Paddington In Peru

Dear Peru Dance

Paddington In Peru
Directed by Dougal Wilson
UK/France/Japan/USA 2024
Columbia
UK Cinema Release Print.

Paddington In Peru is the third in the staggeringly successful and popular series of films based on Michael Bond’s eponymous bear and let me say up front that, as far as I’m concerned... yes, this is perhaps ‘the least’ of the big screen Paddington adventures. And I think there are some very specific reasons for that, which I’ll probably get into in a minute but, it would also be remiss of me to not say that this is by no means a bad film. Like the previous installments it’s fun, entertaining and has a lot going on for it. It just pales slightly in comparison to those first two but, what other family films don’t these days?

The majority of the former cast are all present and correct, with people like Ben Wishaw doing the voice of Paddington, Hugh Bonneville as Mr. Brown and Julie Walters as Mrs. Bird. That being said, I did really miss one of my favourite modern British actresses, Sally Hawkins, in the role of Mrs. Brown. Alas, my understanding is that she has a medical condition which prevents her from filming overseas at the moment so... yeah, it’s a damn shame because she was my favourite thing about the Paddington movies, to be honest. Having said that though, this is not to detract from her replacement, Emily Mortimer, who steps into her shoes really well and still manages to hold the family unit together as they embark on their adventures.

And it’s a fair old romp. Olivia Colman plays the nun in Peru in charge of the Home For Retired Bears but, as she writes to Paddington, Aunt Lucy has gone missing. So Paddington and the Browns (and Mrs. Bird) all fly off to ‘Darkest Peru’, as it was always known in the books, to find her... accidentally getting involved in a quest to find the lost gold of El Dorado with ‘interested parties’ turning up and coming out of the woodwork, including the captain of a river boat they charter, played by Antonio Banderas. The game is afoot, so to speak and Paddington is off on new adventures, of course.

So, yeah, it’s all very good but I have to say, this one makes a little mistake, I think, in terms of the idea of what makes the Paddington franchise tick. It’s not, I believe, the fault of the new director, who absolutely does an excellent job here... it’s more the fault of the writing or, more specifically, the story idea. You see, Paddington is from Peru and the comedy hijinks he gets involved in are often of the fish out of water variety (or should that be bear out of forest), relying on the bear’s unfamiliarity with the trappings and rituals of British life, it seems to me. However, we don’t really have that charming part of the equation here for this one... the opening of the movie (asides from yet another flashback to Paddington’s childhood) is once again set in London but it really isn’t long before the family have upped stakes and transported themselves to Peru. Consequently, some of the comedy and, I would say, some of the wonderfully creative ideas of its cinematic forebears (pun absolutely intended) are not in abundance in this installment either. It all seems to run out of steam fairly early, once the novelty wears off.

But, honestly, it’s just a minor gripe and I still had a fairly good time with it, it has to be said. And it’s not creatively dead by a long shot. For instance, Banderas’ character speaks to his various ghostly ancestors and the way one of them suddenly appears to him as a 3D version of his painting is masterfully done. I also, truth be told, shed more than a tear at some of the more moving scenes towards the end of the movie which, it’s fair to say, is not unusual in a Paddington movie, for sure.

People who are fans of the previous movies will want to hang around for the post credits and mid-post credits sequences too, where a much loved character from the previous installment appears in two mini scenes, although the actor is only billed as the character name ‘playing himself’ in the end credits.

And that’s me done with Paddington in Peru, I think. Not the best of the series but good enough to keep me entertained and I certainly hope there will be another one in a few years time. Hopefully located firmly in the British Isles this time. If you’re a fan of the previous two then you’re certainly not going to hate it... just don’t raise your expectations too high, I would say.

Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny

Lost Arky Medium Spiral

Indiana Jones And
The Dial Of Destiny
Directed by James Mangold
USA  2023 Paramount/Lucasfilm
UK cinema release print

Warning: One big spoiler from which you can infer the ultimate fate of one of the characters.

Okay then... lets do this. I love the Indiana Jones films but I was kinda worried that both Spielberg and Lucas were stepping away from this one (although I think Spielberg was on this one as executive producer or some such). I’ll get to my main worry later because, in a way, it’s a bit of a spoiler so, you know, I’ll leave it to near the end.

