Julieta (2016)

Julieta is an excellent movie about a woman looking back on her life, realizing how little she knows about her daughter. There are two phenomenally emotional performances by Adriana Ugarte playing the younger Julieta and Emma Suarez as the older Julieta. In one fabulous shot, we see Julieta age and transform in a magical switch underneath a towel. It is a movie about a mother-daughter relationship; Pedro Almodovar returns to the theme of family and women (The people who gave us their extra invitations mislead us into believing that the protagonist was a lesbian). The character development is rich and skillfully told. As the story is primarily told in flashback, there is a natural suspense as we wonder how we get from the past to the present. For much of the film, we are left wondering what exactly the drama is. The brilliantly composed suspenseful music doesn't match the tone of the film (but rather cleverly anticipates it) until we finally realize the motive towards the end of the movie. The style is colorful and grand. The cinematography ranges from subtle to epic in the mountains of Spain. And while the ending might not provide the full closure that some clamor for, it was sufficiently satisfying to me.

Wild Tales (Relatos Salvajes) (2014)

This Argentine comedy is an anthology, composed of six short unrelated films of increasing length.  We don't see too many anthologies, a novel idea, but this works extraordinarily well. These stories go together because they all share a theme of vengeance. Each story is brilliant and entertaining in its own right.  Each one cynical, slightly deranged, but so funny, even in a foreign language. Because there are six short stories, the movie holds your attention constantly with something new. My favorite short is the first one entitled "Pasternak" in which the people on board a flight discover that they all share something in common. Each short benefits from good camerawork, solid acting, and unpredictable writing.  This movie rightfully earned a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at last year's Oscar ceremony, and to be quite honest I thought it was better than Ida, the eventual winner from Poland.  Admittedly, they are two entirely different films, but Wild Tales (an accurate title) achieves a refreshing level of creative comic storytelling.