SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Ed Ao Having read other reviews people complain the movie is pointless, that it hints and sways this way and that but never delivers.I would say that this is exactly why I liked the movie. At the beginning it suggests something sinister is happening with the man on the highway with the lizard and the peculiar village woman with accusations of lizards eating brains. By the end of the movie none of our suspicions about the village are totally confirmed or denied. The bit in where she is asleep in the shed on camera and the lizard is on her shoulder she falls out of shot before it is confirmed that it did anything to her.In American films all our suspicions would be confirmed our curiosity would be satisfied by the end of the film, all the boxes ticked. American films only offer open ends to let you know they are making a sequel. This kind of obvious story telling is for teenagers.I found the story of Obaba refreshing, it played on our paranoid fantasies, and allowed us to turn Obaba into something it wasn't. It was in fact a very mature bit of film making, and it was nice to watch a film that wasn't completely predictable from beginning to end. It could have all too easily turned into a zombie film about villagers getting their brains eaten by telepathic super lizards, but then Hollywood has that covered.

daniel Carbajo López Obabakoak is a bunch of short stories with an only common point: the little Vasque town of Obaba. In this film, the director tries to explain some of these stories by using a young reporter as a continuum. The result is a strange film, as it has any main character (the movie spends about 20 min. to each tale) other than the town of Obaba. Any story is really well explained and the fact is that they result very boring. It was by far the best film of the year in Spain, but, well, that's not saying too much. The only good thing of the film is the precious scenarios. It is filmed in a very precious valley and it is more enjoyable to spend the time watching the scenario rather than being aware of the story.

Spuzzlightyear Although this starts out promisingly, a woman in a car is weaving around dark roads in the middle of the night in the middle of the forest until she almost hits a man holding a lizard! This gave me the impression that we were going to see something special, something almost David Lynchian (if there is such a term), but unfortunately, the film starts to go everyplace, not having a core center, just sort of meandering story about a woman trying to solve a mystery of a small town. The character study goes all over the place, and I couldn't really care for any of the characters it seems, especially when some of the story all of a sudden goes into flashback mode. I had some hopes for this movie, but all in all, it was a bit of a letdown.

Bill Not since 'A Hard Days Night' can I remember a film where I became so attached to the characters in the drama that I almost didn't believe I was seeing a fictional movie, but a documentary with an omniscient camera secretly filming reality. Viewers can't help but fall deeply in love with Lourdes, played by Barbara Lennie. She is impossibly perfect for the role, and in it; both because of her incredible natural beauty, and because of her flawless ability to make us believe that she isn't acting. But something is missing in the film. As the other reviewer commented, there are a few stories going forward in parallel, but you feel there may have been more that weren't included. So it feels somehow, incomplete. The other reviewer knew about the missing parts from the book, and the missing political overtones. I didn't, but subconsciously, I was hungering for them near the end of the film. This is one of those films where, you feel they may have had, or could have had a perfect 3 hour movie, but had to edit it down to two hours and perhaps cut out some of the most interesting parts. Lourdes carries the burden of three romances: the romance between her and her lover in the film, the one developing between her and the audience; and finally the one with Obaba. The nude scenes of the actress early in the film may have been as important in breaking the tension between her and the audience as they were breaking that between her and her lover. It's my personal biased opinion (interpretation), that the director of the film was only able to make us fall that deeply in love with her because we were looking through his eyes; his, and those of Obaba the town's itself! So what's the point? Are we, from this point on, able to be as seduced by Obaba as she was? With her seduction of her lover and us complete... the story can shift its emphasis onto the love affair between her and Obaba, the town, which covets her as much as we did. But how can a town seduce a beautiful, successful film student? In any case, this film is charming, and a very fascinating portrayal of the heart of Obaba, a character with a complex personality that in the end, is the principal character in the film.