Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Mabel Munoz Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Jerrie It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

ciffou Several years ago I watched "El dia de la bestia". I recall I had fun. Then with "Crimen Ferpecto" I laughed several times. I watched it so many times. Then it was "las brujas..." and I could not believe what I had just witnessed. Then I learned he had done this before - I just watched it. My god! This was a terrible mess. I don't know which one is worse.I bet Iglesia watched one night that clip of Rafael singing and thought "I should do something with clowns again! But creepy clowns! I need animals around! So I need maybe a circus...or a war? Maybe both! Who cares? BLOOD!!!!"I can't decide what's worst: the acting or the editing. The kid at the start, Alejandro Tejerias and even the leading lady...they are B.A.D.!Our director AND writer just needed blood and beautiful photography. If that's all you as audience need, there you go, this is your movie. If you need a good story or simply a story that makes sense, you will be fighting to remain sane.Things I wrote down while suffering with this: -SPOILERS AHEAD- They are hiding in the shower from the jealous lover inside the trailer, then it's another day, how did they manage to escape? The guy is deformed by the vet...but he has to go outside in a completely different place to see his new face again? When the guy is running from the pig, sometimes we see the animal and sometimes we don't...I guess there was not enough money. How much time has passed? What did the other guy do while the clown was hiding in the woods and the others left the circus? A single guy with a small gun can stop several soldiers - soldiers that, by the way, can't shoot a damn thing! What was the point of having them there? Background noise from their bullets? What does Natalia want? Am I suppose to root for her? If she could run even with clown shoes, why didn't she do it sooner? Everybody is awful! Nobody reacts when a shotgun is near them. The police went inside before him but he finds the couple first?? What was the point of wasting screen time with "Motorista-fantasma"? Why?

Maz Murdoch (asda-man) The moment I saw the trailer for The Last Circus, I fell in love. The bizarre, yet sublime, imagery, the engaging story, the intense music. The Last Circus looked like a hit! However, when some mediocre reviews came in I lowered my expectation slightly, but after seeing it, I needn't have bothered! The Last Circus astonished me at how good it was! I was left in amazement at seeing such a strange, beautiful, funny, sad, tragic and gripping gem. The Last Circus deserves to be a cult classic, for it will certainly not be to everyone's tastes, but it is certainly is to my tastes!The sublime opening sets the tone for the rest of the film. Children laugh as all the institutional information pops up, and then we realise that they're laughing at the clowns in the circus. This laughter is suddenly cut rather short however, when an army man comes in (because it's the civil war) declaring all the circus members to fight! Then some wonderfully weird titles come up with seemingly random images of the Spanish civil war, Universal monsters and other random film clippings including Cannibal Holocaust. Its bizarre and unconventional, which is exactly what this film is! The engaging opening is then finished off with some fantastic imagery of a clown dressed up as a woman, carrying a machete and slicing up the opposition! It's a fantastic surreal image and one you're not likely to forget.After this great back-story has finished, we're introduced to our hero (or anti-hero). The sad clown. A great shot introduces us to all the weird and wonderful characters and it's often hilarious. We've got an elephant who gets jealous when her owner talks to another woman, we've got two old bickering dog trainers and the list goes on. It's a funny sequence and also a great way to get us introduced to all the characters, all of which are brilliant creations. But obviously the sad clown falls for the beautiful trapeze artist, who belongs to the happy clown. The happy clown is a seriously nasty piece of work. The first time we see him, he's tossing dwarfs out the door! It's this rivalry that drives the film forward. However, as the film goes on the line between good and evil begins to blur.I don't want to say any more on the story because it would be a shame to spoil it. The great thing about the Last Circus is that it tells a story. It's a story I loved, and obviously one which the film-makers cared about because it's told so well. The characters are fantastic, with people you can care about, and others you can't. You'll root for the tragic sad clown, who is the only one who has the guts to stand up to the bullying happy clown, but things later take an unpredictable turn. The Last Circus is a love story at heart, and the poor person in-between this bitter feud is the innocent Nathalia, the trapeze artist who you can't help but feel sorry for as she drives two clowns absolutely wild!The Last Circus never stops looking amazing. Sometimes it looks more like an art piece than a film, especially when crazy imagery comes into play such as a clown machine-gunning a restaurant! The grand finale is surprisingly cinematic and quite a spectacle to behold. The Last Circus also never forgets its entertainment-value as horror fans are given some gloriously entertaining blood-shed, without it ever forgetting its story and characters at heart. The Last Circus has a big heart, and quite an emotional ending that left me in surprise.Another great thing about The Last Circus is the pace. The pacing is sometimes break-neck, and the story motors along, trying not to waste a single frame. Sometimes I felt that it moved too quickly, and it would've been nice to soak some of it in. I also thought that the sad clown's descent into madness was too quick and unconvincing, however let's not forget that we're watching a film about two warring clowns! The Last Circus is not trying to be normal! The gripping narrative all culminates into an all-action finale that's pretty intense. The spectacular directing goes up another notch, and the fairytale soon comes to an end we all were hoping to see, and one that's actually very sad.The Last Circus was even better than I thought it was going to be. From the trailer, I expected a bit of a mess (a beautiful mess nonetheless) however what I got was a focused story, with fantastic characters, spectacular directing and a tight screenplay. The Last Circus really is amazing to behold and unlike anything I've ever seen (and I've seen Taxidermia!) It's severely underrated and reminded me of The Prestige with clowns. So if you're after some surreal imagery, a gripping narrative, some intense directing and characters you can actually care about, then roll up, roll up for The Last Circus! No children allowed!

