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Some commentator once said that a movie masterpiece is a film with three great scenes and no bad ones. Well, Roma has at least two great scenes (the birth and the beach rescue) and no bad ones but I still don't like it. It's my beef of the week. This played to me like a self-conscious tribute to Italian neo-realism right down to its incongruous title. Its phoniness is best encapsulated by the "surreal" scene in which some guy in a monster suit wanders through a wild fire and then stops to sing for no good reason. Apart from this ditty, though, there's pretty much no music in the entire film and it shows. The film drags. Sure, this is a slice-of-life film about people in flyover territory (and you can't miss that symbolism) but, let's face it, those same people would rather go to Marooned. Or Gravity. So this is a somber feel-bad film for people who feel guilty about the help. It also has more dog sh*t than any other film in history -- why this conspicuous mess wasn't attended to by the maids makes it both a false note and something of a double-bladed symbol.
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