Popcorn Kernels: La Movida

As our Almodóvar marathon draws ever nearer to its conclusion, let’s review three consecutive films from his early period, roughshod works born from La Movida: the progressive Spanish punk scene that formed in Madrid following the death of the dictatorial, conservative King Franco.

Labyrinth of Passion

Year: 1982

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Cast: Cecilia Roth, Imanol Arias, Helga Liné 

Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

A gay Tehrani prince and a nymphomaniac rock starlet fall in love within the hustle and bustle of Madrid, surrounded by interlocking stories of passion, sex, and rock ‘n roll.

Just two years after his messy but promising debut with Pepi, Luci, Bom, Pedro Almodóvar proved with Labyrinth of Passion that his early period of trial and error would be like no other. Although he wouldn’t achieve true greatness until 1987’s Law of Desire, all the ingredients that he would use throughout his career can be found in Labyrinth.

The absurd kinkiness delivered with a casual shrug that defines most of the director’s best works is at full bore here, with the farcical plot twisting around pharmaceutically-induced incest, a hilariously hard-up psychoanalyst, and a beachside flashback that in one fell swoop delivers upon two characters their nymphomania, daddy issues, and homosexuality, with the implication that a bunch of kids are about to have an orgy. It’s ribald. It’s excessive. It’s La Movida.

Although the plot is certainly more lucid and coherent than Pepi, Luci, Bom, Labyrinth takes frequent breaks from juggling its sixteen or so characters to indulge in a prolonged exploration of the fashion and music of Almodóvar’s Madrid (including two extended cameos of the director himself, alongside musical collaborator Fanny McNamara) Frankly, it’s not compelling filmmaking, but it’s a fascinating cultural document that helps you understand exactly where the man and his unique approach to cinema came from.

But even if it’s not on a whole one of his masterworks, Labyrinth of Passion shows an astonishing vertical leap in Almodóvar’s sense of style. Although his increased budget was still relatively small, he found much more freedom in creating a universe filled with bold colors and retro pop art designs. It’s a beautiful-looking movie, bursting fully formed from the visual imagination of an aesthetic genus.

And it’s damn funny. Almodóvar’s fast-talking, effortlessly cool characters deliver incredibly clever dialogue as if it were the easiest thing in the world. It’s a loving, hilarious portrait of a world burgeoning with life, and even though it’s still a bit slapdash and all-over-the-place, it’s a wonderful showcase of exactly what the young director was capable of.

Rating: 7/10

Dark Habits

Year: 1983

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Cast: Cristina Sánchez Pascual, Will More, Laura Cepeda 

Run Time: 1 hour 54 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

A heroin-addicted nightclub singer takes refuge in a convent, which is run by nuns who turn out to be just as sinful as she is.

Dark Habits contains the seeds of just about everything that would come to define Almodóvar’s alter work. Absurdly casual kink and blasphemy, loosely scripted melodrama with a pinch of ironic comedy and an enclosed world dominated by a group of diverse women.

It even features many key players who would come to define his key ensemble: Consummate cranky mother Chus Lampreave (as Sister Rat, who secretly writes porn in her spare time), 80’s muse Carmen Maura (as the bongo-playing Sister Damned, who cares for the convent’s pet tiger), The Flower of My Secret star Marisa Paredes (as the pious Sister Manure, who physically punishes herself every chance she gets and takes LSD to get hallucinations of the divine), the matronly Julieta Serrano (as the heroin-addicted lesbian Mother Superior), and All About My Mother heavy-hitter Cecilia Roth (as Mercedes, a drug-dealing former nun).

Unfortunately Dark Habits is mostly defined by those iconic Almodóvar qualities that it lacks. Aside from Serrano and Lampreave, the other ensemble actresses play very minor pars, and the crux of the plot lays on the shoulder of Cristina Sanchez, the wife of the producer. Although she played minor roles in Almodóvar’s two previous films (as “Bearded Lady” and “Eusebio’s girlfriend”), it’s obvious he didn’t find an inspiring figure in her as a lead, and the film’s emotional center is lopsided because of it.

Also, the technical quality here is extremely poor. Almodóvar was still building up his mastery of film aesthetic (which begins to rear its head a the party setpiece in the third act), but the kinks he had to work out include such major factors as sound and cinematography. There are entire scenes that are incomprehensibly muffled, and though he has fun with lighting during his chapel scenes, not even the most forgiving viewer would find the camerawork comparable to Bad Education, or even Law of Desire, which came a mere four years later.

It’s fine to spend time with these charming nuns, but the melodrama never coheres into a legible whole (entirely new plot developments are still unspooling five minutes from the end) and it’s a little too long for such a meandering hang-out movie. I love me some nuns gone wild, but an Almodóvar half a decade later could have made something much more moving and satisfying out of this very same premise.

Rating: 6/10

What Have I Done to Deserve This?

Year: 1984

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Cast: Carmen Maura, Gonzalo Suárez, Luis Hostalot 

Run Time: 1 hour 41 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

The lives of a downtrodden housewife, a dominatrix, an alcoholic writer, an impotent policeman, a lizard, and a  telekinetic little girl intertwine in a Madrid apartment complex.

What Have I Done to Deserve This? (aka ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto?, which is not any easier to type) is the worst Almodóvar film I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen all but four at the time I’m writing this. It’s the only one I’ve considered giving a score that isn’t even marginally positive, but as I was flipping through my notes I realized something. This movie is freaking hilarious.

The big standout is Chus Lampreave (playing essentially the same role as her peak performance in The Flower of My Secret, in which she’s lucky enough to get to play off the incredible Rossy de Palma, who the Almodóvar ensemble acquired in 1987). Her batty old mother schtick never gets old, but she has some especially sharp moments here, and her relationship with a lizard she finds in a park might just be the emotional lynchpin of the entire film.

