The Last Circus

God help me.  Spain is just shooting missiles of twisted stuff across its borders and into my red envelope queue.  What the heck.  The last Spanish movie I saw (which I saw right before this) was "The Skin I Live In," and wow, this one was just as macabre.

It took several nights to watch, yet I did keep watching and finished it.  Really, I don't know how or where to start in reviewing this other than the basics: script was good, directing was good, cinematography was good, acting was great, and music was, well, I don't remember it too much which means it did not get in the way.  Okay, dude whose father was a clown becomes a clown and is paired with a sadistic clown who abuses the s#$t out of his girlfriend.  New clown falls for the girlfriend and she falls for him and sadistic clown catches wind of it and then a whole circus of s%*t hits the fan.  New clown then unleashes the 5 gallon Sparklets bottle of unreleased rage he has been filling throughout his life in the span of a week or two.

Gory, crazy, and actually reminded me of Hammurabi settling a dispute of 2 women; both claiming to have birthed an infant and both wanting possession of the child.  It will be hard for this film to find a home as the cover intimates standard B movie crap with cleavage and gore, but the level of acting will be far beyond what purveyors of that genre expect and there won't be enough gore for them either.  On the other hand, the acting and plot are of a level that is more A+ stuff, yet the gore is enough that the purveyors of this will be turned off.

The Skin I Live In

Holy crap.  This is one of the most twisted weird disturbing movies that I have seen in a very long time.  This thing was like a dog pooping.  It is disturbing but you still watch.  Thank goodness it ended and other little red envelopes of love have shown up.  Frankenstein meets the cast of Jerry Springer.

Banderas is great as are all the actors in this film.  The directing, script, music, and cinematography were all great, but man, this was such a twisted film.  If you are ready for just some weird weirdness, this is it.

I am torn on recommending this as it was so well done and I also consider a good movie as one that will hang in your mind for a long time, but man, this was bizarre!

Ong Bak 3

Awesome!  1 was okay, 2 was much better, and 3, wow.  It was really good.  1 was not really the first in the series of these flicks, but 2 and 3 were a series and 3 was one of those rare dealios in which the second in a series kicks over the first.  The writing, the directing, the acting, the cinematography, etc. were awesome.  The only goofer was the soundtrack.  On a few occasions, it was music that was so off that you said, "What the hell is that" and it pulled you away from the on screen acting.  When a soundtrack does that, you have a bad one.

The fighting style of Tony Jaa (leader of the film) is really different and something else.  There was Shakespeare's Hamlet, a series of subplots, Rocky etc. all twisted in here.  It was a total experience and introduction to a culture/time that was way foreign and really intriguing.  Petchtai Wongkamlao who was in the first Ong Bak (2003) was in this one too and played a really good role as a crazy dude.  Funny as...well, funny.