We're never at a dead end. I just didn't want this to become a contentious debate. I take your point about the youth of the gangsters making the violence more worrying, the material more sensational. I too had been wondering why your ethical pangs were so selective: the age factor may be an explanation and a justification. Anyway I suggested Pulp Fiction is really fantasy and obviously very tongue in cheek, therefore meant to be wicked fun. I'm not sure what Goodfellas is. Cidade de Deus is, for all its flash, more documentary in tone, due to the subject matter and the neorealismo technique of using people from the poor milieu. It is undoubtedly both titillating and chilling that it's The Runts who take over at the end of the narrative of Cidade de Deus. As for film criticism, I'm totally into it, reading it and writing it, and I'm all in favor of consulting reviews, getting the range of opinion, and also picking up incidental information that the reviewers may have access to and we may not. I'd like to have more discussion of movie reviewing and movie reviewers on this site. But to me the impression you gave by quoting those passages was mainly that you were using them to support your own view, which you don't need to support: it's valid in its own right. It's not at all certain that people in Mafioso situations as in Goodfellas have the possibility of opting out, any more than the kids in City of God; and Rocket does manage to opt out.

It seems a shame to me that sentimentality and moralizing are no bar to universal recognition of a movie's merits, but the lack of them can be. And it is also a bit odd that this movie is considered "too violent" when its violence is true to life, whereas ultraviolent special effects movies are fine for kids to watch. I'd rather the violence we see be real and tragic, not a show for adult children.

What do you think of Black Hawk Down? I found it very demoralizing and completely without human content, though in its way extremely accurate. Maybe for it my reaction was more like yours with City of God: I wanted more commentary, more of a message, an anti-war message. We are always selective and arbitrary in our judgments but we have to trust our gut feelings or we're lost.