I won’t say too much about the plot of Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny other than it involves a typical 1980s style quest narrative of putting together bits of an artefact before the bad guys... who in this case are the Nazis, despite the majority of the film being set in 1969. And that the artefact in question is the titular dial, aka an invention Archimedes designed called the Antikythera, although it serves a different function in the film to what it was used for in real life. And that’s me done on the story.

Let’s get to the actors.

Harrison Ford is pretty great in this and he’s ably supported by someone called Phoebe Waller-Bridge playing his god daughter Helena. Also, we have Toby Jones in the sequences of the film set in 1939 and Mads Mikkelsen playing a Nazi rocket scientist spanning both 1939 and 1969, who is the main villain of the piece. Anybody who’s seen Mikkelsen play villains will know he’s really good at this kind of thing and this role is no exception.

Then there’s Antonio Banderas who, honestly, is a really great actor... a pity then that he’s totally wasted in this movie. I wish his character would have been written as someone with greater importance to the story. And there are also a couple of actors returning too. John Rhys-Davies returns playing Indy’s friend Sallah for a third time and... yeah, I’ll leave the other returning actor a mystery but, you will be expecting it.

The film is full of action although, the formula seems a little different. It felt a bit like it wasn’t quite as ‘action and plot in overdrive’ as the other four movies and I think it suffers somewhat from this, truth be told. But it’s fine... it doesn’t get boring and Indy fans should be enthralled with the journey this movie takes them on. There are a few problems with the movie too, though...

Okay, my cousin in Australia, who saw it a number of hours before me and who loved it, warned me up front so I didn’t simmer in my own anger for twenty minutes like he did. A big problem is that the Paramount Pictures mountain logo doesn’t transform into the first shot of the movie like the other four films do. This is pretty much like watching a Bond movie without the famous signature tune and gun barrel walk at the start (and we know how that turned out when they tried it on two of the weakest movies in the Bond franchise). So, yeah, that is a pretty anger inducing phenomenon, for sure.

Secondly, the famous shadow silhouettes which Spielberg always used to foreshadow Indy’s entrances at various parts of the movies are completely gone too. Which is annoying and I’d go further and say that, for all the action and dialogue scenes, nothing quite seems as simple as the way Spielberg and his cinematographer would have shot it. It feels elaborately constructed rather than just being elaborately constructed with that fine air of simplicity that made them feel as breezy as the 1930s adventure serials on which they were based. Which is a shame but...like I said... it’s an okay film.

Let me now address two generally cited problems with the film which seem to have come up on social media but which I really don’t think are really a problem at all. One is the ‘younged up Harrison Ford’ CGI. I mean yeah, it’s never great when they do this in movies but, honestly, it’s really not all that bad for the majority of those scenes in the film. I mean, yes, there were a couple of moments where he looked like a fake modern computer game but, for the most part, you should be able to suspend your disbelief enough to get caught up in the action. It’s basically fine... I’m not a fan of this kind of stuff but it suffices here just as big wire cables to hold up the spaceships sufficed in films of the 1930s-1960s. Just ignore it.

Secondly, the last twenty or so minutes of the movie seems to have divided people. All I will say is that it’s traditional for an Indiana Jones movie to build towards a fanciful conclusion. I had the same disappointment when I first saw Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade... which I thought had an absolute rubbish ending. Angels and Sankara Stones I could buy into but ancient knights preserved through the centuries was just silly. I much preferred the next one because the alien at the end seemed a far more sensible option. So all I will say is, the first three movies had religious endings of a sort and the last two movies have similarly fantastical endings which are based on pseudo-scientific wish fulfilment (which you probably will see coming a long way before it happens). Yes, the last twenty minutes or so will cross a line for some people but I think, if you’re going to have this sequence in a movie, then this is rendered as credibly as you could hope for. I didn’t mind it at all.

What I did have a problem with was John Williams wonderful score to the film. I love Williams’ Indy scores but this one felt a little overly familiar. I mean, yes, if you’re going to reference things from previous films then it absolutely is the right decision to score it with a bit of leitmotif which is relevant from the source score. However, I didn’t like the fact that I kept also hearing things which weren’t linked to a specific reference also turning up. For instance, I don't want to be seeing a car chase and then have musical cues like Escape From Venice and Belly Of The Steel Beast (both from Last Crusade) interpolated into the score. It just reminds you of the other movie when it doesn’t have a link so... yeah... found that a bit disconcerting, to be honest.

