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...master's all-time greats (it's a notch or two below All About My Mother and Talk to Her), but it's still complex, vivacious and emotionally resonant. Since the gynocentric Mother and Volver, and the guy-nocentric Bad Education, Almodóvar has returned to the plot structure of the noirish Live Flesh: the toxic romantic geometry of a triangle love story. In the world of telenovela melodrama that has long appealed to Almodóvar, jealousy must be twisted into violence at the top of a winding staircase, while lust collides with a dark fate...
...little hug that can be therapeutic or redemptive. The paraplegic cop played by Javier Bardem in Live Flesh doesn't shrug off sexual desire just because he's confined to a wheelchair. Almodóvar suffuses his new film with this notion of the crippled seeking help; nearly every plot point pivots on someone's infirmity. The message is clear: we are all invalids who want to walk, if the fates allow, into each other's arms...
...mood and tone here are less bustling than in earlier Almodóvars. This time his energy went into the dense plot scheme, with its duplication of characters and family dynamics. One thing hasn't changed: the director's skill at bringing out the star quality of his performers. Homar, a Spanish stage veteran, handsomely shoulders the weight of the film. As for Cruz, in her fourth Almodóvar film, she's never been more luminous, serious or sexy. Her Lena is woman enough to justify one man's need to possess or destroy her and another's desire...
...call it “ironic,” “Ninja Assassin” has few fleeting moments of conscious self-deprecation. Its only redeeming characteristic, its constant flow of gasp-inducing, gory fight scenes, is undermined and rendered largely impotent by the frailty of its plot and characters...
...McKay's appearance, it hardly seems like a legitimate context. Sonja is not as worldly as she'd like us to believe - she's all red lipstick and knowing looks - but she and Richard still seem light-years apart in terms of maturity. It doesn't help the plot's credibility that there's something slightly off about Danes - her vivacity is a kettle threatening to boil over - and that we, along with Richard, have already met his far better match, a quirky aspiring writer (the adorable Zoe Kazan) who is his equal in unjaded excitement...