The Tree of Guernica

 1975 war movie

Rating: 10/20

Plot: There's a war in Spain.

This was Fernando Arrabal's third movie after Long Live Death and I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse, a pair of movies that I didn't enjoy or understand. So I'm not sure why I bothered with this one because I didn't enjoy or understand it either. The thing's steeped in metaphors, some that I didn't understand and flew by like non sequiturs and some that were so obvious that they seemed juvenile. Also juvenile was a lot of sacrilegious imagery Ok, Arrabal, we get it. You don't like the church very much. I don't need to see any more characters wiping their ejaculate on a statue. There's a lot of war footage and its grotesque imagery mixed into the barrage of often disturbing imagery. There are also a lot of little people, one with a naked guy who later gets a sex scene while other little people towel him off. And there's a bullfight scene with one of the little people tied to a cart with a bull's head on the front, a scene that I swear lasted ninety minutes. And there's a scene with two guys tongue-wrestling that looked like something that could have been in a Will Ferrell movie. Oh, and a giant ear knife on wheels (I have no idea how else I could describe it) with naked children running around it and a lady saving herself from rape by hurling snakes. It's that kind of movie, and I actually started hating myself in the middle of it. A lot of this has the feel of a snuff film, and although I'm sure there's a point being made with the whole, it was well over my head and I really couldn't connect to anything that was happening enough to even care that I was missing out on something. I would not recommend you watch this although it is a little funnier than The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

1990 romantic movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A mental patient kidnaps an actress, suggests that they get married, and refuses to take no for an answer.

I've got to start with this since I'm a pervert: I have a new favorite sex scene, the bathtub scene in this movie featuring the lovely Victoria Abril and a wind-up diver toy. That's worth the price of admission alone. I guess my problem with this one is that the movie had to be about Antonio Banderas and Victoria Abril and their characters' relationship and not more about Maximo Espejo, the director played by Francisco Rabal. He gets a great line though: "When you put your heart and genitals into something, it always ends up personal." I might have that put on my tombstone. Banderas is fine, but the lead characters lacked depth, and their love story was actually pretty boring, despite all the bondage. Morricone's score is dull, 80's fizz. There is a nifty and colorful musical number with a trumpeter who has a mini-pompadour, cheese-covered keyboards, an old lady, a young girl, and a polka-dotted lead. And there's some He-Man figure decor which, for whatever reason made me laugh a little bit. But if I ever watch this again, it'll be for the toy diver scene which makes me cry just thinking about it.