Thursday, March 25, 2010

THE 100 BEST FILMS of 2000-2009:







FILM #10: "Amores Perros" (2000)

Jagged in its flashbacks and with obvious homage to Pulp Fiction, Amores Perros consistently and brilliantly challenges film convention. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's direction is simply sublime as he tackles three interlinked vignettes that explore cause and effect, greed and envy, ambition and family life. It also deals with consequences of actions that touch not just your own situation but the lives of others. Inarritu's style is disjointed , poetic and captures the perfect Latino, smarmy ethos that has come to be expected: blood stir-fries into a frying pan, ect.

The first vignette slyly deals with family strife so intense that the brothers end up clobbering each other, in essence over a woman. The second vignette centers of Valeria (Goya Toleda), a supermodel who is having an affair with a married man. Opposite the apartment where they live is a giant poster of her leggy beauty but this soon becomes a curse after a car crash leaves her in a wheelchair. The third vignette deals with El Chivo (Emilio Echevarria) and his abandonment of society. All three stories are brutal in the depiction of human life yet stunningly tender towards dogs...