Too much of everything

just watch it!

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

I didn't finish the movie first time round. It was pretty tedious going. The whole thing went on too long with nothing happening and unconnected events jumping around in a boring way. If you can put up with the tedium then this might just be a good film. There is one truly sick and brutal stabbing scene and some blood going everywhere but otherwise nothing to note except an unnerving sense that I had seen it before. The whole theatrical style was just painful. The ending did not validate anything and left me wandering what the hell what I just watched was about.

I love Alejandro Jodorowsky, the person, who is charismatic and funny and interesting. But, man, he must have been smoking some righteous substances when he made this amateurish and borderline incoherent mess. After looking at the glowing reviews, I feel compelled to exclaim that the emperor has no clothes here. In a way, I get why the adulation. Jodorowsky is a seriously cool guy, and it is commendable whenever a filmmaker goes out on a limb to make something with zero mainstream appeal. He is probably a genius, based on the quality of his comics more so than his movies. But come on. Bad is bad. I never for a single moment forgot that I was watching a movie during this. The histrionic acting was laughable. I did not care about a single character. The symbolism was obvious and clunky. The special effects were cartoonish. I became increasingly bored and had to pause the film twice just to get up the energy to finish it. I did like one scene - the piano scene - which was genuinely impressive. His son apparently can act when given the right material. But the rest of it was insufferably dumb.

Woahou ... What a masterpiece ! I've bought Jodorowsky's movies without knowing what's going to happen, result : I've gain so much maturity by watching all of them, and Santa Sangre is definitively with The Holy Mountain the duo that clearly change my way of enjoying REAL art. This is just pure madness, surrealism at it best. Stunning soundtrack mixed with circus fantasy, an absolute mind trip to Jodorowsky dimension. Everything is beautiful in this movie, everything is well linked, all actors play fantastically, there's no mistake. I'm really happy that this kind of movie isn't "mainstream" like other sci-fi sh*t massively sponsoring by media and "people". I just wish to see more like them, and it's a hard job finding them because of their rareness. The only regret, as an audiophile, is that few tracks on the movie are unfortunately NOT present on the Original Soundtrack released on vinyl and CD, result > horrible DVDRIP MP3 audio for a frightening sound in the graveyard part (and also from the DVD menu) . Anyway, I just stand up like I did at the end of the movie, clap my hand loudly and say proudly with a tear drop : BRAVO - BRAVO !!!!!!!

Now that Jodorowsky is finally coming out with a new movie, I am sure there are hordes of new cinephiles who have only recently discovered the magic of El Topo, Holy Mountain, and hopefully - this.Many years ago, I showed this movie to a cousin of mine. She was not from the US, and didn't have much exposure to cinema other than the stuff her home country makes (which is quite a sizable chunk of world cinema, to be fair). Afterwards, dumbfounded and speechless, she merely said, "I didn't know movies like that existed..."The sad truth is: they don't. This is a deeply affecting film of great beauty and dark, melancholy magic. It will stay with you for many years to come, if not for the rest of your life. It's definitely not as "out there" as Holy Mountain, but it uses that visual style much more effectively; whereas Holy Mountain is a monstrous sensual buffet that ultimately leaves the first-time viewer bewildered and scourged, this is a finely-crafted gourmet meal that does a much more surgically-precise job on the soul. You still get the bizarre circus imagery, the lurid back-alley scenes, the jabs at Catholicism, the hallucinatory nightmare sequences - but you also end up caring about the characters, and their world. Though it's fairly simple on paper (Freudian slasher flick, basically), the story is the ultimate organizing force here, and all the great surreal visual elements that make this a true Jodorowsky film are fully ready to serve it and its themes. The music should also get an honorable mention, since it's responsible for carrying many magical moments in the film: Felix and Concha's "Dejame Llorar" duet (which translates to "let me cry") is devastating - perhaps because it is both lurid and heartbreaking at the same time.I am not sure if NOT calling this a horror flick is the right attitude - I would be very happy if hundreds of unsuspecting, stoned teenage gore-hounds across American white suburbia were exposed to this. But though it's not really Tobe Hooper or Tom Savini material, it's definitely not for the squeamish.