And although Carmen Maura is limited by her character being the center of the “tragi-“ half of this tragicomic film, she still brings a blustery detachment to some of the director’s kinkiest scenes yet that makes them even funnier. You can’t not giggle as she makes a quick buck by sitting next to an exhibitionist going at it with her prostitute neighbor, still clutching the groceries she walked in with, bored out of her mind. And out of all the casual kink of Almodóvar’s early work, nothing can beat the brutally businesslike transaction where she lets her son be adopted by a pedophile dentist because she can’t afford to get him a new crown. It’s dark as hell, but not a single character sees it that way, and that’s the perverse magic of this director, especially during his boundary-pushing Movida period.

So yes, it’s funny. It’s just not much of anything else. The final scenes are incredibly moving, but for the most part the story keeps you at arm’s length, all the while being incredibly confusing. The interlocking story combines autobiographical elements (Almodóvar’s time as a letter writer in his home village is reflected here), vintage kink, a family drama instinct that will eventually pupate into Volver, and a bunch of scattered odds and ends of characters who pretty much amount to nothing (including a telekinetic little girl who should’ve had more than three minutes of screen time), which all jostle for attention in a harried mush.

There are feints toward the cinematic artistry that Almodóvar would truly manifest in Law of Desire, like the lizard named Money who arrives in a time of chaos, metaphorically representing every character’s tangled motivation. But the limitations of the set make this a very static, almost neorealist movie, and that approach is too inherently lifeless to benefit from the director’s particular talents. It’s a noble mess, but a mess nonetheless, and not one that I would feel particularly keen to revisit.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1075

Popcorn Kernels: Pain And Life

Here is another trio of reviews on Pedro Almodóvar films, as we enter our final summer marathon of his collected filmography.

Matador

Year: 1986
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Assumpta Serna, Antonio Banderas, Nacho Martínez
Run Time: 1 hour 50 minutes
MPAA Rating: NC-17

A matador obsessed with death meet a defense attorney with a similar fetish when one of his students confesses to a string of murders

Matador is one of Almodóvar’s weirder movies, and that’s really saying something. It’s kinky, edgy, and dark in ways only his early 80’s output could be. He was still exploring his craft, and there was certainly still room for improvement, but his inimitable voice still rings loud and clear.

For one thing, this tale of rape, murder, suicide, and necrophilia is hilarious. The A-plot is as straight as a drama can be, but it bounces between a litany of buoyant performances on the sidelines: Julieta Serrano as the pious, bullying mother of Antonio Banderas, Chus Lampreave as the doting, oversharing mother of the model he assaults in an early scene, and even Pedro Almodóvar himself, in an uncredited cameo as a fashion show director. Their antics and complete lack of self-awareness allow Matador a levity that prevents the subject matter from becoming too unbearably dark.

And despite its lack of the bold color patterns that would come to define the director’s work, Matador is beautiful on top of everything. The opening scene in which bullfighting is compared to seduction numbers among the director’s most sublime visual sequences. Unfortunately, this level of cinematic perfection fails to sustain itself, and in turn is incapable of keeping the messy plot on life support. It’s still a delightful slice of filmmaking, but it overstays its welcome, something that almost no Almodóvar movie is capable of doing.

Rating: 6/10

The Flower of My Secret

Year: 1995
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Marisa Paredes, Juan Echanove, Carme Elias
Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

A romance author can’t find inspiration now that her marriage is on the rocks, and takes a newspaper job where she has to review her own novel.

The Flower of My Secret is definitely a middling Almodóvar work, from his period in the early 90’s that people don’t like to talk about quite so much. Nevertheless, if any other director had made it, it would be considered the peak of their career. That’s the kind of sliding scale we’re working with when we discuss Almodóvar, and that’s a glorious thing.

As far as I can figure it, there are only two things “wrong” with The Flower of My Secret. First, while Almodóvar’s plots do tend to meander, this one really gets away from him, especially in the third act. The movie is short enough that the messy plotting isn’t exhausting, but it can be a bit difficult to really sink your teeth into it. The second thing is that the film is just plain. The director’s retro, eye-searing colors and bold set design choices are rather toned down here, so there are no images immutably burned into your brain.

Those are the reasons it’s not a classic Almodóvar film. The reasons it’s a great Almodóvar film are numerous. For one thing, it’s downright hilarious. The plot beats are reserved for some heartstring-plucking melodrama, but some of the film’s many detours find their way into character-based joviality, with dialogue slipping over itself in a beautiful farcical frenzy. This reaches a particular height whenever our protagonist visits her mother and sitter, played by Almodóvar stalwarts Rossy de Palma and Chus Lampreave. Lampreave especially takes what she was working with in Matador and turns it up 11 as a batty, headstrong aging mother stock character given warmth and depth around the edges of her irresistible performance.

The melodrama is also well-crafted, anchored by the terrific Marisa Paredes, who joined the Almodóvar troupe in the early 80’s, but really rose to the top of the heap with his 90’s material. The scene of Paredes seeking comfort from the women in a knitting circle in her hometown is worth the price of admission alone. Paredes suffers a lot, but Almodóvar uses her trials and tribulation to celebrate life, love, art, beauty, and especially women of every shape and size.

Rating: 8/10

Broken Embraces

Year: 2009
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Penélope Cruz, Lluís Homar, Blanca Portillo
Run Time: 2 hours 7 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

A blind filmmaker revisits a tragedy that struck 14 years ago while he was directing his final film.

