Biutiful (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, 2010)

4/10
The ultimate removal however was Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Biutiful, which never makes the slightest effort to engage the audience or make us feel any sort of pity for its put-upon, cancer-addled protagonist Uxbal (played by Javier Bardem with a stone face and fists shoved perpetually into his pockets, as if this alone is enough to invite sympathy). The movie is desperately grave and deals with what should be very emotive topics (human trafficking, impending death, abuse, the struggle to survive, righting our wrongs, etc) but they all glide by without hitting even the most minor of chords. Which is all inoffensive (if disappointing) enough but Inarritu commits one of my few cardinal sins of filmmaking when (slight spoilers) he repeats the mysterious opening scene from the beginning of the film in its entirety at the end - as if his audience is too stupid to realize the significance of such a scene and keep it in mind the entire time that they need it read back to them. Shameful.