The Phantom of Liberty

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Alec B Buñuel at his most playful and hilarious. It jumps from one absurd scenario to another without bringing any of those pieces to a satisfying conclusion but the film never feels inconsistent or jarring. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 11/10/23 Full Review Dave S Luis Bunuel, the master of cinematic surrealism, takes things to a new level of oddness in The Phantom of Liberty. Consisting of a series of short vignettes tied together with the most slender of threads, we encounter poker playing monks, a fox hunt that involves the military, a meandering emu, toilets used as dinner chairs, an elderly virgin pursued by her amorous nephew, a mass murderer who becomes a highly celebrated celebrity, and a young girl who is declared missing, despite being in the presence of her parents. And there's more!! Bunuel takes aim at all of the targets he has traditionally attacked over the course of his career, but that doesn't make The Phantom of Liberty any less impactful. It is an ingenious and wonderfully inventive bit of weirdness that never fails to entertain. ‘Long live chains!!' Indeed. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 05/05/23 Full Review William L "Those bastards who mistreat animals should be drowned." Mr. Buñuel, have you seen ANY of your other movies? A surrealist comedy of manners that sees Buñuel move away from explicitly criticizing the habits of the Church and the upper classes to more universal territory, taking aim at common social mores and assumptions about conduct that most take for granted. It's a film that you have to keep an eye on, as the script creates plausible scenarios and characters to lull you into a sense of security before dropping an absurdist twist without warning, with each actor playing their respective roles straight as if they're Leslie Nielsen in Airplane!; the particular style is not unique to the director (Jacques Tati comes to mind, in some respects), but there are plenty of Buñuel's unique artistic traits, particularly the focus on creating dialogue that sounds respectable and formal in short bursts but which immediately becomes satirical viewed from a step or two back. In some ways it's a film that feels completely ahead of its time, with a focus on shallow government and social institutions and characters that exist in a post-truth world, sincerely going about their days without complaint or self-awareness. Perhaps not as famous as some of the director's other films, but still plenty sharp. (3.5/5) Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 07/27/22 Full Review david f This film was a disparate collection of surrealist anecdotes. A topless piano player and a dinner table with toilet seats for chairs are a couple of the jarringly inventive visuals but I think that most of these scenes are too personal to the director, Luis Buñuel, and not given enough connective tissue to gel for the average viewer. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member some very funny, absurd typical Bunuel moments and some less successful, makes this film a mixed bag. I saw it a couple of days after La Charme Discret De La Bourgeoisie and I didn't enjoyed it as much. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 01/24/23 Full Review Audience Member Of course it's a classic, absolutely mandatory film. Great ideas, aged well. BUT: acting is very farcical, the directing is very loose and some bits are too self-explanatory, maybe they would work better as a comic strip or a stage play. The ideas are great, but the execution not so much. Very brave movie. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/14/23 Full Review Read all reviews

The Phantom of Liberty

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