Tag: Antonio Banderas

Rapid Response: Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

“Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” put Pedro Almodovar on the map with its strong and wacky female lead.

“Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” could be the title to a number of female-fronted comedies both old and new. “Bridesmaids” and “30 Rock” come to mind, but then so do “My Man Godfrey” or “The Awful Truth,” to an extent.

That’s because unlike men, who are often simply extremely irritated by a comic foil in such movies, women tend to display an utmost level of poise and steadfast resolve about how they are going to change their life right before it implodes.

Or at least that’s how they act in screwball comedies. Maybe that’s seen as a bad thing, but leave it to Pedro Almodovar to overcome the stereotype. Ever since “Women” he’s been making female fronted movies with as much color and surreal charm as is on display here. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”

Ruby Sparks

Great fiction is almost always as good as its most interesting character. Zoe Kazan has written for herself a wonderfully infectious sprite in this film’s title character, Ruby Sparks. Her bright red hair beams off the screen, she’s charming as hell and we don’t seem to mind that’s she blatantly a mystical, hipster dream girl.

But the big problem with “Ruby Sparks” is that the film is really about Ruby’s fictional creator, Calvin (Paul Dano), and not her.

Calvin is the modern equivalent of J.D. Salinger, a visionary who wrote the next great American novel at 19, now plagued with writer’s block trying to envision the next big idea. Calvin’s surrounded by pretentious, faux-intellectuals and his shallow, sex-craved brother Harry (Chris Messina), so you can see why Calvin would feel like a hack if these were the people who admired him.

In a desperate fervor to understand himself, Calvin puts into words the girl of his dreams. In his imagination, she’s constantly backlit with God-like sunlight, and his vision of her is an amalgam of romantic quirks. She’s from Dayton, Ohio, doesn’t know how to drive, is an amateur painter, and so on. Ruby is perfect in all her imperfections. Continue reading “Ruby Sparks”

Haywire

“Haywire” is a no-frills action movie that measures what can be accomplished in a genre film.

Something with as many ass kickings as “Haywire” couldn’t possibly be called an experimental film, can it?

Steven Soderbergh built one around porn star Sasha Grey, so why not for martial arts fighter Gina Carano?

“Haywire” is a no-frills action movie that measures what can be accomplished in a genre film.

It minimizes on sweeping photography or handheld queasy cam effects and produces a stylized, precise and expertly choreographed film. Its simplicity is compelling just in admiring the craft of it all.

Carano plays Mallory Kane, a secret agent betrayed by her private contractor (Ewan McGregor), but the plot too is stripped to its bare bones to the point that the cryptic details are just filler for “Haywire’s” artsy combat set pieces.

Soderbergh gives us full-bodied fights that lovingly make use of space, his rapid editing still delineating clear angles as though he were photographing Carano in the octagon.

The gorgeous Carano makes for an unusual movie star with how at home she is during the film’s many battles.

She’s the key in a film uninterested with her striking sexuality. But Carano demands presence, and although she could serve as a better feminist icon than Fincher’s Lisbeth Salander, Carano is too tough and impressive for anyone to really notice or care.

3 ½ stars

The Skin I Live In

Pedro Almodovar’s lush thriller stars Antonio Banderas and Elena Anaya.

I guess you could classify “The Skin I Live In” as a surrealistic revenge sci-fi romance. Pedro Almodovar’s film is so lush, sexual, exotic and artful, as they always are, that it’s above genre or even emotional expectations. Rarely is a film this darkly sexually perverse simultaneously queasy and mesmerizing.

The plot in ways recalls “Vertigo,” although this Spanish art house classic hardly feels or looks like Hitchcock’s masterpiece. It’s the twisted story of the wealthy plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas). Robert decorates his house with priceless Renaissance nudes, each Madonna shimmering in her perfection. But his prize possession he watches from a hi-def surveillance camera placed in the next room.

There sits Vera (Elena Anaya), a goddess Robert has crafted for himself. As he watches, his instincts transcend voyeurism. He is captivated in awe at the deep secrets and memories she represents, for she seems not entirely a woman but an untouched being. Each day, Vera sits in isolation doing yoga and reading, and she seems only aware of her purpose for Robert.

It’s because he has literally created Vera using a synthetic skin stronger than a human’s. She resembles Robert’s dead wife, and her strength against cuts, stings or burns leaves her an untouched masterpiece. Most of all, Vera radiates. Continue reading “The Skin I Live In”