Roma – 7

Alfonso Cuaron’s paean to his childhood nanny in 1971 black-and-white made me think, for different reasons, of The Bicycle Thief and Proust’s Francoise, but it clearly meant more to him than to me. I kept waiting for something to happen, and when I realized that wasn’t the point, it was too late. I was more emotionally involved in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. It’s hard to give a low score to a film that is so perfectly realized, and there were touches, like the plane flying overhead, that piqued the imagination. But then there were scenes, like the student demonstration and shooting in the furniture store, that, rather than adding context and complexity, merely baffled. I didn’t detect the three layers of storytelling that Roger Durling advertised, nor do I think it will be “the best movie of the year.”