Broken Embraces is definitely a Pedro Almodóvar movie. If ever you see a lush melodrama filled with gorgeous women and mop-headed twinks boasting an ending that makes you go “oh, that’s all?,” he is surely behind it. A lot of his favorite themes are present: a death setting a chain of events in motion, an artist finding catharsis through their craft, Penelope Cruz looking gorgeous as all hell… It’s definitely in his drama vein.

Frankly, Almodóvar’s dramas don’t appeal to me nearly as readily as his comedies, but broken Embraces struck me more than most of the others. There’s a quiet beauty in this reflection on a long, full career. And the autobiographical elements are hardly veiled, considering that this character is in the middle of making a fictionalized version of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. The only difference is that this version (titled Chicas y Maletas) is kind of a disaster whereas Breakdown is a stone-cold masterpiece.

Like most of his dramas, Broken Embraces is a technical triumph. From the detailed production design to Cruz’s platinum blonde wig so fierce they had to call in animal control, every item in the frame is perfectly composed. All the better to let the emotions of the story spill out around it. Frankly, I can’t find that much unique to point out, because it’s exactly as sublime as his other efforts. I should really step back and appreciate how lucky I am to be able to take this film’s craft for granted, but the sad fact is if it’s not Volver, then I’m just not as invested.

Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 1024

Popcorn Kernels: Queers For Fears

In which we catch up with two delightfully queer films I watched an embarrassingly long time ago.

To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar

Year: 1995

Director: Beeban Kidron

Cast: Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze, John Leguizamo 

Run Time: 1 hour 49 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Three drag queens on a road trip break down in a small Southern town and befriend the local ladyfolk.

It is an absolute miracle that To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar got made in the first place. Obviously it owes its existence to that other drag queen road comedy with an overwhelming title The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, but the fact that this movie got made in late 90’s America with this caliber of onscreen talent and that it didn't turn out to be an unholy mess is something that makes me ant to fall to my knees and weep in gratitude.

First and foremost, To Wong Foo doesn’t treat its drag queen protagonists with kid gloves. It takes the fact that they’re gay men who dress up like women for granted, and though it’s a bit of an indulgent fantasy in terms of how often they’re in drag during their daily lives, their personalities and conflicts aren’t defined by their proclivities: Patrick Swayze’s Vida is a bit too prim and controlling, but has a warm, gregarious nature as a shield against her cold upbringing. John Leguizamo’s standout character Chi-Chi just wants to be loved, but her fierce stubborn nature gets her in hot water. And Wesley Snipes’ Noxeema needs to learn to open her heart after sending so long closing it off from the world.

Its depiction of the inhabitants of a small Southern town as hopeless yokels who need to be save by urban sophisticates probably isn’t quite so tender and realistic, but really: who needed the representation more? And they’re treated with just enough respect and autonomy that it’s easy to ignore their more cartoonish nature. Regardless, To Wong Foo is a cartoonish comedy, dazzling audiences with gleeful, glitzy camp magic.

It’s uncompromising in its queerness, and that leads it down a road to letting comedy develop naturally from its characters. Is it the best comedy in the world? No, probably not. But a charming and character-driven rote comedy is nothing to thumb your nose at, especially when those characters are so far outside the usual sphere.

The best thing To Wong Foo has to offer is its cast, who justify every predictable beat in the plot and ground their tomfoolery in something real and true. That goes for the Southerners as well, though Leguizamo, Snipes, and Swayze are doing most of the heavy lifting. With or without its prematurely progressive values, To Wong Foo is a delightful romp, and I am supremely glad it got made.

Rating: 8/10

The Skin I Live In

Year: 2011

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Jan Cornet 

Run Time: 2 hours

MPAA Rating: R

A respected doctor who’s developing a new synthetic skin keeps a mysterious woman captive in his mansion.

Pedro Almodóvar’s filmography has been aggressively, transgressively queer from square one. Hell, his debut film Pepi, Luci, Bom features a housewife casually getting peed on by a punk rock teenager. He’s not afraid to bring radical ideas into his filmmaking, and The Skin I Live In is the first time he has brought his unique sense of melodrama to the horror realm, or at least as close as any of his amorphous films have ever gotten to inhabiting a single genre.

The Skin I Live In is basically a decades-later progression of his earlier film Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, in which Antonio Banderas also played a captor hopelessly in love with his victim. Where that film may have been even more transgressive by giving the characters a sweet ending, The Skin I Live In leans into the more terrifying aspects of the thing, doubling down on full-tilt body horror.

Although it’s tremendously effective at creating a sense of creeping unease, The Skin I Live In is probably Almodóvar’s least visually stimulating film to date. He still retains his effervescent attention to detail in his production design but the stark, sterile color palette mutes his personality a little too much. It’s a very cold film, which works for its storyline, but also makes it just a little less accessible. And accessibility has never really been the man’s strong suit.

It’s very European, frankly, which is has every right to be. But if you’re not ready to approach it with your brain turned on at full power, you’re probably not going to like it quite as much. However, that can hardly count as a criticism. The Skin I Live In will chill you to the bone if you let it, and I certainly have.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 810

Popcorn Kernels: All Modovar

In our continuing quest to watch every Pedro Almodóvar movie ever made, we have spanned his filmography from his very first movie to his most personal, autobiographical work, to his most recent attempt to return to his roots, all of which are getting mini-reviews right here.

Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls on the Heap (Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón)

Year: 1980

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Cast:  Carmen Maura, Eva Siva, Alaska

Run Time: 1 hour 22 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

A fast-talking heiress, a submissive housewife, and a 16-year-old punk rocker come together to explore their desires, their individuality, and the anarchist lifestyle of Spain’s Movida movement.