Okay, there are a few more minor problems also like anachronisms in terms of the time setting throughout the movie (police car livery, makes of gun... that kind of thing) but I don't know how many of these were actually genuine mistakes as opposed to dumbing things down for the audience for greater clarity... so I think I’ll stay off that subject. And now we get to the big spoiler so, yeah, don’t read further if you don’t want to know.

My biggest worry about this one was that they were going to kill off Indiana Jones... not because it didn’t feel right but because it would completely break continuity with the Young Indiana Jones TV show where we know that Indy lives to tell his stories from the perspective of the 1990s (as played by both George Hall and, in one episode, Harrison Ford himself). Especially since the last movie validated the series as continuity in that events from at least one episode are mentioned and, similarly, this movie has its own visual reference to the show. All I will say to others worried about how this movie keeps continuity with that TV show is... it absolutely does. Which is a big spoiler in itself I guess but, the movie doesn’t contradict the timeline in any way that I could see, so have no worries there.

And that’s about all I’ve got to say about this one other than, Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny is an enjoyable enough romp but, for me, it’s easily the weakest of the Indiana Jones films and I won’t be rushing back to the cinema for a repeat viewing. I’ll catch up with it again when I show it to my parents on Blu Ray. It’s a nice enough film for sure and it certainly has its moments but, for me, the writing and direction didn’t come close to the earlier films. It’s not the years it’s the mileage.

The Hitman's Wife’s Bodyguard

Virus, The Angels Fell

The Hitman's Wife’s Bodyguard
2021 UK/USA
Directed by Patrick Hughes
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Some small spoilers.

The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard is, obviously, the sequel to The Hitman’s Bodyguard (which I reviewed here)... well now, hey, it’s better than giving it a 2 on the end. Now, I’d heard that this sequel is not as strong as the first film but, frankly, although there’s one slight issue I have with it, I think this second movie is far superior to the first and gets some things right which were thrown away as kind of a missed opportunity in the first.

Okay, so the plot is that a big bad guy played by Antonio Banderas is going around various countries in Europe, drilling into their electrical supply lines and then crippling their countries in a very explosive, Hollywood style over-the-top manner by injecting a computer virus into the various systems. None of it sounds that do-able in real life (in this fashion) but, well, it’s a movie plot set up so it works just fine. We’re in fantasy land here after all... as demonstrated by the amount of physical punishment that Ryan Reynolds takes in this movie, which would surely hospitalise a real person for months at the very least (he’s run over with a car at least twice).

Anyway, somehow Samuel L. Jackson’s hitman character gets kidnapped and mixed up with this whole scheme and it’s down to the always wonderful Salma Hayek, reprising her role as Jackson’s wife, to get him out. So she gets to the psychologically troubled (due to events in the last movie) Ryan Reynolds bodyguard character, forcing him out of his ‘new, stress free life’ because she misunderstands her husband’s request of who to get to help her get Jackson away from his captors. And, of course, in the process of this initial rescue, the three become ‘travelling companions’ as they get embroiled in the whole caper and tasked with saving the world from Banderas’ evil scheme.

And it’s a hoot. This one retains the wonderful, disagreeable chemistry between Reynolds and Jackson and then ramps it up by expanding Salma Hayek’s role from the first film to really add the craziness. Salma is on fire here and she’s easily the best thing about the movie, it has to be said... the three leads are all great and make a perfect team in this one.

And it’s a bit ‘business as usual’ for a Hollywood action film but the various gun battles, fist fights, car chases and stunts are all quite watchable and this one does the one thing the first film should have done more of. I remember complaining the first time around that Jackson and Reynolds were so good playing off one another but that, for some reason, they rarely shared any action sequences together... the writers always seemed to split them up and cross cut between two separate action sequences for each character. Here, I’m happy to say, we have none of that. All three leads... Reynolds, Jackson and Hayek... share a lot of screen time together and collaborate on all of the action scenes really well (and they’re all quite funny performances too... which helps anyway).

