Heyyyy...

Hey Everyone,

I have on my list of reviews to write:
1) Hugo
2) Underworld: Awakening
3) the Hallmark movie "A Smile As Big As The Moon"

Here's what's on the to-do list above that stuff:
OMG SPRING SEMESTER STARTED AND I HAVE TO START WORKING WITH CHILDREN LIKE 24 HOURS A DAY AND PREPARING FOR THAT AND SOME HIGH STAKES EXAMS THAT WILL BE REARING THEIR UGLY HEADS HERE PRETTY QUICK

So I just wanted to say that there'll likely be ungainly, unprofessional, and unpleasantly long delays between posts from here until late May. When (not if, right guys?! heh..heh..hehhh..trails off, eyes glazed over staring in general direction of stack of books and papers) I do end up posting, I'll put a status update on the ol' facebook. So if you're into reading this blog, cast your errant eye on my page when you feel like it (or more likely when you don't feel like working) and you'll find out pretty quick if there's anything new for you to look at or not.

-the complainer

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 (2011)

Dear Every Other Reviewer of Twilight,

Please stop complaining about the plot of the movies. Everyone knows the story is silly already-- we read the books. For those viewers of the movie who did not (or did not wish to) acknowledge how silly/terrible the plot is, and what a disgustingly distorted and unhappy relationship dynamic it represents, your review means nothing. They will simply say "haters gon' hate" and throw your review in the trash.

Kindly focus on the cinematic aspects of the movie that failed. They were nearly as catastrophic as the plot elements that you spent your precious word count critiquing. However, as stated above, the flaws of the story were already there in the book. Leave criticizing those up to the book critics.

Please see my review below for an example of an honest consideration of the film's strengths and weaknesses.

Thanks,
Cait (The Complainer)


REVIEW:

This movie sucked and was majorly boring.

Hideously inept acting, extremely poor pacing, and ill timed and ill themed musical accompaniment soured the entire film experience overall. Little details like garish yellow contact lenses and unintentionally hilarious use of special effects kept everyone wondering why they paid to see to the movie in theaters. Lengthy "conversations" between snarling wolves and extremely corny love scenes provided handy moments for bathroom breaks. Taylor Lautner doing a laudable attempt at a crying breakdown, providing what was to be the only emotionally resonant moment of the film for me, served as a handy litmus test for just how bad the movie was overall.

I am still going to see the final installment. I have no justification as for why.

But please get a new editor or a new director or something. At least make me able to pretend I didn't waste my twelve bucks and 100 minutes.

Apollo 18 (2011)

Appall-o 18.

The only thing that made this movie better than Transformers was that they didn't waste nearly as much money making it.

Moon rocks are really spiders that go in your skin! And are really boring! And are trying way too hard with too many loud-music-in-place-of-actual-scares moments!

Just awful. Not even good for a laugh.

Blah. I had to go eat a donut afterwards to feel like the evening wasn't entirely wasted.

The Craft (1996)

Definitely a major guilty pleasure for a lot of people around my age, The Craft does not fail to delight even fifteen (?!) years after it was made.

Fun fact-- The Craft carries more weight with me now than it did when I was however old when I first saw it because unlike then, I now live where the movie is set-- L.A. in all its grimy glory.

I will not try to claim here that The Craft represents a decent portrayal of Wicca, or even of high school girls and all their awkward 'practice' relationships, but I do maintain that it is hilariously entertaining. Plus the soundtrack is still awesome.

Recommended for an indulgent Sunday afternoon. Smug and incredulous laughs abound.

Fright Night (2011)

This extremely entertaining update of the 1985 original has everything I enjoy seeing in a horror movie: humor, low stakes suspense, and an effervescent enthusiasm for making fun of itself.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching Fright Night from beginning to end, laughing along with my friends at all the ridiculous moments, most of which were delivered by Colin Farrell, who seemed to luxuriate in making his role seem as hilariously perverted and degrading/deviant as possible. Even when he's sucking blood out a parade of hapless teenagers, Farrell makes it brazenly obvious that what's really happening is intense, unbridled, and inappropriate sexual pleasure. It is extremely entertaining to watch Farrell run with this role, and I think he did a really smart interpretation of it that I'm not sure others could deliver.