So, it has come to this. When I found the disc for Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls on the Heap hidden in my school library’s treasure vault, I knew I had to leap on the opportunity to rent it. It’s hard to find (in fact, I had to crack through a Region 2, subtitle-less DVD to get to this screening like I was in a National Treasure movie). But I knew there was a reason it’s hard to find. As Pedro Almodóvar’s first movie, it has certain… challenges. By his own admission, the continuity is a complex puzzle with pieces missing. And he never had a lick of film school, so he was flying by the seat of his pants. However, this was also going to be a treat. I was going t see what an Almodóvar movie looked like when stripped of its directorial polish. What raw core components does he possess?

Well, the first thing I’ll say is that Pepi, Luci, Bom is unmistakably an Almodóvar movie. It has the circuitous storytelling, the twisted 50’s pop art style, and the unbreakable bedrock of humor. Hell, it has Carmen Maura, his preferred lead actress for almost a decade. But this Almodóvar isn’t the quietly kinky artiste we’ve come to know and love. This is a young Almodóvar bristling with contempt for post-Franco Spanish culture, and he has made a messy loud, delirious, radically queer anarchist text. It’s unprofessional, but it makes up for that in volume, like all the best punk rock idols.

I’m used to queer, S&M, antiestablishment subtext in the director’s work, but here it’s just plain text. Hell, it’s supertext, leaping out of the frame and splattering all over your face, much like the scene where a submissive housewife receives a golden shower from a teen punk while giving a knitting lesson. It’s sublimely kinky (the Golden Shower scene is treated like Marilyn Monroe’s famous skirt updraft in Seven Year Itch), frequently funny, disconcertingly erotic work that – if it doesn’t quite function as a narrative – at least makes a distinct impression.

The key here is Almodóvar’s casual presentation. He’s not trying to shock you, he’s just showing how these people’s lives are different from ours in shocking ways. It’s a wonderfully out-there sexual and political statement.

Now, I’ll be frank. This movie’s narrative is a shattered disaster. There is such irreparable damage to its hull that Almodóvar must resort to title cards to make any semblance of sense. Continuity is an idea this movie has heard of, but long ago or maybe in a dream. The movie slams the brakes for several full musical performances from a punk band. But it also numbers among his funniest works, building big, blaring laughs out of incredulous, frequently perverse situations. This is a sex farce that doesn’t care if you’re gay, straight, masochistic, or whatever. It will throw you full force into the midst of this incredible, memorable, irreverent, wonderfully amusing heap.

Rating: 6/10

Bad Education (La Mala Educación)

Year: 2006

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Cast: Gael García Bernal, Fele Martínez, Javier Cámara 

Run Time: 1 hour 46 minutes

MPAA Rating: NC-17

A movie director meets an old flame from boys’ school who wants to star in a movie he wrote, fictionalizing his own life. He discovers not all is exactly as it seems, and he must untangle the web of fiction and reality to discover the truth.

So, it’s time to skip forward from 1980 to 2006. With a couple odd decades to ruminate on what it means to be a film director, Almodóvar releases Bad Education, a film so clearly autobiographical that this title card fades directly to the title card of one of his protagonist’s films. Obfuscating this true to life material, which is also a scathing attack on the Catholic school system, are several layers of fictionalization that are perhaps the most frustrating of his career, and this is a man who does not shy away from circuitous narratives.

Although the narrative is difficult, I’s also supremely rewarding, providing a piano wire tension for the thriller elements that dress up this quasi-memoir. It’s telling that his film that most blends fiction and reality on the thematic level is also the one that literally folds in stark, horrifying truths from his own life. Almodóvar has always been obsessed with depicting the act of filmmaking and film viewing, but Bad Education combines them here, both within the narrative and the very structure of the film, which he uses to give him some distance from his past so he can really examine it properly.

It’s a fascinatingly complex journey, bolstered at every turn by the extraordinarily vivacious Gael García Bernal, who utterly transforms at every narrative juncture, playing a variety of different characters in various layers of the movie. His performance is a tour de force, layering broad comedy over a deeply tragic figure, then combining an object of lust with an unsettling threat, and always maintaining exactly what tone the script demands. He is key to understanding how the disparate portions of the film function, as well as how they all fit together.

With all this going on, Almodóvar isn’t up to as many visual tricks as usual, though one stunning, bloody transition is both shocking and profoundly thematic. It’s possibly the best cut of his entire career, so he’s not exactly coasting. Although my least favorite Almodóvar movies have all been his attempts at thrillers, which he is too warm and gooey to really pull off properly, Bad Education is a terrific, valuable piece of cinema packed with raw emotion and sensuality. This is certainly the director’s most personal work, and it shows by cutting straight to the bone.

Rating: 7/10

I'm So Excited! (Los amantes pasajeros)

Year: 2013

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Cast: Javier Cámara, Pepa Charro, Cecilia Roth 

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Three harried flight attendants attempt to distract the business class passengers from the fact that the plane is about to make a highly dangerous emergency landing.

At the time of this writing, I’m So Excited! is the most recent Almodóvar movie available in America (Julieta has already been released in Spain, but is taking its sweet time to make its way across the pond), which competes this slate of mini reviews’ span from the beginning of his career to the present. Some 36 years down the road from Pepi Luci, Bom (33 at the time of I’m So Excited!’s release), things have certainly changed. Two Academy Awards grace his shelf (Best Foreign Language Film for All About My Mother, Best Original Screenplay for Talk to Her) and a whole host of actors and actresses have returned time and time again, had fights and vanished for decades, then resurfaced with newfound vitality.

