Ralph's Movie Reviews: BROKEN EMBRACES

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

BROKEN EMBRACES

Drama
In Spanish with English subtitlte
Original title: Los abrazos rotos

PRINCIPAL CAST MEMBERS
Lluis Homar: blind writer Harry Caine
Blanca Portillo: his production manager, Judit García
Tamar Novas: her son Diego, Harry’s associate
José Luis Gómez: a wealthy Madrid industrialist Ernesto Martel
Penélope Cruz: his secretary Lena
Rubén Ochandiano: Ray X, an aspiring film director

REVIEW
It is overlong and unnecessarily complicated with much screen time devoted to sex. Especially about vampire sex. The scenes from the movie-within-the-movie “Girls and Suitcases” I think are meant to be funny but they are not: instead they are deadly dull and repetitious because we get to see the same scene replayed several times.

Jumping from past to present this flash back and forward technique is used to show the parallel of events in time but results in a confused mess. It is quite a struggle to keep things sorted out; many will think to themselves “why bother?”
Good question.

CLASSIFICATION

for sexual content, objectionable language and some drug material.

FOR NITPICKERS ONLY
Mateo takes a photo of a couple on the beach using a Canon EOS 5D camera. That model was only launched in 2005, some 13 years after this beachside photo op took place in 1992.

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my ratings system

I've always thought that telling too much about a movie or warning someone about a "twist" at the end deprives the person the pleasure of seeing it as it unfolds, so I don’t do it. You may not always agree with my rating of course, but at least it is an unbiased opinion unlike some of the full time professional reviewers who are on the studio’s payroll.

A few movies you won’t see any review from me:

Scary movies: I’m the world’s biggest chicken and just hate getting the crap scared out of me. I can handle an unexpected door slam, that kind of thing, but a movie that keeps you on the edge of your seat…not for me. Sorry.
Movies geared to the young teen and pre-teen crowd with dialog comprising mostly of crude remarks, awful jokes and lots of rude, socially unacceptable body noises. "The Spy that Shagged Me" comes to mind. (I wonder if the kids know what the British verb to shag someone really means? They probably do; I bet you it’s the parents who haven’t a clue).
Sometimes Hollywood gets on a roll and they produce a series of movies that are all very much alike. For example movies about the CIA were very popular and so we had The Bourne Identity and Bad Company and The Sum of All Fears. They all had the same basic theme and it becomes repetitive. I will see some, but not all of them.

FYI this is my rating system:

0 stars = Terrible: so bad it’s not worth talking about; in fact, I’d pay you not to go
= Lousy: I actually got up and walked out before the end it was just that bad (no kidding)
= Not so good: thought about walking out but hung in just in case it got better (but it didn’t)
= A so-so good movie: I enjoyed it somewhat but wasn’t all that crazy about it
= A really good movie: I recommend seeing it
= An excellent movie you just got to see! I suggest you put it on your "To Do List" it’s that good.

some favourite websites

For those into it, Nitpickers at

has more movie mistakes than you could ever imagine. My contributions can be seen if you check out the Nitpickers Registry and click on the link Nitpickers Listed by Nitpicker Number, select the group 45,401 - 45,500 and drill down to number 45411. Although I have 56 nitpicks to my credit, some have almost 2,000. You wonder sometimes where they find the time to do it.