The only problems I had with the film were that 1) the vampires were way scarier when they were not CGI enhanced than when they were. The climactic final monster scene was so overdone CGI-wise that I burst out laughing at the site of it. Leave Farrell with his black contacts and creepy just-jizzed-in-my-pants face alone. And 2) the kid playing the main character appeared to be a 30 year old man*. But he still did a good job in his role, as did the Russell Brand lookalike who played a very apropos satire of Criss Angel.

Overall, VERY worth your time, unless you watch the above clip and hate it. Because if you don't get what's funny about that clip, you won't think Fright Night is funny, at all... guy.

*Horrifying realization: he's younger than me.

Red Riding Hood (2011)

A lot of close-ups on Amanda Seyfried's way too big eyes as she gazes unconvincingly longingly at some very not cute Edward/Jacob knock-offs.

Bewildering story, inane details (Large metal elephant that you can torture someone in by putting a fire under it??? How did anyone ever think this was a good idea?!), infantile delivery and editing choices. PS. There's a choreographed dance scene.

PPS. This movie sucked.

Worth a laugh, maybe, as a rental. Do not pay to see it in a theater. They couldn't even get the shots of the winter landscape scenery right. Ouch.

Leprechaun 5: Leprechaun in the Hood (2000)

Just a little late for Saint Patrick's Day!

I love a movie that is self-consciously terrible. One that really acknowledges its own disfunctionality and gets a little carried away with itself celebrating it.

Enter Leprechaun 5: Leprechaun in the Hood. Oh my goodness this is a terrible movie. The story makes no sense at all, the actors seem like they're trying not to laugh as they deliver their lines, and even the gore/sex factor usually providing some vague sense of interest in a B-movie doesn't quite deliver.

And yet. AND YET! Leprechaun 5 still manages to be amusing. Each scene of half-baked ideas for outlandish deaths, mythological maniacs who speak in rhyme, and random "Zombie Fly Girl" gratuitous gold plastic hot pants (yeah, you read that right) seems like it's trying to outdo the last. The result: an entertaining and surprisingly light evening of entertainment.

Certainly good for a few hours of escapism, if nothing else.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

Intriguingly strange, at best. Horrifyingly depraved and depressing at worst.

Not fun by any means, despite the (now) cult-classic lines from Johnny Depp as Hunter S. Thompson.

Kind of felt dirty and nauseated by the end of it. Maybe that was the point?

Discomfort as the goal of the movie… hmm. I don’t know how I feel about this just yet. In fact, I couldn't even really pick many labels for the movie. Horror, I guess, was the only one that I felt could be accurately applied.

Overall—know what you’re getting yourself into before watching this one.

Winter's Bone (2010)

Unique story, uncommon setting, great acting.

Dragged in some parts, somewhat unconvincing as a whole.

Best picture? No. Totally worthwhile? Depends on your taste.

Overall—pretty good. Watch it if you like a feeling of brooding, the Ozarks, and very strong female protagonists.

Black Swan (2010)

Shut up, Darren Aronofsky.

The Monster Squad (1987)

Yeah, this movie is good…if you like your movies ridiculous and offensive.

From scenes with Dracula shouting “Give me the amulet, you BITCH!” in the face of a terrified five-year-old girl, to Frankenstein taking photos of a stereotypical 1980s teenage girl in pink bra and thong while muttering “bogus,” it is entirely clear that no one was holding anything back while making this film.

Less amusing: a bunch of twelve year olds throwing around “fag” and “homo” like there’s no tomorrow, with gratuitous violence, lackluster characters, and a plot that would make even the biggest B-movie fan fall asleep.

I watched The Monster Squad because a number of people had said that it was “critically underrated” and “deserved watching.” Clearly I do not share that opinion. This movie should have stayed in 1987.

Bogus, indeed.

Eclipse (2010)

Despite what you may expect, I, like many people all over the place, have totally and not altogether regrettably been sucked into this whole Twilight mass tomfoolery. I enjoy debates over who is “better for Bella.” I can tell you the plot of the whole series in the time it takes for a bus to travel about ten blocks. I have pretty definite opinions about casting decisions that have been made, and I now own the soundtrack to two of the movies. And I can say all of these things while still acknowledging (like most adult fans of Twilight) that even through the whole thing is pretty awful, when you get right down to it, I still sincerely enjoy participating in it.

