An outburst of filmic inventiveness and a nicely convoluted plot with elements of outright fantasy, nearly all of which works.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 12, 2008

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jan 9, 2006

Scattered clever moments do not a good dark comedy make.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 2, 2005

Long on outrageous style but short on real laughs.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 18, 2005

A story that begins as farce but that evolves into something approaching satirical profundity.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 18, 2005

Toledo is hilarious as Rafael.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 18, 2005

My advice is to choose the first half, where things are really funny until they aren't.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 18, 2005

Shrug off the shaky philosophy and instead savor the film's snarkier elements.

| Nov 17, 2005

[J]ust cuz a movie has subtitles doesn't make it deep or meaningful or even worth your time...

| Nov 17, 2005

If twisted noir novelist Jim Thompson had scripted the Jerry Lewis vehicle 'Who's Minding the Store?,' the result might have been something like this...

Full Review | Original Score: '3/4' | Nov 7, 2005

The Perfect Crime is an outrageous fiesta of decadence.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 17, 2005

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 8, 2005

An outrageous comedy of errors set at a Madrid department store.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 7, 2005

A worthwhile and fairly amusing effort.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 26, 2005

A well%u2013oiled machine of wit, sex and violence, as darkly funny as the Coen Bros. (almost) and as visually interesting as Tarantino (almost).

| Original Score: B+ | Sep 24, 2005

An astute satire on the boundlessness of unchecked sexual fetishism and power.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 23, 2005

De la Iglesia is a mercilessly agile talent, turning his department store into its own little film-noir cityscape, only with better lighting and perfume samples.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Sep 23, 2005

It's dark, well-paced fun, even as it sags from the over-eager absurdities de la Iglesia layers onto the well-established formula.

| Original Score: B- | Sep 22, 2005

It plays like one of those minor European oddball comedies of the 1970s ... neither realistic nor particularly clever but making up for that with a certain charm.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 22, 2005

From a tight satire about the emptiness of materialism, El Crimen degenerates into such macabre silliness, it's as if another director stepped in and -- rather like Don Antonio -- destroyed a beautiful thing.

| Sep 22, 2005