(Los abrazos rotos) Built upon an even more story-within-story structure than most later Almodóvar movies, “Broken Embraces” seems to reflect personal issues about art and mortality in pessimistic fashion, yet the brio of the filmmaking is undiminished. Almodóvar creates a film with a writer and director who’s blind, who mourns the loss of his great love in the same accident that took his sight. The giddy gamesplaying—elegantly demonstrating bad filmmaking—is enlivened by Penélope Cruz, more at home than in other films she’s in this year, her vivid, squishy features and darkly liquid eyes are mischief itself even when she strives to capture the essence of bad acting. She’s tiny and regal and vivacious. As for Almodóvar:Love, loss, cinema: the customary dazzle. With Blanca Portillo, Lluís Homar. 109m. (Ray Pride)
“Broken Embraces” opens Friday at Landmark Century.
Ray Pride is Newcity’s film critic and a contributing editor to Filmmaker magazine.
His multimedia history of Chicago “Ghost Signs” will be published soon. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram as Ghost Signs Chicago. More photography on Instagram.
Seeing The Elephant: A Review Of Babylon The boisterous, brawling yet melancholy "Babylon," is a variation on film history, but more drawing for drama. It's gaudy and mean, celebratory and sorrowful.
Heart: A Review of Soul The real world is soulful, too, in Pixar's bountiful life of the mind.
Uncanny Ally: A Review Of M3GAN "M3GAN" sells itself in its first handful of seconds in how it introduces the handiwork of roboticist Gemma (Allison Williams, "Get Out") and her present product, PurrPetual Petz from Funki.
(Los abrazos rotos) Built upon an even more story-within-story structure than most later Almodóvar movies, “Broken Embraces” seems to reflect personal issues about art and mortality in pessimistic fashion, yet the brio of the filmmaking is undiminished. Almodóvar creates a film with a writer and director who’s blind, who mourns the loss of his great love in the same accident that took his sight. The giddy gamesplaying—elegantly demonstrating bad filmmaking—is enlivened by Penélope Cruz, more at home than in other films she’s in this year, her vivid, squishy features and darkly liquid eyes are mischief itself even when she strives to capture the essence of bad acting. She’s tiny and regal and vivacious. As for Almodóvar:Love, loss, cinema: the customary dazzle. With Blanca Portillo, Lluís Homar. 109m. (Ray Pride)
