Kenneth Branagh’s wildly over-praised Belfast is similar to Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma in three respects — black-and-white cinematography, focus on a family, violent political conflict affecting the basic climate.

The difference is that Branagh seems afraid of turning off the cinematic low-brows with a sudden plunge into monochrome, so he begins his 1969 tale in the glorious digital present, showing Belfast’s brilliant colors and upgraded commercial center, all spiffy and rockin’ to some punchy tune.

Only after the audience has been sated with the colorful safety of now for two full minutes does Branagh summon the resolve to commit to black-and-white and the Belfast that once was.

Cuaron, of course, started his film in monochrome from the get-go and stayed with it.

Initially written during Monday’s 858–mile marathon, re–edited and tweaked in West Hollywood on Tuesday morning: On Sunday night (9.5) I finally caught Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, and there’s no question that it’s brilliant and (I mean this respectfully) oddly hateful in a chilly sort of way.

It’s a visual knockout on a shot-by-shot basis. but except for a scene or two featuring Jeffrey Wright it refuses to provide any sort of narrative tissue or emotional connection with the characters. It’s all arch attitude, snide-ironic voice-overs and deadpan expressions, and after a while it makes you intensely angry. That or your spirit wilts or you become weak in the knees.

The French Dispatch is a bullwhip immersion in hardcore, doubled-down Wes. It’s not that there’s no way “in” as much as there isn’t the slightest interest in offering any kind of common humanity element.

So much so that I began to wonder if Wes might be going through a phase vaguely similar to Jean-Luc Godard’s Marxist-Maoist revolutionary period (‘68 to ‘79). I ask because it’s a pure head-trip objet d’art — there’s no sense whatsoever that Dispatch is looking to engage on any kind of semi-accessible level, even to the extent of reaching people like me.

It’s so mannered and wry and rapid-fire ironic that it sucks the oxygen right out of your lungs.

That said, I loved the boxy (1.37:1) cinematography. I was also kind of wondering why Wes didn’t use 1.66:1 more often. (I’m actually not sure he used it at all.). It seemed to be about 85% boxy and 15% widescreen scope (2.4:1).

For me the most humanly relatable moment doesn’t involve Wright’s character. It happens, rather, during the 1968 sequence that costars Frances McDormand as a Dispatch staffer writing about the fevered climate of French student revolt. Asked if writing is a lonely, isolating profession, McDormand answers “sometimes.”

There’s no chance that anyone this fall will even flirt with the concept of Dispatch being worthy of above-the-line Oscar noms — at best it could land some for production design, costumes, makeup, editing.

Again, Deadline‘s Pete Hammond:

Pretty much all of your sharper, tougher Telluride critics have problems with Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast. The more obliging middle-of-the-road types (critics, columnists and industry folk alike) have oddly fallen for it.

You can’t grab people by the lapels and order them to have a sense of taste about such matters. If someone likes Belfast or finds it Oscar-worthy, okay — shrug and throw your hands up. But when someone says Belfast is “one of the best films [they’ve] ever seen,” all kinds of crazy reactions come to mind. Because it’s fair, I believe, to compare Belfast’s family dynamic with that of Fred Savage and The Wonder Years, as IndieWire’s David Ehrlich did today.

Either you’re the type who can tolerate or, God forbid, embrace cloying emotionalism, or you aren’t..

From a 9.5 Deadline column by Pete Hammond:

Jean-Paul Belmondo has passed at age 88. No strenuous sorrows as he persevered for nearly nine decades, and lived a much fuller and more colorful life than the norm.

Belmondo’s career was launched by his starring role in Jean-Luc Godard‘s Breathless (’60). How good is that 61-year-old film, really? I would say more “fleetingly iconic” than great. The adoration that Belmondo’s character, Michel, felt for the tough-guy manner of Humphrey Bogart — that’s what sticks in the mind. Particularly his Bogartian facial expressions as he lies dying on a street in Paris. Right before he’s shot, Michel says “I’m tired…I want to sleep.” An odd sentiment at such a young age — a natural or not unexpected thing to say at age 88.