My favorite obsession

La piel que habito (The skin I live in)

Crit

Ah, Pedro: love him or hate him, you can't deny he takes us places we'd never see via Hollywood. About two-thirds of the way through this, I was simultaneously admiring and being repulsed by it, and I was certain I wouldn't be adding it to my personal Almodóvar shelf. Now I'm not so sure. I was, as well, feeling nostalgic for my comfort level while watching those 2 recent flicks I had praised for putting me so on edge--they seemed pretty relaxed compared with this.

And then came the plot twist that completely blindsided me (partly, I'll confess, because of a lack of vision on my part that some people I know don't share), and then . . . I got lots more uncomfortable, then adjusted, and finally I found the weird world the director had put us into more or less normal, leaving me happy to take whatever came from there.

One gripe: the final scene would have been a lot more effective had the suspension point on which it ends come--as it easily could have--just a few seconds into the scene.

Trailers

• The Iron Lady--A long teaser rather than a trailer, with an absolutely brilliant wait-for-it, wait-for-it, wait-for-it reveal.
• OK, seriously, just open Pariah already, so I can stop seeing the damn trailer. I'm pretty sure I'm not a racist and positive I'm not homophobic, but I'm an ironclad bigot against crap high school "poetry"; the film itself might actually be OK, and it's certain to have a lower concentration of that puerile verse.