Rate The Last Movie You Saw

I just watched this and quite enjoyed it. A slight film for sure, with some of his trademark transgressive sexual politics, but a consistently amusing and energetic little flick.

The Almodovar films I've seen ranked:

Pain & Glory
Talk to Her
Volver
All About My Mother
The Skin I Live In
Tie Me Up Tie Me Down
Bad Education
Broken Embraces
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
I'm So Excited

I'm a fan of them all. Love everything from TMUTMD on up.

Good movies. I like the first one best.



Indie movie. Robin Wright very good. Somewhat slow & boring, but worth watching in the end.

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The Skin I Live In is hands down my favorite of his, followed closely by the frequently overlooked Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!. Honorable mention goes to The Flower of My Secret, which I often feel that I’m the only person who’s actually sat seen.

I'm sure it's still technically worth watching, but I didn't find it even that terribly amusing. Was just kinda....there.


Next to that I'd put Volver at the bottom of the list, but I know most people generally rank that highly, so it's obviously worth watching. Almost all of the others (and I've seen everything up to Excited but Pepi, which I've never been able to find) are all very good to great.


Easily one of the most consistently original and important filmmakers....ever? I really should talk about him more considering how highly I value him. Absolute master

Pepi, Bom, Luci and Other Girls Like Mom is pretty crude compared to everything else I've seen from him and unfortunately imo it's rather weak, quite surprised to see it's rated over 6 on IMDb. Definitely an outlier for me from those of his that I've seen as I've enjoyed everything else.

Man, I've had that in my queue since it came to streaming and I never get around to it.

Aside from Julieta (which just arrived in the mail, actually), I've seen every Almodovar post-WOTVOANB, which seems to be the film recognized as ushering in his proper auteur state (but maybe it started earlier?)

His early works aren't easily available to someone averse to piracy though there is a blu-ray set (region B) that I have my eye on that contains most of my blind spots except High Heels and Live Flesh. It's not terribly cheap but if I happen upon a little extra money, I'll be picking it up within the month.

You should.its so f*cked up it's great!

They aren't as assured, but I think they are equal to a lot of his later work. Dark Habits and What Did I Do to Deserve This two of my favorites I might have actually not seen High Heels. Hmmmm.

Im deeply in love with crude or underdone cinema, so the idea of someone who became so on point stylistically in later years doing something so potentially amateurish has always been a huge draw for me

I have seen 2 of Pedro Almodóvar's films. Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down and The Skin I Live In. I should watch more of his.

There are several Spanish/similar directors that I really enjoy. del Torro, Jodorowsky and Amenábar are my favorites. I had a friend who lived in Argentina so it wasn't unusual for us to watch a Spanish language film at times.

Hopefully you'll be able to find it at some point then. I was dead lucky as I was purchasing another Almodóvar dvd set and the seller mistakenly sent me the one with his earlier works on (Pepi, Luci, Bom...; Dark Habits; What Have I Done... and Woman On The Verge...) and when I informed them they told me to keep it and sent me the correct order as well

I have The Flower of my Secret and Broken Embraces both on Blu-Ray and I've watched neither!! I really need to get around to them.

Nice!

You see, I just love how slick he can be, falling somewhere in between Hitchcock and Demy.

I'm not sure his less formally accomplished works will measure up.

It's not like there is some huge drop off in their formal qualities. It's just he is clearly more in the zone in the second half of his career.

I believe you. I just wanted to slip a slick jab into the conversation.

Almodovar may be formally slick, but you can get away with that because he's not emotionally slick.


I'm not 100 percent against slick. But it usually needs to be offset with something to give it's slickness some weight. Or personality.

That's the one I hear about the most. It will probably be the next one of his films I get to.

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Y tu mamá también - (2001)

The great thing about hanging around here is I get to watch a truly great film a little more frequently than I would otherwise, and case in point is Y tu mamá también, a Alfonso Cuarón film I didn't know about, and so just a few weeks after watching and loving Roma I end up watching it last night and luxuriating in it's sex and filmmaking brilliance. A road movie set in modern Mexico sounds dangerous (I'd want a tank) but with Julio (Gael García Bernal, who I'm a bit of a fan of) and Tenoch (Diego Luna) there's post-adolescent freedom by the bucketload, and with the much more experienced Luisa (Maribel Verdú) their lack of experience shows them up to be all braggadocio without anything to back it up. There's so much joy in this, but also a dark vein which remains hidden for most of the film. It's bright, heady and intoxicated filmmaking - with interludes which purposely shut down the film's score and sound to deliver omniscient information about the characters directly to us. I hope one day to articulate why this film is so great in a grander and more descriptive manner.

9/10


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Help - (2021)

A do-over here - this film troubles me. About the pandemic, and with Jodie Comer as it's lead it's kind of brilliant until it's final 15 minutes and then (for me) goes a little astray. I penalized it's rating heavily for that transgression, and it felt all wrong. Doing an about-face also felt wrong, even though the film for the most part is so good and worthy of recommendation. I rewatched that last 15 minutes, and could understand a little better why the film might have decided to take the direction it did, but regardless, my excitement for it overall died a little the first time - and I felt I had to take that into account. Last night, I figured out what I'd do. I'd rate it twice, with a counterbalance comment on each rating like thus :

8/10 - But be warned, the film dips a little right at the end.
5/10 - But for the most part, this is one of the best 'made-for-TV' films I've ever seen.

Does that make any sense? Maybe not. See it for yourself, I actually recommend it for the most part. 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, 7.7/10 on the IMDb and 4.0 on Letterboxd with unanimous great reviews is high praise indeed.

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