The Orphanage
October 3rd, 2007
From Spain comes an incredibly spooky ghost story by first-time director Juan Antonio Bayona. The Orphanage, produced by Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) was just selected as the country’s entry for the foreign film Oscar. Belén Rueda and Fernando Cayo play a couple who move into an old mansion with their adopted son — who has imaginary friends who may be all too real….
Read my review of The Orphanage on About.com
El Orfanato. Juan Antonio Bayona, 2007. ***
The trailer:
The Method
July 6th, 2007
Here’s the beginning of Marcy’s review, with a few heavy-handed edits from yours truly.
It’s a very special version of hell: fill an office suite with qualified executives, lock them in, and have them duke it out for a top job. Request they fill out duplicate forms, subject them to twisted mind games, offer food that has gone bad… and see how far they’re willing to go. Far below the corporate windows, G8 protests are raging in the streets of Madrid, but it’s going to get even uglier inside. That’s the premise of The Method, Marcelo Piñeyro’s unique, Survivor-in-a-boardroom contribution to the suddenly popular genre of the biting office satire.
El Método. Marcelo Piñeyro, 2005. ***
- More from Matt Zoller Seitz and James van Maanen.
The Devil’s Backbone
January 27th, 2007
Even the Academy has figured out that Pan’s Labyrinth is destined to be a classic (it’s exceedingly rare that anything with subtitles plays at Kaufman Astoria), and so we’ve been digging back through Guillermo Del Toro’s filmography. Hellboy and Blade 2 aren’t as good as the fanboys would have you believe, and my memories of Cronos are pretty hazy–but this film is very, very good on its own terms and obviously a stepping stone to the grander, more archetypal Pan’s Labyrinth.
Part Pan’s, part Empire of the Sun, part Lord of the Flies, The Devil’s Backbone is set in a boy’s orphanage during the Spanish Civil war. There’s anti-fascist gold, budding artists, tragic love, a Dumbledore who can’t get it up, and a ghost that spills clouds of blood from his fractured skull. Del Toro’s fertile imagination creates scene after haunting scene, and the film is full of proto-Pan images that are still worth absorbing in retrospect, such as the unexploded bomb that sits in the center of the schoolyard like a freeze-frame from the last page of Gravity’s Rainbow.
El Espinazo del diablo. Guillermo del Toro, 2001. ****
[tags]guillermo del toro, 4 stars, film, spain, war, children, orphans, ghosts, bombs, gravitys rainbow[/tags]
The Fountain
December 22nd, 2006
A trippy comic book about the search for eternal life. The go-to adjective for Darren Aronofsky’s first film since Requiem for a Dream is “ambitious,” but Métal Hurlant has been churning out stuff like this for decades. In three overlapping stories, Hugh Jackman is a meditating spaceman traveling to a dying star, a conquistador unearthing secrets of the Maya, and a doctor trying to save his wife (Rachel Weisz) from a brain tumor. Weisz also appears as Isabella, queen of Spain. The spiritual mumbo-jumbo never adds up to more than the old saw about death bearing the kernel of life, but the pull of the grief-stricken moments between present-tense Jackman and Weisz is difficult to resist.
The psychedelic visuals are tasty, but when it’s all said and done, I was disappointed with the way the three stories finally hook up. We have to take it on good faith that the low-rent Ken Wilber in the space bubble, the poorly lit Apocalypto outtakes, and the melodrama about the doctor and his dying wife are related in a meaningful way, and The Fountain doesn’t reward that faith very well. It’s a comic book that mistakes itself for something much more profound.
Made me want to watch Solaris again.
The Fountain. Darren Aronofsky, 2006. **
Bonus audio: In honor of Izzy, here’s Phish covering Jimi Hendrix’ Izabella, Madison Square Garden 12/30/97. Totally legal audience recording, which is to say the sound isn’t great.
[audio:Isabella - Phish.mp3]
[tags]film, 2 stars, darren aronofsky, hugh jackman, rachel weisz, space, maya, eternal life, scifi, trippy, spain, inquisition, metal hurlant, audio, phish[/tags]
Volver
December 10th, 2006
The second time around, each frame, already brimming with emotion and color, only grows fuller and deeper.
Volver. Pedro Almodovar, 2006. *****
- Marcy’s review.
- Volver at the New York Film Festival
- Volver Press Conference
- Volver Photo Gallery
- Volver at RT: 92%
[tags]penelope cruz, film, 5 stars, pedro almodovar, mothers, daughters, red, spain, murder, ghosts[/tags]
August Days
September 27th, 2006
Is it ok if I plagiarize my own entry from Worldfilm?
From Spain, Marc Recha’s August Days is one of those quiet, unassuming movies you’re likely to see at festivals and nowhere else. The film concerns two brothers, one of them Recha himself, who take a road trip into the Catalanian hinterlands, where they find traces of the Spanish Civil War, walk in dried-out riverbeds, and meet a number of peculiar characters, including a larcenous flamenco dancer, unhelpful Germans, and a legendary catfish. The suspended textures and hypnotic sounds of the summer countryside are every bit as important as the sparse narrative, and August Days is at once entrancing and maddening, especially if you haven’t had lunch yet.
August Days. Marc Recha, 2006. **
[tags]film, nyff, spain, road movie, 2 stars, catfish[/tags]
Pan’s Labyrinth
September 20th, 2006
Of course: the evil stepfather was a fascist! Guillermo del Toro mashes up fairy tales with the Spanish Civil War; the villain is With a Friend Like Harry’s Harry (Sergi Lopez) as evil stepfather in a captain’s uniform vs Maribel Verdú, the teenager-devouring doomed hottie from Y Tu Mama Tambien in a role straight out of For Whom the Bell Tolls, along with a secret garden, golden keys, magic chalk, mandrake root, and gnarly CGI creatures that Terry Gilliam only wished he’d had the budget for in The Brothers Grimm. The plot ends up not quite as fresh as I would have wished, but then again, there are only so many ways to make myths new (they’re supposed to tell the same story.) Some of the images–liquor seeping through the gauze on a stitched-up face, fairies chomping down on raw bacon, the Cronenbergish pale man with eyes in his hands, others I won’t spoil–are bound to haunt my dreams.
Pan’s Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro, 2006. ****