Kingdecoy37 I find it hard to believe that someone can come on here and do nothing but bash this film. People who claim to "have seen a lot of films", and people who "fought to hold their food down". Maybe these people have never felt the injustices of the world and the mental toll they can take on a person over time. When talking about the sudden and rapid shifts in tone and mood, I feel like I'm experiencing the same mental and emotional turmoil as these two clowns of destruction. Being reduced to the basic carnal behaviors of jealousy when fighting for the woman they love. Now the thing is, it's all being done in the sense of a black comedy. The hyper violence of the movie has a natural born killers approach to satire. The gore isn't important in the movie. It's just an added bonus to the types of people who would honestly enjoy this film to begin with. The true underlying message is the extremes people have gone to for the love of another person. Not the dialogue, not the violence, not the "fat sadistic clown". This movie is something that has never been done before, which is a plus right of the bat. It's not meant to be taken completely serious. If you feel it was just randomized crap with buckets of blood thrown in, then you missed the point, and this film wasn't meant for you. So please just sit down shut up and watch the movie

DICK STEEL A bizarre love triangle set against the historical backdrop of Spain from the 30s to the 70s, with fantastical elements thrown in for good measure, complete with grotesque images that firmly puts this amongst cult favourites demanding an acquired taste. It won writer-director Alex de la Iglesia a Silver Lion at the 2010 Venice Film Festival, and so I'm quite surprised it actually did make it to our shores some two years later given a subject material that is steeped in Spanish history with its allegories, without which it may just appear to be a violently dark film.It begins in 1937 where a laughing clown is in the process of entertaining children, but for the Spanish Republican militia to rudely interrupt the circus act to conscript every able bodied man to fight off the insurgent Loyalist forces. The clown is given a machete and he proceeds to really hack off countless of adversary soldiers, before being put down, jailed and soon gets sent to work on the Valle de los Caidos. He leaves his son Javier with advice to be the sad clown because Javier had lost his childhood with the war, and we fast forward to the 70s where the now grown up Javier (Carols Areces) finally heeds his dad's advice and got a job as a sad clown, playing opposite the laughing clown Sergio (Antonio de la Torre), a sadist behind the makeup, but so popular that he's single-handedly responsible for the circus' financial viability.Of all people, Javier has to fall in love with Sergio's wife, the acrobat Natalia (Carolina Bang), who herself is quite the cock-tease for stringing Javier along, who personifies the type of girl who just cannot pull herself away from the bad boy. Javier insists that she leaves Sergio during one of their secret outings at night, and soon the entire narrative blows apart when Sergio catches them together, and beats the living daylights out of both. Here's where everything becomes a little bizarre, with Javier seeking revenge and almost killing Sergio, if not for their fellow circus troupe members sending him for emergency surgery at the nearest vet, causing disfiguring and in essence, puts his inner, ugly personality on the outside for all and sundry. As for Javier, he hides out in a cave stark naked, feeding on animals who drop in, before being caught by a one-time enemy, humiliated, and in a dream sequence, becomes the violent, angel of death strapped with every conceivable gun, going on a rampage to get his lady love back.While the narrative may be strangely held together by plots that don't really connect, with disparate scenes and sequence of events, it is the imagery that gets put on screen that becomes somewhat magnetic to watch, keeping one glued to how everything would turn out, especially since violence has now entered the picture. Alex de la Iglesia challenges you to keep watching even as he presents some of the vividly horrific scenes of self-mutilation as Javier literally turns into the sad clown, and a gun toting one at that, driven to madness just for the unattainable love of a woman who repeatedly continues to spurn this one time gentle giant of a man, for a drunken who can satisfy her fetish for violent sex. de la Iglesia never shied away from fusing history into his plot, with old newsreel interruptions to point out specific historical milestones that ties in with the story he wants to tell, but the best parts as the film wore on was the battle between the two clowns, with a final shot that's really quite poignant as they become truly who they are, with make pretense in an arena turning into actual, permanent emotions.If you're up for a film that can easily be a staple in fantastic film festivals, then The Last Circus will be right up your alley. Otherwise the narrative may border a little on the unbelievably absurd, coincidental, and may not actually make much sense, and easily become B-grade exploitative fare if not for its love triangle that connects the protagonist together, and the strong statements Alex de la Iglesia has depicting the tumultuous, violent history of the country.