One of the strengths of Almodóvar’s work is his massive pool of performers, which he draws from pretty much constantly. Every movie he makes is graced with familiar faces and future celebrities, because he knows who’s good to work with and has an eye for recognizing raw talent. I’m So Excited! has a lousy reputation among fans of his work, but one thing nobody can argue against is his casting: Almodóvar stalwarts Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas cameoing as hapless airline employees, Volver standout Lola Dueñas as a psychic virgin, Cecilia Roth (who’s worked with Almodóvar since Pepi, Luci, Bom) as an aging dominatrix, and future Sense8 hottie Miguel Ángel Silvestre as a drug mule on his honeymoon. And that’s just some choice cuts from the jam-packed cast.

As you can see from those character descriptions, I’m So Excited! is very much a  return to the wacky ensemble comedy format that  defined the first decade of Almodóvar’s career. It’s a fast-moving, casually filthy romp with queer overtones, undertones, and everywheretones. The reason it has such a foul reputation is that it’s a stark departure form his recent works, which have been more prestigious dramatic fare like your Volvers and your Bad Educations. There is no such desire for cinematic respect in I’m So Excited!, which is leagues more shallows than his masterpiece Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, but as uproariously funny as anything he’s put out. This is the first film in a long time where he’s not putting on airs, and it’s mighty refreshing to see him let his freak comedy flag fly.

That said, there are some major, perhaps film-breaking flaws in I’m So Excited! A less-than brief interlude where we abruptly leave the perspective of the plane completely disembowels the film. Although this sequence is just as funny as everything else, the hysterical midair farce slowly building its momentum comes to a screeching halt that it never fully recovers from. And the rigorously classical comedic structure loses its timelessness with a funny, but extremely forced joke about Twitter. It’s odd that a reference to social media should feel anachronistic in 2013, but Almodóvar has built such a 50’s-esque pastiche universe in his filmography that it just feels like a violation.

But so it goes. I’m So Excited! is a spectacularly lopsided, shallow film that limps across the finish line, but it never stops being a hilarious, raunchy good time. Pitch perfect comic performances bounce around the confined, pressurized tube like pinballs, creating a raucous, glittering chaos that’s part Airplane!-esque mania, part Women on the Verge battle of the sexes, and part gay pride parade, with a dash of Beavis and Butthead scatological humor. It’s a blast, so it doesn’t need to be a masterpiece. Almodóvar has made enough of those to last a lifetime, so let’s just let him have fun.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1724

Popcorn Culture: Banderas de Manos

Man, Sergio and I are just plowing through the filmography of Pedro Almodóvar Here are two mini-reviews of flicks starring a psychotic Antonio Banderas. Check it out.

The Law of Desire (La Ley del Deseo)

Year: 1987

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Cast: Eusebio Poncela, Carmen Maura, Antonio Banderas 

Run Time: 1 hour 42 minutes

MPAA Rating: NC-17

A promiscuous gay film director brings home the wrong fan: A jealous, psycho who will stop at nothing to make sure he’s his ONLY lover.

Pedro Almodóvar is a genius. A colorful, frenetic, dazzling presence behind the camera. An overwhelming personality that radiates love and fun even if you’re not enjoying a particular movie all that much. The way Almodóvar crosses and transcends genre boundaries, it was inevitable that I would stumble across one that doesn’t hit my sweet spot, though that doesn’t mean it’s not a work of art. The film in question is Law of Desire, which grafts the director’s loopy, nebulous storytelling style onto a thriller framework. It can’t be argued that the result isn’t visually spectacular, but the presence of such a tautly defined genre casts the director’s storytelling idiosyncrasies under a harsh spotlight.

To be fair, everything I love about Almodóvar is here in spades: His surreal interstitials (like a gorgeous shot of cocaine falling over a movie script like snow), his effortlessly kinky sexual deviancy, and most of all his intricately woven thread of unshakeable humor. The comedy is not so prevalent as Volver or Mujeres (the latter of which is an out-and-out farce), but it’s no less electric. Humor is mostly relegated to supporting players Carmen Maura (an Almodóvar stalwart from Day 1) and Manuela Velasco (star of my beloved [REC], who is very young in this film but no less talented) leaving Banderas and top-biller Eusebio Poncela to make do with a heap of straight drama (and by that I certainly don’t mean “heterosexual”) that doesn’t mesh as well with the cozy, silly aesthetic as it could have.

There are still some tremendously solid components to this part of the film, notably the subtext about a filmmaker who wants to direct his own life but finds out that life has different plans. But this is largely derailed by a goody third act amnesia plot point that’s perhaps even more frivolous than the similar moment in The Muppets Take Manhattan (yeah, that movie got dark).

It’s an undeniable achievement in filmmaking (remembering the driving scene that matches a car with the lead’s flaring emotions still sends a chill down my spine,), but the story is just to weak to hold up the weight of Almodóvar’s visual prowess. The film crumples in upon itself in the third act, but let’s remember that a disappointment within the context of this director’s filmography would be the magnum opus of most anybody else.

Rating: 6/10

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (Átame)

Year: 1989

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Cast: Victoria Abril, Antonio Banderas, Loles León

Run Time: 1 hour 41 minutes

MPAA Rating: NC-17

A newly released mental patient kidnaps his favorite movie star and ties her up in her apartment to make a case for why she should marry him.

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! is essentially a bold-faced challenge to anybody who thought that Law of Desire was too kinky. It might boast the shallowest, most straightforward narrative I’ve seen in one of his films, but that doesn’t stop it from being a sexually dynamic, uproariously silly, sublimely weird erotic thriller. It suffers from the los of Carmen Maura (the up-for-anything actress who stopped working with Almodóvar for 18 years after a tough experience on the set of his previous film, Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios), but what female lead Victoria Abril lacks in personality, she makes up for in wounded vulnerability.

