Rare to see a film that is at its heart so fundamentally opposed to what excites and inspires me about cinema. Punishingly fussy, insufferably cutesy, with a particularly dumb high schooler's eye for visual irony and a shameful penchant for the basest cruelty. Cuaron has supposedly brought his childhood memories to life. A smart filmmaker would take this as an opportunity to interrogate the ephemerality of memory (especially taking into consideration the class divide which clouds the relations these kids take for granted) but instead he's like "nah my mise en scene is going to be unbearably fastidious, a truthful recreation." What is the goddamn point? The few actual observations he manages to muster (when he's not making room for masturbatory references to his previous films) are completely banal. "Life sure is hard for women huh." Thanks for letting us know dude. I didn't really get it until I saw that woman's baby get born dead in a single torturous take. Fuck off. Cuaron has the dramatic sensibility of a kid with posters of the Joker in his room and the visual/editing chops to match. This film is infuriatingly bad. But it has a scene where the main character is in a movie theater so, Best Picture incoming.