Two Pedros.

John McMurtrie on Two Drifters for the San Francisco Chronicle: "An overwrought weepie, it may be inspired by the recent dramas of Pedro Almodóvar, but it comes off as Almodóvar Lite - muy lite."

Chris Fujiwara in the Boston Phoenix on Almodóvar: "His unobtrusive skill with staging and camera movement keeps tasteful garishness from turning into cloying.... He shares with Fassbinder, Chabrol and Ruiz the gift of speed, though he lacks other qualities - including, respectively, brutality, corrosiveness, and a luxuriant imagination - that make them great filmmakers."

"Funny that the current standard critical line about Almodóvar seems to be that the Spanish auteur's subversive streak has been increasingly nullified in recent years," writes Michael Koresky at Reverse Shot. "I would venture that All About My Mother, and certainly Talk to Her, as well as passages of Bad Education and Volver, have the ability to cut deeper, burrow at terrifying truths with more wisdom and alacrity."

More on Almodóvar's leitmotifs from Brendan Kiley in the Stranger and more in general from Neva Chonin in the San Francisco Chronicle and Nathaniel R, who, in his "Pedro Watch #3," offers a roundup of nifty Almodóvaria.

Posted by dwhudson at September 2, 2006 4:18 PM