The Florida Project (2017)'s comments

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Pike

An intimate, subtle and graceful story that still manages to effortlessly hit notes of epicness throughout. No preaching, no monologuing, just people moving through their complicated lives, leaving it to us to feel and think about what it means on a micro and macro level. It's pretty much unmissable.

6 years 3 months ago

ntan

See it see it see it.

The title comes from the working title for Walt Disney World Resort during its planning and construction. And that's where this story takes place. In the cheap rundown motels on the way to Disney's magical gates. It's a harsh portrait of a sector we don't see too often on film. Outstanding performances all around, and an ending that will make you angry and heartbroken at the same time.

6 years 6 months ago

Ebbywebby

With Caleb Landry Jones as The Guy Who Helps Move Stuff.

6 years 4 months ago

Siskoid

Like his previous project, Tangerine, Sean Baker's The Florida Project feels like a documentary, in large part because the kids feel so real - he just lets them be themselves, I imagine, rather than follow scripted dialogue. The film ably acts as a nearly plotless slice of life snapshot set in an unusual ghetto, a set of colorful motels near (but not too near) Disneyland, where most of the residents are living week to week, whole families to each room. While their circumstances aren't ideal - poverty, negligent parents - the kids nevertheless have fun, use their imaginations, and due to lack of supervision, get up to a lot of trouble. Adult struggles - represented by Bria Vinaite's irresponsible single mother and Willem Dafoe's paternalistic motel manager - don't really make a big splash in their perceived reality. This is just how it is, and the film, shot in vibrant color, puts the lie to the idea that a harsh environment necessarily leads to misery. And yet, there's tension between the image and the audience, as we're forced to imagine just what kind of people these children are becoming. Living on the outskirts of a magical kingdom, it seems unlikely they could ever escape to it, the soundtrack to their lives forever a noisy highway.

6 years 1 month ago