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! is an intriguing evolution from Law of Desire, upgrading the sympathy for its villain along with the depth and complexity of Antonio Banderas’ performance. While the story may not have as many twists and turns, it shows a heretofore unseen focus on developing one particular character, showcasing Banderas as the true movie star he is. The really interesting thing about the cut-and-dry plot keeping the villain in the spotlight is that the film is unmistakably an entry in the horror genre. You don’t just hire The Thing composer Ennio Morricone by accident.

Of course, Almodóvar can’t keep his finger on any one genre for more than about 20 seconds, but the horror influence is certainly felt. So far, every single movie of his that I’ve seen has either been explicitly about cinema or features a character who works in the film industry, but this is his first to center almost entirely over the production of a B-horror film. Again, this is certainly no coincidence. His passion for the subject bleeds around the edges of the frame, and these scenes on the movie set number among his most effortlessly funny material.

I can’t stress enough that the story itself is a touch weaker than it could have been, but I’ll be damned if h doesn’t pull out the stops everywhere else. The foreshadowing in the script is dense and satisfying, and a recurring shot from the film-within-the-film is a woefully perfect cinematic image (a body swinging on a rope that resembles the pendulum of a grandfather clock). Plus, his characters, even the ones that only appear in a single scene, are given startling emotional depth. They’re like stepping into a puddle only to realize that your foot has plunged into a pothole.

Almodóvar just loves people, even the crazy ones. Especially the crazy ones. As wacky, kinky, and violent as Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! gets, it remains a warm-hearted tribute to the best in humanity, it’s also a fearless depiction of sexual deviancy with an extended, iconic (for those who know about this kind of thing) lovemaking sequence that’s erotic because it’s not erotic. It’s perhaps the most real, human sexual act hat’s ever been committed to celluloid. It reflects his European sensibilities in a perfect, divisive (NC-17, anyone?) manifesto. Sex is messed up, gross, fumbling, and beautiful. And it certainly doesn’t have to be a big deal.

This scene(and in fact this entire movie) basically defines the entirety of Almodóvar’s sexy, lighthearted, fearless filmography. So, yeah. Don’t write it off just because the A-plot is a wee bit thin.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1075

Popcorn Kernels: Sick Women

This set of mini reviews will cover a multitude of films I’ve seen recently about women who are under the weather, whether it’s a contagious bug, a nervous breakdown, or a psychological corkscrew.

Contagion

Year: 2011
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Jude Law
Run Time: 1 hour 46 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

A lethal viral pathogen is quickly spreading across the world and authorities scramble to find its source, discover a cure, and decide who to save first.

There’s no single more effective moment in Contagion than its opening shot: A pale Gwyneth Paltrow coughs and sniffles in an airport lounge. The title card “Day 2” appears in ominous, blood red font. This is not the beginning of our story. We don’t know how or why, but it has already begun and there is no escape until it reaches its inevitable conclusion. Now that's how you open a movie!

I’m an easy lay for viral outbreak movies. As a card-carrying germophobe, I had a knot in my stomach for nearly the entire duration of the movie. It freaked me out more than every horror movie I’ve watched this movie, combined. And while I appreciate any film that can generate a physical reaction in its audience, I am NOT an easy lay for positive reviews. And as tense as Contagion may be, it’s an astoundingly messy movie.

It’s telling that the film’s best moment is its opening shot, because once Contagion’s innumerable characters and subplots kick in, they weigh the film down like so many anchors. The broad, multi-perspective view of an epidemic is certainly an intriguing and tense approach, but the film’s overall structure suffers, narrative logistics cracking under the weight of a metric ton of stars. Contagion’s desperate attempts to weld together storylines involving Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne, Marion Cotillard, Jude law, John Hawkes, Brian Cranston, and Elliott Gould lead to a waterlogged conclusion that haphazardly drops subplots to bail out a slowly sinking narrative. It’s the Garry Marshall’s Valentine’s Day of viral outbreak movies.

Contagion is a roller coaster; a rip-roaring thrill ride that leaves you entirely unchanged upon its completion, if a little nauseous. Its shallowness isn’t necessarily a fault, even if its relentlessly purple dialogue is (“should I call someone?” “Call everyone!”). It does have some shaky thematic throughlines about the indignities of the class system and how fear and rumor spreads just as quickly as disease, but for the most part it’s just a slick, by-the-numbers thriller. When it finally ends with a pointless explanation of the virus’s origin, it’s hard to feel like the movie has accomplished anything, but it was definitely a wild ride.

Pro-Tip: Contagion is patently NOT a date movie. Potential suitors, avoid at all costs.

Rating: 7/10

Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios

Year: 1988
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Carmen Maura, Antonio Banderas, Julieta Serrano
Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

An actress jilted by her co-star boyfriend tempts to deal with her break-up while a friend on the run from the law, her lover’s ex-wife, his son, and his son’s fiancée unexpectedly arrive at her apartment.

Sergio and I were so taken with Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver that we more or less instantly followed it up with Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios/Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, a much earlier entry in his filmography that also stars the inimitable Carmen Maura (it was also the one that capsized their creative partnership, and in fact they wouldn’t work together at all until the 18-years-later Volver, but that’s neither here nor there, I suppose). Although it’s another female-led comedy with dark themes that allows its protagonist license to be venal and selfish, Mujeres could hardly be more different from Volver.

Where his 2006 effort is a confident, fantastical treatise on the beauty and wonder of life, Mujeres is an out-and-out farce of gran proportions, a wacky, door-slamming effort in the vein of classic stage works like Noises Off. There’s the obvious contributing factor that it mostly takes place in a single location once the second act kicks in, but it’s also a loony jaunt jam-packed with delightfully cartoonish characters. Once again, Almodóvar delivers an effervescent comedy that transcends language barriers with a solid undercurrent of emotion and artistry.