There’s perhaps an over reliance on a kind of visual punchline to many of the scenes, perhaps... where we, and usually the characters, perceive something to be happening and then the camera will pull back to reveal a different picture, such as the fact they've just been surrounded by a section of the secret service holding guns on them... or something will happen to just change the situation suddenly, like all three getting tranquiliser darts in the neck (of course, Reynolds gets about six shot in his face) but it’s not too distracting and it provides the required humour as intended so, I can’t complain too much about this stuff. Nor possibly on the use of ‘unexpected dream sequences’ being used in a similarly humorous way.

What I can complain about is that some of it isn’t all that funny in places and there is an over reliance on way too much swearing, perhaps but...yeah, a lot of comedy in general is hit and miss, to be honest but the joke to laugh ratio isn’t bad here and, frankly, one woman at the screening I was at was laughing hysterically throughout the whole movie so, I’m maybe a little humour-light myself, in all fairness.

Other than that, there’s a nice Steve McQueen reference and a silly but watchable guest role for Morgan Freeman as Ryan Reynold’s ‘ultimate bodyguard father’... but I don’t want to say too much about that character here, to be honest.

Ultimately, if you liked the first movie, then you should have a fair amount of fun with The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard... and Salma Hayek seems to be in so few things these days that it’s always good to see her in anything new, especially humorous roles (I always loved her as ‘the muse’ in Kevin Smith’s Dogma). I had a fairly good time with this one and, from the sound of the audience, everyone else had an even better time with it than me. So, yeah, if you liked the first one, then definitely don’t miss out on this one. And if you do, be forewarned, there’s a mid-end credits scene plus a little joke on the very end of the movie, if you are so inclined to stay.

The Expendables 3

The Uncanny X-pend

The Expendables 3
2014 USA/France
Directed by Patrick Hughes
Cinema release print.

Well... this one kinda works well.

If you’ve read my reviews for The Expendables (here) and The Expendables 2 (here) then you’ll already know that I have a soft spot for these movies and the sentiment behind them. I have to confess to being a little worried about the fact that this one’s gone for a much lower age rating than the previous installments and I’ll stand by that and raise some points about that lower on down in this review but... all in all, The Expendables 3 kicks ass if it’s a nice big dose of action you crave.

The cast is as solid as usual and has the usual, additional names added to the roster... this time in the shape of Wesley Snipes, Harrison Ford, Antonio Banderas, Kelsey Grammar, Robert Davi and Mel Gibson (as the villain of the piece). However, there’s also a new, younger team of recruits and future Expendables in this and they were all pretty likeable in here too, with special mention going to the lady in the pack, Ronda Rousey, who has great screen presence in this and does the action scenes just as well as her colleagues. Imagine my surprise when I just looked her up and found out that this is her first feature film.

The story is about what you’d expect from an Expendables film. It’s simple, clichéd, not very challenging to your mental capacity and, basically, does what you’d expect it to do from the message on the tin, so to speak. And there’s nothing wrong with this. I think trying to graft a more intricate plot onto a movie which is basically trying to recapture some of the atmosphere of those late 1970s and early 1980s action movies would have been a delicate tightrope walk to pull off. This movie ditches any attempts to remake its original intentions in this manner and, frankly, the franchise doesn’t need to do that anyway. The film works well at its level and supplies pretty much most of the right ingredients needed to pull it off in style.

There are some casualties though.

Once again, Jet LI has what amounts to a cameo role in this, coming near the end instead of the beginning like the previous movie. Robert Davi is also underused as a minor villain, it has to be said, but it was at least nice to see him. I say this having always pretty much disliked the actor but I think that’s probably more because I identify him with some of the villainous roles he’s played in the past and so, if you’re paying attention here... that means he must be a pretty good actor. I’ve probably unfairly mis-judged him over the years and so, like I said, it would have been nice to see him as a more major villain in this one, I think. Gibson works well with the script he has, though, but I still preferred his turn as the villain in Machete Kills (reviewed here), to be honest.

It’s an entertaining movie, no question, but if I was asked to rank it compared to the others I think I’d struggle with its placing. I think it’s definitely better than the first one, for sure, but I think I can’t say it’s any better or worse than the second one. It’s kinda swings and roundabouts and here’s why...

Okay, there’s been much fuss made about it going for a toned down, lower rating to get more money in at the box office and, while I can’t blame the stupid accountants in Hollywoodland who are the enemy of art and all about making money, I think this was a bad idea on their part. The Expendables franchise has had a pretty hard edge to it in terms of the depiction of on-screen violence and, while the inclusion of the goriness and the exclusion of it in this movie neither, in all honesty, attracts or detracts from the overall experience of watching a fun, action move... it does have two big negatives for leaving the “blood and guts” factor out.

