Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Lee Eisenberg One of Pedro Almodóvar's early movies is a gruesome look at the dark side of human nature. Bullfighter-in-training Ángel Jimenez (Antonio Banderas) worries that his teacher Diego (Nacho Martínez) doesn't consider him manly enough, so he attempts to rape Diego's girlfriend Eva (Eva Cobo), and then confesses. This leads into a whole analysis of each of the characters, who also include Ángel's lawyer, María Cardenal (Assumpta Serna).Without a doubt, Almodóvar's movies are not for everyone, and "Matador" is quite possibly the most extreme example. The opening scene will very likely tell you whether or not you want to keep watching. Of course, one of the topics that the movie brings up is Catholic guilt, as Ángel's viciously strict mother (Julieta Serrano) has damaged him to the point that he confesses to crimes that he didn't commit. Religion doesn't get much love in Almodóvar's movies, as seen in "Bad Education" (probably for a good reason, since Almodóvar very likely had a bad experience with the Catholic Church).I probably wouldn't call "Matador" Almodóvar's best movie, but it does bring up some good points, so I recommend it. Carmen Maura and Eusebio Poncela also star.Antonio Banderas and Pedro Almodóvar are now collaborating on a movie called "The Skin I Live In", which I hope to see. It's going to be a shock hearing Banderas speak his native language again, after years of his starring in Hollywood movies.

johnnyboyz I liked the film Almodóvar made just prior to this a lot more; 1984's What Have I Done to Deserve This? was a far more involving, concentrated and reigned in effort about a group of women living in a cold; damp; greyed out; unwelcoming Madrid striving to get by amidst volatile living conditions and family members. It was witty, punchy and taut: a real treat. While I'd furiously champion that film if you're seeking out early Almodóvar, his 1986 effort Matador leaves a bad taste in the mouth; a wandering, sprawling freak show of a film documenting irritating; destructive and border-line psychotic people getting mixed up with one another in webs of "love" and "passion". It is nonsense of the highest order; a wandering, sprawling piece that treats an array of sensitive subjects in a grandeur and disrespectful manner. Maybe it's about the sorts of items the cinema of Spain had been mostly starved of over the decades prior to the 1980s due to strict censorship, but in truth; it's a relatively routine, drab thriller with a little bit of trashy sex sprinkled in, about a misogynist whom it's gradually revealed might be coming around to realise his ways as whom it is his eye catches goes through a routine process of idolising somebody a tad too much.The misogynist and idol in question is a certain Diego (Martínez), a trained matador who now teaches after a bit of an incident several years ago during a bullfight in which he was gored. He teaches young Ángel (Banderas), the lone interesting character of the film whose impetulance in being a youth sees him overreact and do something daft early on resulting in the film imprisoning him for most of the rest of it. This means we get to focus on Diego and a certain María (Serna) bickering; bantering and meeting at all sorts of odd times in odd places as lust and so fourth rages. Diego is a man that likes pain; derives pleasure from pain and particularly pain inflicted on women given how much he enjoys the horror film he watches at the beginning. This, before we cut to the same gentleman lecturing on how to skewer a bull to a class of matadors. Next scene, María is murdering a poor hapless chap by 'goring' him in her own unique way; a sharp hair pin into somewhere just thinking about sends shivers down my spine. This is what links them, you see – sadism attracts sadism; the longing for dangerous and powerful romantic interludes attracts the longing for dangerous and power........oh, you get the idea. María is a lawyer, and even turns out to be Ángel's attorney after he turns himself in for an attempted rape on neighbour Eva (Cobo), someone who just happens to be Diego's girlfriend.What begins as a slightly interesting and edgy drama about a number of colourful people interacting with each other on this plateau of suspicions and the questioning of one's identity quickly dissolves into bland Euro-centric dribble designed to shock and confuse, written and directed by a man on a then-brief vein of form that sees him ramble without consequence as the revelling in grotesque content comes across as that of the 'high-art'. Maybe to him and some others, to the rest, it's just juvenile. The film systematically uses Ángel to tap into Spain's problematic past and both Diego and María as tools documenting what everyone else in every other Western nation are "obsessed" with in their texts so as to provide some sort of closure on where Spain and its art (plus attitudes) might (or ought) be headed. The case study between the two romantic leads exemplified by the two graphic sex scenes María is involved in: grotty, greyed out and uncouth in a run down locale with a nobody earlier on, but in a lavish; colourful; exquisite; log-fire lit locale later on with Diego.Almodóvar has fun addressing the past in the character of Ángel, a young man that lives with his mother in a rather expensive home having had a Catholic upbringing, and we get the sense he's been kept as far away from any sort of temptations, however seemingly minute, as possible. This is touched upon in a sly moment when Almodóvar has him engage with Diego around a billiards table, Diego asking for a game to which Ángel does not even attempt to rise to simply by saying he "does not know how to play". It would seem pool houses, items such as gambling and the like have been in no way omnipresent throughout Ángel's life. Issues of sexuality are questioned – this representation of the more 'classical' young Spanish male then driven to go out so as to try and rape a girl; a neighbour, someone local, thus clearly establishing a sense of desperation or suddenness in the act, built up by anger. But incarcerating Ángel is Almodóvar's method of telling us he's dealt with that bit and now wants to focus on the scummy leads, systematically rendering Ángel's strand one of a detective driven nature as police officers struggle to work out what has driven this young man to do the things he says he has done. The film is remotely interesting at the best of times, off-the-wall; grotesque and rather stupid at the worst – culminating in a bizarre race against time borrowed from many-a past thriller rendering the entire experience a wholly unpleasant way to spend an hour and a half.

dromasca It is very much worth watching this early film of Almodovar from 1986, with a painfully young Antonio Banderas also at one of his first major screen presences. As many of his latest great movies it's a film hard to put in a precise square, a combination of comedy and tragedy, of crime, love and corrida movie with a touch of absurd and a touch of passion taken directly from life.Although many of the major themes of passion, sexual desire and ambiguity, relation between love and death are already present the movie is somehow simpler in action and easier to watch than some of the later films. The story of two sexual predators and murderers, united in life by the passion for bull fights and in death by their passion for each other is acted with accuracy by a good team of actors and directed with an already recognizable style by Almodovar. The hand of the young master is certainly already there, and the film ages well 20 years after is premiere.

writers_reign The NFT in London are currently holding an Almodovar season - what else would pseuds do - and the best you can give it is that at least it's not New Voices From The Rain Forest: Some Recent Films From Jivaro Directors, which is probably scheduled for Next year. Having failed to 'see' anything in Almodovar's recent titles I thought perhaps his earlier titles would have something going for them. Alas, I have to conclude not much. His first film, screened last week, and this one from six years later are apparently based on the theory that if it's outrageous enough it will be good. T'ain't so, honey, t'ain't so. This time around we have a Black Widow spider of a lawyer who kills her partners at the moment of orgasm, an ex-matador who likes his girl friend to pretend to be a stiff every time HE gets stiff, a 'psychic' virgin with a penchant for confessing to serial killing, etc, put them together and what do you get? Bibbety-Bobbity-Poo or pretentious crap, whichever's the greater. If it's a choice between this and being force-fed ALL the Carry On titles whilst Elton John brays from a speaker system I know which I'd choose.