And yet I found this latest installment of the self-proclaimed “saga”, Eclipse, pretty ho-hum. Where they were trying for suspense all they really achieved was too much dilly-dallying and dwelling on some weaksauce make-out scenes. The intensity of all the smoldering gazes is totally neutered by the sheer number of shots that are dedicated to them. Plus I think I’m now totally insensitive to both Taylor Lautner’s abs and Kristen Stewart's sultry sulking, which is a goddamn crying shame. Overexposure was the culprit, again.

Pretty much the most emotional part of the whole movie was the scene in which Bella spends what is supposed to be her last sunny vacation with her mother in Florida, which was probably the only scene in the movie done with any type of restraint or subtlety whatsoever.

I spent the rest of the movie being bothered by the clunky opacity of the yellow contacts they put on the Cullens and wishing for a tiny bit of risqué behavior from anyone at all on screen. All this idle time also unfortunately allowed me to make dangerous realizations about Stephanie Meyer’s narrative style, which basically entails her not thinking about the mythology she’s creating, backtracking, and then re-writing the rules so that the story can continue and everyone is happy.

Whatever. I still can’t wait to see the next movies. They should be just as forehead-slappingly frustrating, yet just as mandatory to attend to anyone addicted to the crack that is Twilight.

Yours truly included. (Team Bella).

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)

Oh, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. You make it so difficult for me to confidently label this post as either favorable or unfavorable.

I loved the lead character named Lisbeth, played by Noomi Rapace. She is a very muscular, highly androgynous, tattooed and pierced young woman who in the first thirty minutes or so of the movie acts out what is (I think) a common retaliatory fantasy against rapists. On top of that, she’s a professional hacker who is fiercely independent, unsentimental, and unemotional, and yet somehow she remains easy to cheer for. And kudos to the filmmakers for making her bisexuality not be a sensationalistic point of interest in the story. It’s just a fact, uncommented upon, plain as day.

I also thoroughly enjoyed the plot, up to a point. With lots of sinister affiliations rolled into one, the whodunit story that brings Lisbeth and a publicly disgraced (but framed) journalist named Mikael Blomkvist together intrigues and entices. Full of brutal details that are kept disturbingly subtle on screen, the 40 year old murder lurches wrenchingly back to life, zombie-like in its horror and its fascination which grips the audience and the characters on screen alike. Extra unsettling moment: when Blomkvist places several old photographs of a missing woman taken in succession together to create a sort of flip-book effect, revealing an important detail about the day she disappeared.

The problem was that while I was wildly enthusiastic about certain aspects of the movie, I became really spitefully resentful toward others. Unfortunately, story-wise, the first two hours were good but the last half hour was just plain dumb. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo started as a great mystery/thriller, i.e. a well paced, interesting (though not necessarily believable) story with very unique characters one could engage with, but then in the last half hour tragically devolved into a frustratingly neatly wrapped up cliché about familial ties and the virtues of heterosexual monogamy. Even the visual aesthetic switched from the cool (though expected) bluish grayish noir with a punk androgyne kicking ass in the beginning to an obnoxiously sunny-happy aesthetic, complete with tearful reunions, stilted confessions of emotional connections, and our (in my view) now fallen heroine sporting a large blonde wig, a business suit, and heels. What the hell.

I can’t even really decide whether the first two hours of the movie make it worth it to watch, either, because I just can’t ignore the flaws of the ending. What I wish is that I could re-watch the movie and just stop it around the point where things start to get ridiculous and add my own alternate ending mentally or something.

Anyway… the only way you’ll find out whether or not it’s worth it is to watch it yourself, which I suppose I can grudgingly recommend, if only for the majority of the movie and not the whole.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010)

The primary take-away message of this movie is that kids between the ages of 12 and 16 are terrible people. Horrible excuses for human beings. Unethical jerks. Soulless, spineless, filthy monsters. Etc.

I am sure most readers have their own list of adjectives to add to these few choice phrases. In fact, I am willing to bet that anyone who went to a public middle school in the United States already knows full well the horrors of pubescent and adolescent folly, specifically relating to hubris, hygiene, and home life, which Diary of a Wimpy Kid highlights.

Yet though the appeal of the movie stems from the universal cringe-fest induced by the possibility of reliving one’s terribly awkward pubescent days, Wimpy Kid is nevertheless curiously devoid of any characters that the audience is invited to connect with. It was more the situations that struck a nerve, not the individual kids themselves. Which is not to say that the actors delivered a poor performance—far from it. I think the young actors in Wimpy Kid did a terrific and impressive job in their somewhat hyperbolized roles.

