Nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Jeff Bridges as the richly comic, semi-tragic romantic anti-hero Bad Blake, a broken-down, hard-living country singer who's had way too many marriages, far too many years on the road and one too many drinks way too many times. His story, a richly-realized, deeply heart-felt character study, was filmed on location in the shockingly beautiful New Mexico desert. Also starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Robert Duvall. (R, 100 mins.)
Penelope Cruz stars in Pedro Almodovar's latest cinematic wild ride. She plays a hooker-turned-actress who falls for her Almodovar-ish director in a deliciously twisted tale of love, death and a badly edited film. Writer/director Almodovar again creates an onion of an experience, a movie within a movie within a movie, irony in each layer, with poignancy that stings and whimsy that bites. (R , 127 mins., Spanish with English subtitles)
