He's not quite as good as Cuarón, but he is better than del Toro, IMO.

He'll never win, but Javier Bardem completely deserves the Best Actor Oscar. He's just fantastic in this.

The key to this movie's enormous success, beneath its enthralling crime-movie trappings and unnerving supernatural elements, is how well Bardem and Iñárritu capture what a dying parent must feel in their final days. The idea of having to leave one's children far sooner than expected, the fear they might not remember you, etc. Heartrending.

There's also lots of indelible imagery. The scene with the birds!

This should've been nominated for Best Picture, not "just" Best Foreign Language Film. It's so much better than a lot of the nominees, including The Social Network.

To anyone who knows Barcelona and the places and ambience in which Bardem's character moves this movie must be one of the most unintentionally funniest of the year.

Oh, who gives a flying fuck... As long as the milieu feels alive and energetic and harsh and real, nothing else matters at all. I've never been in a favela or a crime den in Melbourne, but City of God and Animal Kingdom made them come alive on the screen, made them feel real. And Biutiful does this for where it's set, completely.

Now I am excited to see it!

A spanish gypsy (Bardem) who lives from the work of exploited Africans and Chinese.

Chinese mafia in Barcelona is such a closed society that no Spaniard whatsoever would make money from them.


A van from a special squad of the Mossos d’Esquadra hitting the Africans selling pirated stuff and making a lot of fuss to capture them all in Plaza Cataluña.

You can see them selling marihuana in the middle of Las Ramblas in front of everyone every day and no one even cares. Like the police is going to make such a fuss to capture a group that’s selling fake bags for 3 Euros.


Bardem, who will die soon, gives an envelope with money to the wife of a Senegalese who sells bags and was captured and sent back to his country. He barely knows her (and the film makes clear that she needs the money) but still gives her the money to take care of his two kids.

Of course, in real life she would have already run away with the money before I could even end typing this sentence, but in the movie, nooooo, she is so good, that she really takes care of the kids. Hah!
Every one in Barcelona will tell you that the people that the movie portrays would sell their mother for 1 Euro and change.


Bardem’s wife, with whom he has an intermittent relation, cheats him with his own brother and he catches them both. He grabs his brother a la Clint Eastwood and threatens him, but with his wife, who starts crying, he sits down, caress and tries to understand her (he almost ends up applauding her too).

Typical Feminazi agenda where the brother is treated like an asshole and the wife, who is equally at fault, is just a victim of the brother.
A real gypsy catches his wife cheating on him and the first thing he does is grab her by the hair to beat her senseless, and then he goes after the cheater.


So please don’t tell me the milieu feels real.

I don't care when American movies don't get some Spanish or other country stuff wrong (the running of the bulls in Sevilla and not in Pamplona in NIGHT AND DAY, showing the Romerias of Sevilla as the Fallas in Valencia in MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2, saying Frankfurt in A-TEAM and you see the Cologne Dome) as those movies are fluff.

But I detest when reality is altered in movies that pretend to be pretentious and at the end they basically end up being a joke.

(Hmmm, now I'm starting to worry a bit as I was sure I wrote a review for both this and 127 Hours)

8/10 -> B

It's a really good movie. But this one could have been much better. Two stories don't work very well together as they feel like two completely separate stories. I would have preferred if this was:

a) a movie about a man who talks to the dead and helps them crossover, but when his time comes he's unable to leave things clear with his children thus he will need a help himself to crossover

b) a movie about a man who talks to the dead and helps them crossover, but when his time comes he's unable to leave things clear with everyone he hurt while doing job on the grey/black market

As both stories happen they never feel like they have any connection whatsoever. While Bardem was pretty good I never fully believed that both of his guilts were working at the same time. While he was with his children he seemed like his guilt over his job didn't exist and vice versa.

I must say that I loved the opening scene. One of the best opening scenes I've ever seen. There was just something magical with the way those hands were filmed and how they moved them.

This is racism and xenophobia, not a factual error.

-Feels-, Price, -feels-. A movie's milieu can feel real without being 100% accurate.

Yeah, Gunslinger's argument is kind of ridiculous. It's basically "well I'm ignorant of that so it's a great movie." I mean, if I'm unaware of specific inaccuracies in a movie of course they won't detract from my opinion because they can't. However if someone points them out, to argue that they are irrelevant and the movie is still perfect and it's play at realism shouldn't be affected by the reality it's showing... it's a really dumb argument.

Nothing Price said is revelatory enough to discount the experience of watching the actual film. Or revelatory at all, to be honest. Oh, the cops wouldn't have busted those characters for stealing counterfeit goods. Oh, she's African, so she'd have just stolen the money. A noble African in Barcelona? Ha ha ha.

And my original point remains. Prieto's cinematography and the locations give the film a very "alive" feeling. The milieu felt real as the film unfolded.

Seriously people. It's not a documentary. It's a movie. It has ghosts in it. And you're arguing about how the reality of Barcelona is misrepresented? LOL.

I haven't even seen the movie, but all of this feels very nitpicky.

I agree that as a cinematic experience if the setting is presented as real than that can make a good movie. be.ready is also correct that this isn't a documentary and I'm not asking for complete accuracy. However to argue details of the situation they are trying to accurately represent as realism within a movie are irrelevant is silly. If I go see Cedar Rapids and they mention the city is west of des moines than as an Iowan that is something that would irritate me. If you're using details of reality to depict realism in a film I think the accuracy is relevant.
Having said all that it is nitpicky, I just think your argument is too bent on not allowing anything to detract from how much you love the movie, as with most of your arguments about films. It's okay for a movie to have flaws Gunslinger, those no reason not to acknowledge them and move on.

I see your point, BUT I'd argue Price didn't cite any factual errors. A Spaniard could NEVER do business with Chinese gangsters? Eh. Maybe, if Price says so. Barcelona police don't care about counterfeit goods? Eh. Maybe, if Price says so. Neither of those is a mind-blowing factual error, and everything else he said was a problem he had with a character arc or theme.

I should have specified, it was this point I was obejcting to, not anything subsequent. Price's examples don't really matter to me, I just thout this was a silly argument.

I don't mind you liking the movie at all, I just took exception to the parts in bold.



Problem is it may feel real, but if it's not, you are just being manipulated by the director/screenwriter. Not that there is something wrong with that, but you should at least be aware of it.

I respect what you're saying, but I still don't entirely agree, lol. At times it's nice to just give oneself over to a film. I'm sure you or I could go over, say, Barry Lyndon with a fine-tooth comb, analyzing Kubrick's film vs. the real customs and history of the era of George III's reign, and discrepancies might artise. And there might be a lot of interest in those discrepancies for students of history or sociology, but there's something depressingly cynical about it as a film fan. I kind of like the idea of, "It feels real enough, if it looks real enough, if the milieu doesn't strike you as aggressively phoney, then give yourself over to it unabashedly."