It was just that at the end of the day I couldn’t really sympathize with any of them, but rather was simply left with the uncomfortable feeling that I’d just been a reluctant witness to the humiliating and extremely debasing spectacle that is “coming of age”.

Of course I laughed quite a bit—some of the situations are very funny. But overall, it felt like a downer. But maybe that was the whole point?

Alice in Wonderland Commentary Followup

...Because it was so big it merited its own post.

@Chris

You say that you don’t like Tim Burton for two reasons. 1) “his dark and creepy imagery that is portrayed in nearly all of his films” and 2) “the constant praise by die hard conformist followers of "Tim Burton is hip and weird, thus awesome… so I'll believe he is hip and awesome too!" crowd.” But then later you say “knowing the bizarreness naturally associated with the Alice in Wonderland saga, I couldn't bring myself to hate this movie but at the same time, I wasn’t overly captivated or wowed by it.”

What I gather from your commentary is that you don’t like Tim Burton because of the bizarre imagery and dark themes he often uses and because he is, in your opinion, overrated by people who are simply following the crowd. But in this case you grudgingly accept Burton’s bizarre imagery in Alice because the pre-existing story world seems to require it.

So my question for you, Mr. Guy Who Loves Dark Twisted Movies Like The Tin Drum, is would you be willing to accept Burton’s work, and even maybe really enjoy it, if he wasn’t so popular? Or is it something in particular about Burton’s aesthetic/thematic creepiness that puts you off?

Just wondering!

@Alla

With regard to the moral of the story:

I didn’t say that there is no moral to the story in this decidedly different variation of a distinctly Disney movie. What I said was that I was relieved that Burton didn’t rely on elaborate yet obvious direct metaphors to carry his heroine through her fantasy world. In other words, what I was dreading was a sort of Wizard of Oz scenario in which each character presented to Alice in Wonderland has a direct counterpart in the real world—i.e. the Red Queen being directly relatable to some tyrannical figure in the real world, the Mad Hatter being analogous to a quirky acquaintance, etc. I was so happy to see that a lot of the characters in this version of Alice were actually just independently random (odd, endearing, frightening, horrifying) weirdos.

I also liked that the blue butterfly at the end (presumably the now metamorphosized Absolom the blue caterpillar) showed up in the “real” world, thereby further highlighting the tenuous boundaries between the fantasy space and that of “reality.” I think what really appealed to me was that Alice’s whole Wonderland/Underland adventure was consistently emphasized to be real—that there were fairly high stakes despite the whimsy of the place. It was emphatically not just a dream, and Alice was affected (physically by wounds, mentally by whatever growth she achieved during her stay) by this world.

This all set aside, I do realize that when the White Queen says the line about “when you face the Jabberwocky, you go alone” that this is a literal voicing of a message or moral Alice is supposed to be gaining from her adventures. I concede that the moral is obvious in this moment, and frankly, probably really necessarily so, because I think this movie was a bit crazy and probably difficult for children to process without such a handy take away statement of “the point”. I guess for me this obvious moment is forgivable, though, for a few reasons.

Firstly, that this message comes from The White Queen, who was a character that I thought felt pretty new and interesting. She was not your typical motherly figure, nor a romantic interest, nor even a particularly heroic figure herself. I don’t know where I’m going with this—something about her just really appealed to me. And secondly, and definitely more importantly, I loved that the moral itself was about independence and decision-making. It related to personal responsibility and consequences, risk taking and facing unknown outcomes. Even though the characters referred to the Oraculum throughout the film to see what “destiny” held for Alice, there was still a lot of room for deviation from this path. They kept checking the thing to see if it had changed. It felt less like a sword in the stone, destiny cannot be avoided type of thing than a “you may or may not live up to your potential depending on your choices” sort of thing.

About the Mad Hatter and Alice’s Relationship:

Woah. I totally did not read any kind of romantic relationship into their interaction with one another. I read only a weird and friendly vibe between them. Regardless as to what either one of us did or did not take from their onscreen interactions, the more important point, for me, is that there is no blatant love/romantic relationship in the film that determines Alice’s success or failure as a character. Even her relationship with her suitor in the “real” world is presented as a joke from the get-go. We are never led to believe Alice’s fate hinges on her getting a guy. I mean, obviously, we know that things would probably suck for her if she did marry the weak-chinned suitor, but it’s not like she’s going to seem like a failure if she doesn’t find a replacement.

