Alex de la Iglesia

Started by Weak2ndAct, July 09, 2005, 02:52:59 AM

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Weak2ndAct

Searching his name turned up jack and shit.  Am I the only person here who likes this guy's movies?  For US Xixaxers, I suppose it's a bit of stretch considering up until recently hardly any of movies weren't even available here (Day of the Beast and Accion Mutante are only available via less the reputable means).  I've seen/own all his flicks except for 'Crimen Perfecto,' which I heard is coming out here sometime this year.

While I don't find his films all to be perfect or total masterpieces, there's something totally compelling and fascinating about each one that ends up winning me over.

Pubrick

i gotta be honest with you, i just don't like movies anymore.
under the paving stones.

Alexandro

Well, I was and still am a big fan of Day of the Beast, it's one of the emblematic films of my teenage years. Accion Mutante is also pretty great. But after not liking Perdita Durango at all (first insane Javier Bardem's performance I've ever seen) I never gave any of his films another chance until last night, when I saw The Last Circus (or Sad Trumpet Ballad, the original and logical title to this movie). Sad to say that in the 15 years since Perdita Durango, all the things I disliked about his style in that film have become a signature. The guy has awesome ideas (in this case, a love triangle between two circus clowns and a "jessica rabbit" like femme fatale during Franco's dictatorship) that get lost in all the mayhem he loves to create. The pace he sets for this movie, desperately trying to be exhilarating becomes a bore. Characters verbally state their motivations early on and every sequence feels the need to top the last one in gore, or violence, etc...That's not to say that there's not a ton of creativity and effort put into this film, and a bunch of truly great sequences (most of those are set agains true life events in Spain's history, suggesting De la Iglesia has been influenced to some degree by Inglorious Basterds) you can tell there is an expert behind this whole thing, and that there is a point, but the screenplay is terrible as far as the characters are concerned, because it's impossible to give a shit about them, and they go through a lot here, but instead of caring you just feel more and more detached.

Personally (and this is important) I've never found spanish humor to be very funny, in fact I've felt the opposite. Back in Madrid a few years ago I went to a comedy club and I couldn't believe how bad every comedian was and at the same time how everyone was rolling with laughter. With comic spanish films it has always been the same (Day of the Beast and Almodovar films, which are more like melodramas, are exceptions), so every joke in this film felt pretty lame to me also. I don't think I'll watch another film from this guy for a while.