You see, the women in this film aren’t just on the verge of a nervous breakdown due to their over-the-top situations. They are real life women trying to get by in the face of life’s incalculable unfairness. Their struggles are palpable and their exaggerated reactions blameless. Essentially every problem they face is the result of men carelessly using them like playthings, and the entire arc of the film reflects main character Pepa’s growth into independent womanhood. Not only is it a passionate and exuberant feminist tract, it’s a god damn work of art.

There is perhaps no film scene of the entire year that matches the dreamy magnum opus of this film’s opening, played out through a retro film scene followed by Ivan – the man who caused all this trouble – providing dubbed Spanish dialogue for another movie. The eclectic collection of shots in the film within the film depict him declaring his undying love for a multitude of international women (including an American stereotype I can’t say I’ve ever come across – a baton-twirling cheerleader), followed by an outpouring of dubbed emotion over a muted film track, in which the woman silently flaps her lips in response to his declarations. It’s a genius setup that clearly implies how Ivan (and, by extent, the world) views and ignores women, as well as how trapped they find themselves by his words. It’s a powerful, beautiful piece, and it’s followed by 80 minutes of vivacious, neon farce.

It’s a stylized, wacky, sexy romp that turns a comic relief cabdriver (he’s a relief from the comedy because he’s marginally less funny than the other characters) into an exquisitely precise longform punchline. This film is women against the world, and they grab it by the horns, toss it through a plate glass window, and keep it laughing so hard it passes out. I’ve only seen two of his films so far, but Pedro Almodóvar is swiftly becoming one of my favorite directors.

Rating: 10/10

Heathers

Year: 1989
Director: Michael Lemann
Cast: Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Shannen Doherty
Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

A teen girl is seduced by a new boy in town, who convinces her to murder the popular kids at her high school.

I’ve always viewed Heathers as an alternative teen classic, a late period bit of counterprogramming to the overly earnest John Hughes cycle, but I personally hadn’t seen the film since the first time I watched it, at a very young age. Given distance and a new perspective, Heathers is much better and a hell of a lot worse than I thought. Its themes have only gotten more potent and many moments are unequivocally brilliant, bleeding-edge satire, but to get to them you have to sift through a heap of late 80’s detritus.

The first act is a gauntlet to prove that you’re worthy of the film’s brilliance; a cheap, stagey spectacle of overbaked dialogue that almost certainly made a young Diablo Cody swoon. It’s a vexing half hour of hip, snappy teens spouting avant garbage about spokes in their menstrual cycle, reigned over by a truly dreadful, soul-curdling non-performance from Kim Walker as the Queen Bee Heather Chandler. But once you’ve broken through that vexing permafrost, you hit pay dirt.

Heathers is a delicious dark comedy that could only have been made in 1989 – that sweet spot in the wake of the slasher boom but pre-Columbine – and its true core of pitch-black humor activates with Heather Chandler’s death, which also conveniently rids the cast of its weakest link. After this, the film snaps like a slingshot, launching into a wry satire detailing what happens when a vapid, venal student body that is used to violently lashing out more out of a sense of stir-craziness than righting actual wrongs comes into contact with a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool psychopath. This is a society where suicide (faked or otherwise) is the great equalizer, an alternapunk wasteland of superficial nihilists who will fake true emotion if it gets them on TV, where life only gains meaning once it’s extinguished.

It’s unspeakably grim, but also uproariously funny. Watching these teen movie archetypes marching through their stages of non-grief is a hilariously biting indictment of apathetic teen culture, balanced out by the earnest Winona Ryder resisting her seduction over to the Dark Side (represented by Christian Slater, copping Urkel’s nasal whine). She is the one point of light in this world of careless parents, thin-skinned teens, and inept cops, and her dance with the Devil has surprising emotional weight. Her turning point into genuine heroine for hope comes in the film’s most brilliantly twisted moment: a guilt-stricken Ryder burns her palm with the car’s cigarette lighter and Slater grabs her hand, not to comfort her, but to use it to light his cigarette.

This detachment fuels the entire film, giving it an edgy boost that overcomes its feeble first act and shoddy production design(although I do love the blue neon light used to denote nighttime and one shot of a chase scene through the misty woods is a warped, expressionistic marvel). Eventually this delves into a patently silly climax that I recognized as goofily inferior even when I was a kid, but for the bulk of its run time, Heathers is a sharp, dynamic, demented flick that’s totally worth ritual rewatching, a proto-Fight Club for the angsty teen set.

Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 1623

Splatter University V: A New Beginning

Here we are again at the start of yet another promising and terrifying semester for Yours Truly. To cope with the sheer amount of work I have looming in the distance (including six consecutive 12-hour weekend shoots), what else is there to do but write reviews of crap we watched in my horror class (for which I am now TAing - the student has become the master)? And so it goes.

Warlock

Year: 1989

Director: Steve Miner

Cast: Julian Sands, Lori Singer, Richard E. Grant

Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Dave Twohy, the director of the Riddick trilogy wrote the screenplay for this late 80's fantasy horror picture shortly after graduating from California State University, Long Beach. Evidently he was too lazy to return to his alma mater and talk about his early career. For that reason, there shall be no further mention of him in this blog.

I'd rather talk about Steve Miner, anyway. This man resolutely refuses to leave the hallowed halls of crap horror and has thus ended up on this blog more than any other director save Wes Craven. Although Miner is certainly less talented than Ol' W. C. (as House and Friday the 13th Part 3: 3D can attest), he is always a welcome presence around these here parts.

