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Rating: 9/10 (15 July 2016)

In City of God, the brilliance in movie making is rivaled only by the brutality.
It seems every technique known to man has been utilised in making film, which makes it feel like a masterpiece in the original medieval sense of that word. In particular, there is a lot of hand held camera and quite close up shots, which make sense and make the film really tangible and personal.
The writing is brilliant. A kid asks another kid what his name is during a brawl and the narrator uses that opportunity to tell the audience his name. A lot of smart little things like that, but the story itself also has a good structure and smart turns.
I watched a whole lot of Oscar-winning Hollywood movies and they have just been dwarfed by this Brazilian one, but this crime drama is a really heavy movie to sit through. There is some really really messed up stuff here. Be warned. And in that regard, I have been a little bit sceptical about how believable the extreme villainy of some of the kids in this movie is (and characters in general), but after reading and seeing some of the recent events in the world, I guess I have to adjust my views of reality.
This film puts me in a strange position. On the one hand I cannot deny the brilliance of the film. One the other hand, from the entertainment perspective, the film left me feeling kind of uncomfortable.