One of those negatives is that it’s almost an essential part of what has become The Expendables brand. It does run the risk of not quite seeming like a bona fide Expendables movie... almost like an A Team kind of romp instead. It’s one of the things that sets it apart from what most of the other films in a similar genre are doing and it’s a shame that it loses the roughness which highlighted it and gave it a certain style.

The other big negative about cutting out the gore, for me, is that in doing so the film does what a lot of big action movies do these days in that it pretty much glamourises violence. Frankly, when you show the goriness of, say, a man being literally cut in half by a barrage of machine gun bullets, with bits of his innards flying everywhere... you are showing a very real and horrible consequence of the act of violence. It’s not glossing over it in any way and it makes you think twice about the possibility of doing violence yourself. However, when you lose the bloody consequences of that violence and cow-tow to the censors, and there’s a certain irony here, then you actually end up making that violence look like a very attractive element of life. And while I enjoy action movies as much as the next guy or gal... I think it’s important that youngsters need to get a feel for the fact that violence is something a human being should use as a last resort and not go in all gung ho and guns blazing. Just my two pennies worth there but it’s another reason why I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the DVD and BluRay releases of this movie are released in a much harder cut.

On the other hand, this movie does work better in terms of the way the characters are, mostly, all interacting and, for the most part, getting a pretty equal amount of screen time. The ensemble nature of the first movie, which was one of its big strengths and which I thought got a little lost in the second one (even though I preferred the second overall) is back and it serves the delivery of the story very well. Stallone and Statham should definitely work together more and the team they’ve got here all seem to have pretty good chemistry which, in this script more than the last, comes more to the foreground. So that’s all good.

At the end of the day, I can’t decide if I liked The Expendables 2 or The Expendables 3 more and, frankly, I don’t care... because whichever way you cut it you’ve got a great little action movie which works well and, like the first two, has a marvellous score by Brian Tyler, a composer I’ve been really getting into the swing of lately, since hearing his scores for the fourth Rambo movie and Battle: Los Angeles. Bits of the score definitely sound like they’ve been recycled from the previous movies but that possibly means this one is pulling the leitmotif together in an exceptional way (I’ll be clearer about it when I get my hands on the CD, on that count). So, all in all, if you liked either of the first two movies in this franchise then, despite the ratings drop, The Expendables 3 really delivers the goods on what you are expecting from the trailer (even though my favourite Banderas line of dialogue from the trailer didn’t make it into the final cut, by the looks of it). Definitely one to go see if you like these kinds of movies. I’ll definitely be picking this one up again on the home video release, for sure.

Machete Kills

Machete Junction Kills

Machete Kills
2013 USA/Russia
Directed by Robert Rodriguez
Playing at UK cinemas now.

Warning: Yeah, there’s gonna be some fairly big spoilers here.

The original Machete movie was a spin-off movie of a fake trailer used in Rodriguez and Tarantino’s Grindhouse project (released separately as Planet Terror and Deathproof over here in the UK). Like other projects made from the fake trailers in Grindhouse, such as Hobo With A Shotgun, Machete was a modern movie masquerading as a 1970s exploitation picture but made with a dash of self-conscious nostalgia for the sub-genre.

Both Machete Kills and Machete Kills Again were put up at the end of the original Machete as two films in which the title character ... um... Machete (played by Danny Trejo), would return. And now he has, in the promised Machete Kills. This was a film I’d really been looking forward to.

The film opens with a new fake trailer, that for the third movie in the Machete trilogy which has had something of a title revision since the last movie. Now the next Machete movie after this one, if the series gets that far, is Machete Kills Again... In Space. And indeed, the trailer looks wildly silly, it has to be said. Laser beams, Buck Rogers robots, light-sabres, light-machetes and a host of other things referencing the boom to plunge a character into the sci-fi milieu left in the wake of the original Star Wars movie’s cinematic success. Although this trailer is quickly referenced again at the end of Machete Kills (amongst other pre and post-credits chunks of “Machete movie moments”), I think that this should maybe have been left completely to the end of the movie because, this opening trailer tells us some important and spoilery things... one very quickly and then a bunch of stuff when you get into the last third of the movie.