The plot goes like this - an evil Warlock (Julian Sands) is imprisoned in the 16th Century and the unpredictable magic he uses to procure his escape lands him smack dab in the middle of 20th Century Los Angeles - 1988 to be precise. Although perhaps we need not be so precise, considering that the girl who lives in the apartment he crash lands into looks like a cross between Run Lola Run and LeeLoo from The Fifth Element.

I don't normally post screencaps in mini reviews, but come on. How could I deprive the world of this?

She teams up with a 16th Century warrior (Richard E. Grant) sent to defeat the Warlock in order to lift the curse of aging he has placed on her. Also, there's a whole thing about uniting the separated thirds of an ancient tome that will reveal the true name of God, which - if uttered backwards - can undo Creation.

It's a whole thing, I won't get into it.

Original fantasy horror like this would soon be lining video store shelves in the early 90's (Leprechaun, anyone?), but Warlock is better than most. Sure, it's a hunk of cheese big enough to trap Mickey Mouse, but it's such a loveably batty and low rent thriller that it never fails to charm.

And for once in this kind of film the comic relief consistently lands, making up greatly for the tepid horror (which falls flat in spite of some frankly terrific original ideas). In fact, it can hardly be distinguished as a horror film what with the brightly lit setpieces and largely inconspicuous music. Only one scene can be counted as truly horrific, but it's a doozy - genre veteran Mary Woronov is possessed by some sort of orgasm devil and it is grand and melodramatic in the best way.

All in all, it made me excited to watch more crappy DTV horror, which is always a good(ish) time for me.

One last thing before we go: Apparently God's true name is Rakisha, which seems a little ghetto for an omnipotent deity but you won't catch me complaining.

Rating: 7/10

Bram Stoker's Dracula

Year: 1992

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Cast: Winona Ryder, Gary Oldman, Keanu Reeves

Run Time: 2 hours 8 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Why oh why does this kind of thing keep happening? The Dracula story is over and done, simple as that. The story is centered around a real estate agent and hops back and forth between Britain and Transylvania so many times that the characters spend more time traveling that actually doing anything. All the sex in the world couldn't spice that narrative up.

Sorry, I've been sitting on that one for a while now.

At least Francis Ford Coppola's retread of the classic work has a daring visual aesthetic that challenges and creates a thoroughly moody and lovely horror backdrop. Unfortunately I am not the type of film major that can be won over with visuals alone, practical effects or not (and yes, this film displays a truly impressive amount of in-camera effects - in fact, all visual effects but a screechingly obviously fake blue flame were done the old fashioned way and it's a major credit to Coppola that he stuck through such an arduous task around the beginning of the mainstream acceptance of computer generated imaging).

So yes. Visuals. And effects. Yay. And an immense theatricality which would be welcome in a movie with literally any other cast. Gary Oldman fares well as the aged and decrepit Count Dracula, but mysteriously falls flat as the handsome young swain he becomes. Winona Ryder fumbles hopelessly at the role of Mina and Keanu Reeves just plain never was going to work, was he?

Although he is perhaps the only actor alive at the time who could convincingly portray just how unfathomably stupid the character of Jonathan Harker really is.

It really doesn't help that Van Helsing was played by Anthony Hopkins in one of the first of his many subpar post-Silence of the Lambs roles. If every Van Helsing scene in the film was cut, it would still make just as much sense. And it would still be too long.

In a just world, Coppola's vision of a bloody, sexy, colorful, melodramatic Dracula would have been a smash success, but so many of the pieces fail to fall into place that the film is stuffy by the first minute and dull by the halfway point. A swing and a miss.

Rating: 6/10

Interview with the Vampire

Year: 1994

Director: Neil Jordan

Cast: Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Kirsten Dunst

Run Time: 2 hours 3 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I watched this film for the first time in class on Monday. It's really quite interesting to see how many plot and character elements were lifted wholesale from this film and the novel it's based on to piece together the literary wreckage that is the Twilight franchise. But enough of that. It's uncouth to kick a franchise when it's down, no matter how repugnant or obnoxious it may be.

The most important takeaway from this film is that Kirsten Dunst is a BABY. Here I was obliviously expecting her to be a love interest, not having noticed the year on the back of the DVD case. But no. She may as well be a fetus. It's insane.

Interview with the Vampire tells the story of one Louis de Pointe du Lac (Brad Pitt), a grieving American colonist who succumbs to the curse of vampirism as offered by the fiery Lestat de Lioncourt (Tom Cruise). Louis struggles to accept his newfound thirst for sexy sexy blood and manages to avoid killing actual humans for a while, but finds that his Cullen-ness doesn't pay off in the long run. 

Also Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt's hair colors are switched for this film and it trips me out something fierce.

The two enter a loving partnership long-term companionship that leads them across America and eventually to the creation of a vampire child, Claudia (Kirsten Dunst). Basically the first act is Dracula and the second act is a vampire version of The Kids Are All Right.

And the third act is Harry Potter Book Five, all angsty and brooding.

I'm really avoiding intense analysis of the film because it is a towering obelisk of pop romantic filmmaking. Interesting and pretty to look at, but lacking the depth that (possibly? I wouldn't know) might be contained in the books.

It's largely entertaining for what it is, although it does drag in it's second hour. Man, do I loathe second hours.

And I might just have to create a new custom tag for my blog posts - "homoerotic vampire movies" - because this is the most recent in a string of many, starting with The Lost Boys. Remember how the brothers in that film couldn't talk without staring into each others' eyes with the intensity of a thousand suns? Well Brad Pitt speaks directly into Antonio Banderas' mouth.

It's pretty hot.

The end.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1387