I love Spanish culture. And with the blessings of a man named Pedro Almodóvar, who churned out such films as Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Talk to Her and All About My Mother, he has gained a cult following, which includes me. His lates offering is yet another masterpiece, and what I believe, is the best since Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Penélope Cruz offers a sultry performance as a housewife, and Carmen Maura is wonderful as her long-lost mother, returning from the dead. Yohana Cobo and Lola Duenas provide well-acted support, in an honest, compassionate film, that lacks Almodóvar's usual carnal sexual explicitness (which tripped some of his other films).
This is the movie I saw from the beginning. I don't mean to be rude, but I saw this coming. I hoped for this film to be big, and despite it's late bloomer status, locked out of the major awards, it was my film from the start. But let's get to the point. In this very loose adaptation of my favorite P.D. James novel, Clive Owen is a few years too young, Julianne Moore doesn't get pregnant and the main antagonist is scratched. Yet Clive Owen looks dirty enough to be fifty, and packs the same forthcoming determination. Julianne Moore doesn't get pregnant, but what the hell. Clare Hope-Ashitey was, in my mind, the best acted breakout performance of 2006, with her dirtied features, doe eyes, and very large belly. At least I got one prediction right.
3. Clean
Clean was the first of the year that really was good. For a while I thought no film could surpass. Then Kate Winslet and Ivana Baquero came waltzing along, and uh-oh, it was bounced to third, but it was still a gem of a movie. These top three films are truly masterpieces in themselves, among those twenty-five elite that remain the top films of the decade. Maggie Cheung and Nick Nolte deliver some of the most mind-blowing and impressive performances of the year, that pack all the punch that we only thought big-budget Oscar films could pack. Cheung came forward through 2046 and In the Mood for Love, but with her ex-hubby Oliver Assayas, she gave such a performance that it pounded all the other Meryl Streeps down.
As Pan's Labryinth finished, I sat in a daze for a few moments. I was stunned. The acting, the visuals, the ideas, the plot...it all worked together to form a spell-bounding film that left spittle escaping the side of my mouth. Disgusting, but the frog's intestines were also plenty unpleasant. Ivana Baquero, Maribel Verdu, Adriana Gil, Alex Angulo and especially Sergi Lopez in a performance that made Darth Vader look like a good guy, worked together with the mind-bottling visuals to force that spit out of the left side of my mouth. The film is gorgeous, from the frog's intestines covered in cave beatles, slime and a key, to a towering golden hall flowered with three beautiful thrones, reaching up towards the ceiling. I want to see it again.
Ah...I love Kate Winslet (who doesn't)? Yet, besides Heavenly Creatures, Iris, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, etc...there is a red swimsuit that calls for her. Her beautiful potrayal of a housewife in a struggle, mid-life crisis to say, blew my mind away. Meanwhile, Patrick Wilson remained a sexay house-husband, under the not-so-watchful eye of Jennnifer Connelly. Together, Winslet and Wilson acted their way to the top of my list, relieving me of every inhuman cinematic attempt at recreating suburban life in the twenty-five years of my life. And they need to do more sex scene together.