The thing it ruins straight from the start is the fact that it reminds audiences the original Machete started off with a scene where he lost his partner. As you know from the previous movie, Machete’s new partner was also his new girlfriend, as played by Jessica Alba, a role this actress reprises here. However, since she isn’t in the trailer for Machete Kills Again... In Space, it doesn’t take much to figure out her character probably won’t make it until the end of this movie. Remembering that last film’s opening sequence on top of that, it’s not hard to realise she probably won’t even make it through the pre-credits sequence of this one before coming to a nasty end and... alas.... this is indeed what happens.

The other stuff you’ll realise, as you go through the movie, is that things are all pointing towards this one dovetailing straight into the next one. When Mel Gibson’s villanous Voz is shown to have a Star Wars fetish and intends to colonise the moon with his hand picked people and super-clones, much in the same way as the “off course” Bond film Moonraker did in the late seventies, you start to figure out where this is all going and, when he shows the silver mask worn in the Machete Kills Again... In Space trailer, you realise that this whole film is leading up to some kind of cliffhanger ending which takes Machete and the main villain careening into more mayhem in space... and that is also the correct conclusion.

For while Machete is clearly playing a more Bondian role in this one (he has his gadgets and knows how to use them... and is clearly a parallel here for “the many lives of John Shaft”... specifically the Shaft of Shaft In Africa) and the movie is quite blatant in its Moonraker references towards the end (with even some of the underscore sounding particularly late 70s Barryish at certain points)... it’s obvious that Machete Kills is Rodriguez saying to his Grindhouse audience... “Okay, so this is Machete’s version of The Empire Strikes Back.” And that is quite literal too... some parts of the sets are modelled on corridors and textures from Cloud City, Gibson has his own landspeeder and, after one of the regular Machete characters is blinded, Voz freezes her, encases her in carbonite and absconds with her in his spaceship.

Okay... so, this is all good and it certainly demonstrates the way films were getting high-jacked mid-production and turned into hastily changed science-fiction vehicles in the late 1970s. However, one of the things it has done, perhaps, is dilute down the already parodic Machete character into something else. It’s certainly a valid thing to do and it was very entertaining, but it was a bit more epic in scope than I wanted and a bit less punchy, I felt, than the first movie in the series.

Don’t get me wrong, it was fast paced as hell and the actors were all firmly committed to their tongue-in-cheek seventies roles, but I just didn’t have quite as much fun with it. That being said, however, there’s still a lot of laughs to go around and it brought a smile to this face on more than one occasion. It even had a follow up to the gory intestine joke of the previous film, which wasn’t quite as funny as the first but had a lot of people laughing. It’s very much a rip roaring time at the cinema and, what it lacks in the rawness of the first movie, it certainly makes up for in the sheer stupidity of its ideas... which includes flick knife smart phones, gatling gun bras, a miniature “strap-on” bazooka which shoots when you twerk, a helicopter blade ride with a difference and a 3D sex scene that will definitely leave you wanting more... especially as the print isn’t even in 3D, if you catch my drift.

Machete Kills is not quite the grimly humoured gore fest of the previous movie (although it certainly has its moments) but this shouldn’t stop the same audiences who liked the first movie from getting into this one... and with actors and actresses like Danny Trejo, Mel Gibson, Lady Gaga, Michelle Rodrigues, Amber Heard, Cuba Gooding Jr, Antonio Banderas, Charlie Sheen and even gory make-up legend Tom Savini, reprising the character he played in the first movie (but with a twist) going along for the ride... you’ll probably find something you’ll enjoy if you liked the first one. Definitely glad I saw this one and certainly looking forward to Machete Kills Again... In Space.

The Skin I Live In (aka La Piel Que Habito)

Skins Of The Father

The Skin I Live In (aka La Piel Que Habito)

2011 Spain

Directed by Pedro Almodóvar

Screening at UK cinemas

There are no spoilers in this review as such. That’s because there’s not a heck of a lot I could give away and the one big twist in this movie (which in a way is the only spoiler I could give... the fact that this movie does indeed have a twist)... is quite a major thing and, itself, gets revealed about two thirds of the way through the movie. I didn’t figure out what it was myself until about 20 minutes before it was revealed during a series of flashback sequences and I blame my own assumptions and expectations from seeing the trailer and some publicity stills for not getting there way sooner (more on that in a moment) like most people would.

