfy set of Art Housr Pj's, one that may have been or just seemed more commonplace back in the 90s, and that doesn't mean it gets an extra bump in that sense but that to have a small, warm-and-dark intimate character study is unique more due to how theatrical distribution is presently. Oh, and what a superb needle drop for Velvet Underground and "Sister Ray!