About Imperialism:

Similarly to the questionable romance between the Hatter and Alice, I don’t think that any kind of endorsement of imperialistic values was really supposed to be the point of this movie. I’m not saying it wasn’t in there—it totally was. I mean… she was pretty much the heir to the British East India Company. “To be the first to trade with China! Imagine it!!”

But I think the whole Imperialism thing was just a product of Alice in Wonderland being written in 1865, not a plot by Tim Burton to indoctrinate young moviegoers into that particular mentality. So it didn't bother me at all.


Anyway… thanks for the provocative commentary. I think I wrote more and thought more about this comment than I’ve written on anything in … a really long time. And I didn't even think this movie was that awesome! I just liked it!

Hope you are enjoying your own adventures!
:)

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Liked:
- All the wonderful colors
- Female protagonist with no romantic imperative
- Subtle (inappropriately?) dark moments
- Outrageous grotesquerie
- The costumes, especially Alice's
- The March Hare
- The pleasant demeanor of the Cheshire Cat
- Johnny Depp's switching accents
- Anne Hathaway's gagging

Did not like:
- The use (perhaps the misuse of or the lack of use of) of 3D in the 3D version (I think 2D was better)
- The futterwhacking dance
- The lame music that went along with the futterwhacking dance
- The overall mellow vibe (would have preferred a bit more crazy of a pace for such a mad story world)

Overall I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed this most recent version of Alice in Wonderland. Much serendipity came from the details and not the overall story. From The Cheshire Cat "breading" when he lands on Hatter's hat in the prison cell to the subtle yet impossible stretching of the Knave's arms and legs, I found details throughout this film that made me happy to be paying attention.

Also, I was so so pleased that the fantasy of the story turned out to be traveling to a place where you can figure out the answers to your most crucial, puzzling life questions on your own, instead of a fantasy where morals are handed to you neatly by a prince in shining armor or are revealed by a convenient metaphor mirroring your own predicament.

Definitely worth watching.

Shutter Island (2010)

Shutter Island seems to be the result of a bunch of people sitting down and brainstorming all the negative ideas or themes they could fit into one movie. Infanticide? Suicide? Arson? How about Nazi death camps? McCarthyism?! The atrocities of abuse in state run mental hospitals?!?! PTSD?!?!?!!!! Ooh, and catastrophic weather AND holes filled with RATS and a STAGGERING array of different kinds of SCARY SCARY PEOPLE AND AN INCREDIBLY OVERBEARING SCORE?!??!!!!!! GREAT LET’S DO ALL OF THAT.

And let’s have it happen in front of a green screen to save time and money.
With a bunch of really really good actors.
For two and a half hours.

No, but for serious, Shutter Island is a solidly (but not perfectly) produced example of surreal horror. There was a little too much going on in terms of plot for my taste and the ending seemed contrived, but that was definitely the entire point of the movie. And Leonardo DiCaprio’s accent was not even as bad as everyone was saying.

So if you can stomach a whole lot of sad/terrible themes, events, and imagery and you like horror and good acting, check it out! You shall not be disappointed.

The Wolfman (2010)

Picture this: you’re in a relationship with someone and things have started to go sour. Your person’s personality has become predictable and tiresome; traits that used to be quirky, exciting, and edgy now come off as eye-rollingly dull and predictable.

Sure, you still find this person attractive in some way. You started dating Staley McBlando for a reason—most likely relating to some combination of physical attractiveness and personality that they do, in fact, possess. However, at this moment in time, for whatever reason, you realize that you are just so freaking bored with this particular variation of your usual match’s patchwork of personal qualities that you have to get up from your table at the restaurant you always go to and walk out that familiar door, get in your car and drive as far away as you can get in an hour’s time. Right now.

Such is my relationship with werewolf movies. Despite the fact (or maybe because of?) their often formulaic nature, I find myself attracted to them again and again. My interest is snared by their promises of a tortured, brooding protagonist, silly mythologies of the occult, gory action sequences, and usually not very nuanced metaphors pertaining to the overlap in the human psyche between compassionate humanity and brutal animal instincts.

I freely admit that even though werewolf movies are usually awful when gauged by the standards applied to other cinema, I wholeheartedly enjoy watching them, laughing at them, and cringing at all the spilled guts and ridiculously bad acting. Usually if a movie offers me even one of the aforementioned traits I can walk away saying I enjoyed it. Even Wes Craven’s Cursed (2005), with its truly awful amateurish acting and hilariously cheesy dialogue, was one that I can say I genuinely enjoyed watching and was in some way entertained by, Christina Ricci and all.

