ManiakJiggy This is How Movies Should Be Made

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

sunheadbowed 'That Obscure Object of Desire' is Luis Buñuel's final film, and one of his best. Even at seventy-seven years old, Buñuel continued to tear-up the rulebook of cinema convention, opting instead for his own subversive, challenging and confrontational style of rebellious surrealism, in which he made all the rules.In 'Object', Fernando Rey plays a wealthy older man lusting after the much younger fiery Spanish beauty, Conchita. Buñuel's dark social satire always boasts a viciously hilarious joke: this time the joke is the concept of using two different actresses to play the same role but never acknowledging it, and switching them around arbitrarily, forming a dizzying mood. That Fernando Rey's character 'Mathieu' never notices his woman's changing physiognomy is the grand gag: Mathieu is so vain and self-obsessed in a privileged bourgeois manner, that he is in love with the idea of having a much younger, beautiful woman on his arm -- what she specifically looks like or who she is isn't especially important.Conchita accepts Mathieu's financial gifts but never sleeps with him -- even going to such extreme lengths as to wear a leather chastity belt in bed with him -- much to Rey's initial disappointment and, eventually, anger. After a large argument concluding with Mathieu throwing Conchita out of his house, the couple are eventually reunited by chance in Seville, much to their surprise and joy; but even then they are separated by symbolic iron bars -- the universe continues to hold them apart, even at their happiest moments (or is it Conchita that consciously holds them apart?). Despite Mathieu's stuffy vanity typical of the bourgeoisie when dealing with the poor, it's hard not to feel some sympathy for the naive older man being taken for a ride by the twin-headed manipulative commoner Conchita.Sexual anxiety and the eternal futility of lust have been a staple of Buñuel's film-making ever since his first feature, the legendary 'Un Chien Andalou'; indeed, Surrealism and the queasy weirdness of sex and sexuality have always gone hand-in-hand since the former's inception. The anxiety and fear of terrorism in this film is a metaphor for the sexual anxiety and psychosexual uncertainty of the characters. This theme of terrorism-anxiety makes the film extremely current and modern in 2017.The film's final joke arrives in its closing scene: the couple's long-awaited orgasmic consummation finally arrives in the form of a terrorist bomb explosion that kills both, while in the middle of one of their many arguments.

treywillwest This feels like the last in an unintended "battle of the sexes" trilogy, along with Viridiana and Tristana, by Bunuel in which the female goes from passive victim to victimizer. Interestingly only the middle film, in which the title lady goes from being abused to a kind of empowered martyrdom, manages not to feel a tad misogynistic. If Viridiana is the most cinematically satisfying, and Tristana the most fully formed narrative, this sign-off from the auteur is my personal favorite. Here, the filmmaker seems less driven by ideology or anti-dogma as by sheer misanthropy. No longer trying to dispel the world of its romantic and spiritual delusions, the maestro now just wants to watch humanity blow itself up. But, like the work of great, angry poets and songwriters, Bunuel makes his hatred of life seem empowering, paradoxically enlivening.

Prashun Chakraborty I saw this legendary well known Spanish film last month which I am sure a lot of people would have heard about and I really liked it. However over the last few weeks I have seen other films but my mind keeps wandering off to scenes of That obscure object of desire, then my like became an obsession for it, what a great film. It is what I call the complete package, its very VERY entertaining. The story revolves around Mathieu a wealthy middle aged widower who is very attracted to his beautiful new house maid Conchita. Mathieu woos Conchita by financially supporting her family, showering her with gifts and giving her the luxuries she never had. The wonderful twist in the film is that Conchita is played by two different actresses as if to portray two different aspects of personality of Conchita, we have the frigid virginal intellectual Conchita played by Carole Bouquet and then there is the fiery career driven Conchita played by Angela Molina. Just as Mathieu (Fernando Rey) is able to impress one Conchita to share his bed with him (yes this movie is about sex) Conchita changes and he is at the bottom of the hill again, it's as amusing as it's frustrating. This is my first Luis Bunel film which ironically was his last, I was very impressed with his direction, I definitely want to see more of his works.

Michael Neumann Few other directors would dare to equate the male libido with international terrorism, but the final feature by master surrealist Luis Buñuel is a dark comic web of sexual obsession (too dark to be truly funny) set against a background of random explosions and political assassinations. The always dapper Fernando Rey stars as a wealthy gentleman who develops an all-consuming infatuation for his young Spanish maid, who by turns tempts him, teases him, refuses him, and finally humiliates him. All Rey wants is to carry his passion to its logical conclusion, but her (deliberately?) unpredictable shifts in mood, from coy temptation to spiteful rejection, leave him in a state of dangerous frustration. Buñuel applies his usual sly wit to the otherwise cynical and pessimistic scenario (one man affectionately refers to women as "sacks of excrement"), going so far as to cast two completely different actresses in the title role and interchanging them at random. The film is at once perverse and disturbing, providing a suitably mordant swan song to a long and distinguished career in movie iconoclasm.