Matador is just one more example of a filmmaker throwing caution to the wind and telling the exact story they wish to.

| Feb 27, 2024

Almódovar unfolds this convoluted plot with zig-zagging surrealism and a careening, sordidly erotic energy that effectively undermines the culturally institutionalized repression targeted by the filmmaker.

| Jan 30, 2020

The film is fiercely funny, executed in a reckless, raucous rage by the most wantonly gifted new filmmaker on the international scene. Almódovar relishes mocking his country's sacred cows.

| Jan 30, 2020

Almodóvar celebrates the controversial potential of the medium more so than most other directors at work today. His movies get people talking and thinking.

| Jan 30, 2020

If Blue Velvet raised eyebrows, Matador will have some moviegoers blinking in disbelief.

| Jan 30, 2020

One of Almodovar's better features, although, like many of the others, it partially plays the role of popularizing stronger stuff, and resorts to some contrived plot devices in order to fuse its diverse story elements.

| Jan 30, 2020

Not so much a maelstrom as a mess of contrived eroticism, pretentious dialogue, and voyeuristic sensationalism, Almodóvar's silly, cod-philosophical whodunit impresses only for its bravado.

| Jan 30, 2020

Screamingly funny, intriguing meditation on sex and violence, delving sacrilegiosuly into the Almodovarish underpinnings of that arch Spanish ritual, the bullfight.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 30, 2020

For all its jolts and bizarre flights of fancy, Matador is a marvelously fluid and darkly sensual film in which Almodovar elicits exquisitely controlled performances.

| Jan 30, 2020

Bizarre, funny and unexpected.

| Jul 19, 2018

Almodovar's early work is saltry, erotic, even perverse, but very seductive to watch

| Original Score: B | Feb 16, 2013

follows a bizarre, but ultimately logical path

| Original Score: B | Mar 4, 2010

The "prolonged orgasm" is Almodvar's format and tenor

| Aug 26, 2009

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 8, 2006

It's a useful look at this Spanish auteur finding his way but lacks the elan of his later work.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 22, 2006

Among the most perverse of Almodovar's films, Matador's characters are so desperate to feel alive that death becomes the ultimate turn-on.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 3, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 8, 2004

fascinating and wonderfully lurid!

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 19, 2004

The movie looks terrific and is acted with absolute, straight-faced conviction by the excellent cast...

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 30, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 20, 2004