But do you know what? Sitting through the colossally dismal The Wolfman the other night I felt like I was at the end of a stale relationship. Maybe it was the endless series of sucker-punch, sudden loud noise scare tactics. Or perhaps it was the hackneyed storyline that was somehow riddled with plot holes so gaping as to have an alienating effect. It might have been the usually sultry Benicio Del Toro’s abhorrent and irritating American accent, or Anthony Hopkins’s half-assed delivery of all his pointless lines. One definite source of my disgust was the stupid choice of not updating the look of the actual wolfman himself from the 1941 classic upon which this picture was based. Seriously, we decided to keep the black plastic dog nose, now painstakingly rendered in CGI? Come on!

Bottom line: approximately five to ten seconds of this was good*, the rest was dumb. Even to someone owns the soundtrack of American Werewolf in Paris and thinks The Howling III: The Marsupials is a good way to spend a Friday night.

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* these five to ten seconds being 1) the opening credits and 2) the brief moment when Benicio del Toro stares hungrily at Emily Blunt’s décolletage with a blank look of arousal.

Edge of Darkness (2010)

Ok so… Mel Gibson with a Boston accent. Personal vendetta. Bad guys: watch out!

Sounds pretty ho-hum, right? I didn’t really want to see this movie either. I thought I knew everything about it from watching the previews. Friends, I was totally wrong.

Edge of Darkness is extremely intense in a "makes you squirm but you know you like it" kind of way. It also has some mind-blowing performances. The nuances of the writing allow the fairly hyperbolic set of characters to remain engaging. The editing is very cleverly done.

For these reasons I consider it to be a good movie. Well done, filmmakers. You delivered on the promise inherent to producing a film labeled “thriller.” I literally developed heartburn while watching because I got all caught up in the plot, which was significantly anxiety producing.

The only thing I had a problem with was the very last scene, but I won’t go into that here. It didn’t sour the overall effect of the movie, so I’ll leave you to pass your own judgment on it.

Make sure you watch this movie with someone else, because otherwise you’ll be freaked out and watching your back all way home. Scary!

La mujer sin cabeza [The Headless Woman] (2008)

In La mujer sin cabeza we watch as a middle class woman named Vero struggles to regain her sense of identity after she hits something with her car on a rural Argentinean road one afternoon. She does not know what she ran over on her way home from a get together—it could have been a dog or a person. She simply drives away after the accident, thereby inducing an odd dreamlike mental state that lasts for days on end following the incident.

I have been waiting with great anticipatory mania for the arrival of this movie, the most recent title by one of my favorite directors of all time, Lucrecia Martel. (She directed one of my favorite films, La ciénaga (2001), which I reviewed as part of my Top Ten off the Top of my Head list a while back.) And I have to say that while I’m not counting on La mujer sin cabeza to replace La ciénaga as one of my all time favorites just yet1, I still feel that it is an incredibly intriguing work because it contains the elements of Martel’s previous works that originally piqued my interest.

Like Martel’s other films, the point of La mujer sin cabeza is not actually the central event driving the rest of the story, but rather the odd, partially obscured details of the protagonist’s life that the ramifications of the central event draw out. As we follow the post-accident Vero wandering through her life in a somnambulistic haze, we catch a glimpse of the many strange and complex relationships surrounding her. We are privy to the unspoken details and whispers of Vero and her husband’s marriage, Vero’s relationship with her lover, Vero and her bedridden, addled mother, and the flirtation between Vero and her niece. Even with the peripheral characters of the film there are references to other ambiguous yet nuanced relationships that Martel hints at but never fully defines.

Indeed, what’s especially good about La mujer sin cabeza is that Martel refuses to offer explanations for many events and conversations, instead referencing the off-screen, the unsaid, the absent. However, rather than creating a void or a lack of meaning with all these question marks, Martel uses double entendre, ambient music, and overheard, half intelligible conversations to prove the existence of that which lies beyond her frame.

In the end Martel is able to say more by saying less, forcing us to focus in on the edges of her story-world, craning our necks to see if we can catch a glimpse of what lies just beyond the borders of the frame. This, for me, is great cinema.

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1. You always have to watch Martel’s work several times over before you can begin to play favorites with characters and stories.