One thing I will say though is that I’m kinda glad, in a way, that I wasn’t aware of the nature of the twist before going to see the film because the subject matter holds no interest for me and I would have simply not bothered going to see this if I’d known. Which would have been a shame because I’ve found myself inadvertently following this director’s career since I first saw Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down (aka Átame!) at the Lumiere cinema back in 1990. That was also the last film that Antonia Banderas worked on with his muse Almodóvar before “going international” and becoming something of a Big Hollywood Movie Star. His return to the Almodóvar brand, and it really is a brand at this point, is very welcome and although I had trouble with certain aspects of the movie, Banderas is his usual, brilliant self in this film.

Now when I saw the trailer for this movie and some of the beautiful stills from it, I immediately assumed this movie would be a dual homage to both Jess Franco’s 1961 movie The Awful Doctor Orloff and Georges Franju’s 1960 movie Eyes Without A Face... and I suppose in some ways it’s lineage could certainly be traced back there. However, the film lacks the post-modernistic referencing I get from most movies these days... that is to say, Almodóvar’s homage in this particular instance was a lot more subtle than I thought it would be... I think I’ve become brainwashed by the blatant eclecticism of lots of modern American movies to appreciate the low-key homage that is going on here. Almodóvar quite rightly serves the story first and foremost... and not the collective geekiness of people like myself.

The pre-publicity also got me thinking that the movie would be serving as a continuation of the long tradition of masked heroes and anti-heroes established in early 1900s French pulp literature and it’s influence... you know, Eric from Phantom of the Opera, Fantômas... maybe even a little of the Italian Diabolik thrown in for good measure. Not to mention characters such as Kriminal and Satanik! Alas, although certain elements of the style of the imagery from these does find it’s way into this movie, this is in no way intentional (I believe) and is just another symptom of the visual devices used to service the story... which, of course, is exactly what it should be.

Now Almodóvar is a bit hit and miss for me but, in recent years, he’s been far more hit than miss and I have to say that the trailer didn’t sell this as being your typical Almodóvar movie (if there’s such a thing as a typical Almodóvar movie... and I think there is). Certainly, for a while there after the film started, it didn’t quite seem to be what I would associate with Almodóvar, outside from the characteristic clean and bright visual style, of course. But as the film snakes along at a fairly cracking pace, you begin to recognise the key Almodóvar trademarks like the extended flashback sequences and the way they change your perceptions of the characters you’ve been living with for the last three quarters of an hour. It seems, after all, that we are on typical Almodóvar territory after all and I was almost disappointed at this turn of events in some ways but I really don’t know what I’m complaining about.

It’s certainly not boring and the colours and cinematography are absolutely cracking. There’s some absolutely brilliant stuff of Banderas giving a presentation at the start of the film via a computer where that particular light source (given a little help from the on-set lighting no doubt) gives him a severe case of sinister, old school 1930s Universal Horror lighting and this, combined with Antonia Banderas’ riveting performance, harking back to a long line of “mad scientists” of the motion pictures over the last 100 or more years, will certainly hold you in rapt and contemplative attention. All the performances in this movie, in fact, are of the usual high standard you would expect from the players in this director’s works... and that’s a big positive reason for giving this one some of your time.

A negative I had is that the musical cue so prominent in the theatrical trailer, and which gave the images on screen such a sinister and off-beat feel, only materialises briefly to score a small part of one sequence. It is not typical of the rest of Iglesias’ score throughout the movie which, although serviceable, was not really as stand out as I was expecting it to be... at least not within the context of supporting the film itself at any rate. I’m not sure how it will play outside of the film as a stand alone work.

My conclusion to this experiment is, thus, simple. The Skin I Live In is a double revenge movie. I’m not going to say why or how but you’ll realise why it is about halfway through seeing it. It has elegantly framed, clean shots with nice, bright colours and is leisurely edited, as you would expect from this director. I was personally left a little empty and uninspired by it and I think that was, more than anything, due to the impossible expectations I’d put on it. I can’t do anything, however, than recommend this fine movie to anyone who’s interested in it. Definitely worth a watch if Almodóvar is one of your directors of choice.