Word: ghostly
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...lope Cruz, in a performance of great strength and ferocity), scrubbing down the grave of her mother Irene (Carmen Maura). With his usual taste for bizarre but plausible narrative twists, Almodóvar manages, in the first 40 minutes, to get a corpse in the freezer and a ghost under the bed. And he's just getting started, since nearly everyone in Volver has a dreadful family secret she is keeping from someone else. This was the director's first film in 18 years with Maura, the earthy muse of his early years. Yet they fell instantly into perfect synch...
...movie glamour, had a Hollywood accent this year as the host to world premieres of The Da Vinci Code and X-Men: The Last Stand. But its usual fare is provocative or perplexing films from top directors. Three of the attention-grabbing entries: Volver Pedro Almodóvar blends ghost story, revenge drama and all-girl comedy in a tale of courageous, if loco, sisterhood. Lovely Penélope Cruz and spectral Carmen Maura merit laurels, maybe Oscars...
...Silk, directed by Su Chao-bin, tries a sciencey twist on the ghostly-kid genre spawned in Japan by The Ring and imitated by movie industries from Hong Kong's to Hollywood's. Beginning with that favorite Asian movie trope - sending some disposable Caucasian to his violent death - Silk focus on a Taipei research project that has managed, through some anti-gravity gizmo called the Menger Sponge, to capture the ghost of a nine-year old boy. Guess what? The death-child escapes...
...movie has enough plot for three good movies, or at least three better ones than this. There are two tragic mother-son pairs, two suicides, a grotty autopsy, a car crash and much spectral infiltration of supporting characters. (They stick their ghostly heart through your rib cage, then squeeze). I found the movie wearying and stayed only because Mary C., who had to leave after the first hour, wanted to know how it came out. The short answer: boy gets girl, ghosts run wild. And that wasn't worth waiting for. But if you've always wanted...
...cast, applauded the 30-sec. film (of steps emerging from beneath the sea and up to the stars, to the swirling, twinkling music of Camille Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals), snapped more photos when the Festival logo appeared on screen and stayed through nearly two hours of conventional ghost-story frissons. When the audience walked out at 2:40, they looked ready to go partying...