Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film of 2004, The Sea Inside is a life-affirming film about a man who wishes to die. That may seem like a massive contradiction, but in the hands of director Alejandro Amenábar (Open Your Eyes, The Others) and actor Javier Bardem (Before Night Falls), this fact-based Spanish drama concerns the final days of Ramón Sampedro, the quadriplegic poet who waged a controversial campaign for his right to die. He was denied this right for 30 years, and ultimately arranged for his own assisted suicide, but this remarkable film--and Bardem's keenly intelligent performance--examines the hotly-debated issue of assisted suicide with admirable depth and humanity, just as Sampedro did until his death in 1998. For... Learn More
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Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film of 2004, The Sea Inside is a life-affirming film about a man who wishes to die. That may seem like a massive contradiction, but in the hands of director Alejandro Amenábar (Open Your Eyes, The Others) and actor Javier Bardem (Before Night Falls), this fact-based Spanish drama concerns the final days of Ramón Sampedro, the quadriplegic poet who waged a controversial campaign for his right to die. He was denied this right for 30 years, and ultimately arranged for his own assisted suicide, but this remarkable film--and Bardem's keenly intelligent performance--examines the hotly-debated issue of assisted suicide with admirable depth and humanity, just as Sampedro did until his death in 1998. For... More Info About This DVD Actor(s): Javier Bardem - Belén Rueda - Lola Dueñas Director(s): Alejandro Amenábar DVD Release Date: Released the 17 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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I'm baffled by all the glowing reviews of this terribly boring and almost pointless film. I rented this the other day and watched it with a few friends (one of whom has lived in Spain and speaks fluent Spanish). Unanimously we were distressed and mourning our decision to watch this one instead of the other we rented. The film was so dark, depressing and aimless that I was actually embarrassed that I rented it. While the actors did their best with the script (yes, Bardem is intriguing when not being annoying - all hopeless things considered) and there are some poignant moments, at the end of it all you almost wish that you had ended it all!
There are moments when we cared about the characters: such as the woman slaving away in the factory or when she's spraying herself down to remove the... More Info About This DVD Actor(s): Javier Bardem - Luis Tosar - José Ángel Egido Director(s): Fernando León de Aranoa DVD Release Date: Released the 18 November 2003 Usually ships within 24 hours
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Marking an assured directorial debut for actor John Malkovich, The Dancer Upstairs is a tense, nerve-jangling political thriller that values adult storytelling and emotional depth over cheap thrills. It's a challenge for those accustomed to the frantic pace of Hollywood thrillers, but attentive viewers will be richly rewarded by Malkovich's slow-burn approach to the film's terrorist plot, adapted by Nicholas Shakespeare from his own novel, based on the "Shining Path" movement that terrorized Peru in the 1980s. The plot unfolds in an unnamed Latin American capital, where a lawyer-turned-police detective named Rejas (Javier Bardem) leads an investigation to locate Ezequiel, a terrorist whose followers have left a trail of fear, death and destruction across the city. Rejas falls in... More Info About This DVD Actor(s): Javier Bardem - Juan Diego Botto - Laura Morante Director(s): John Malkovich DVD Release Date: Released the 23 September 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Javier Bardem plays Victor Ventura, a young man who moves to Madrid to make it as an actor. While waiting for his big break, he struggles to make ends meet as a pizza delivery man. Forced to find a way to make more money, he becomes a phone sex operator. His first client, a man who calls himself "Bill." Some time later, he is requested by a woman named "Amand" and, during their phone conversation, he immediately falls for her and breaks the cardinal rule of the group: meeting one of the callers. After a fantastic night together, she confesses her true reason for calling him and enlists his help to get evidence so she can divorce her husband, "Bill." And, he's just about to get his big break in an American film. But things are not quite what they seem, and Victor soon finds himself... More Info About This DVD Actor(s): Javier Bardem - Aitana Sánchez-Gijón - José-Maria Flotats Director(s): Manuel Gómez Pereira DVD Release Date: Released the 02 September 2003 Usually ships within 24 hours
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Based on the posthumously published memoir by Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas, Before Night Falls is artist-director Julian Schnabel's second exercise in artist biography, but where Schnabel's earlier film Basquiat was relatively conventional, this film is bolder in both style and execution. Schnabel is perhaps too enamored of his subject as a noble martyr, lending the film a somewhat inflated sense of importance. Still, it's rare to see an artist's life and work so elegantly interwoven, and Before Night Falls uses all of Arenas's life as its canvas, from impoverished youth to lively gay freedom in mid-1950's Cuba; imprisonment during Castro's antigay regime; and to New York City in 1980, followed by Arenas's battle with AIDS and subsequent suicide (depicted here as... More Info About This DVD Actor(s): Javier Bardem - Johnny Depp Director(s): Julian Schnabel DVD Release Date: Released the 22 May 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Live Flesh happens to be one of my top three Almodovar films (All About My Mother and Talk To Her being the other two) and sometimes is underrated. Although it feels like a brief film, the passion, the acting, the scenary and the story are nothing short of perfect and leave you panting for me in the end. If you enjoy a passionate story of redemption, love and ironic resolution, this is it.
