VividSimon Simply Perfect

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

streetbuff This unique story revolves around an angel from Heaven and a fallen angel from Hell who are both sent to Earth to compete over the soul of a boxer.In great contrast to so many of her Hollywood movie roles, Penelope Cruz is shot in this film as a less than desirable character. In fact, the most enjoyable part of the movie results from the fact that the angel from Hell that Cruz is playing is the condemned should of a former mafia hit-man or thug, so all through the movie she is playing an angel pretending to be a human, but also was only ever a man in real life so she has to pretend to be a woman while fulfilling her angel role on Earth. So Cruz pretending to be a man at heart who is awkwardly trying to pretend to be a woman creates a magnificent off-kilter dark comedy. If for nothing else, the movie is worth viewing just to see Penelope dance around her room (in the style a man would dance) to the original 1970's song "Kung-Fu Fighting".

nycritic In Agustin Yanes' SIN NOTICIAS DE DIOS (badly translated into English as DON'T TEMPT ME, which in reality should have been NO NEWS FROM GOD), Heaven is a luxurious black-and-white nightclub perpetually set in the Fifties, administered by Marina D'Angelo (Fanny Ardant) and entertained by Lola (Victoria Abril). Hell is a soup kitchen where people speak English, where its administrator (Gael Garcia Bernal) looks like a kingpin right out of "Miami Vice" and where Carmen (Penelope Cruz), a lipstick lesbian works as a waitress, much to her disgust (since she later reveals she was a drug lord on Earth and weeps when seeing GOODFELLAS). Both angels have been summoned by their bosses to claim the soul of one stupid boxer (Demian Bichir). Here is when the story turns into PULP FICTION, but with none of its originality. True, some of the funnier scenes involve business transactions between diplomatic representatives of Heaven and Hell and some rich dialog between Ardant and Bernal, as opposites who appear to have quite a bit in common (more than they would dare reveal but only hint at through JD Salinger's book "The Catcher in the Rye"). Other than that, I didn't quite get the whole mess that the convoluted story is and a subplot where two cops (Cristina Marcos and Luis Tosar) are also after Bichir's tail leads nowhere. It's a shame, because there is a scene where the very masculine character Cruz plays (a man trapped in a sexpot's body) threatens Marcos with doing something rather nasty to her with a fork, but that never happens. As a matter of fact, Cruz's character is really the only interesting one of the lot (Abril's Lola is thankless, suffering in elegant silence until she decides to shoot 'em up) because of the ambiguity she represents. She would have the been the real reason to concoct a story out of as a person sent back to Earth as Hell for some serious expiation in the wrong gender. SWITCH, but with a dark twist. Needless to say, that didn't make the cut and all that remains is this half-baked attempt at a post-modern mediation of what it is to be good and evil and the grey area in between.

corston-2 I'm stuck in Quebec City, Canada, and if it weren't for DVDs, I'd never get to see such good film making. This type of film takes me back to the time when films were working on many levels with the use of intelligent, inventive and ironic HMO; twisting old morality tales into pertinent and hilarious modern-day equivalents without ever preaching. I hope this apparent renaissance continues in the face of much of the dumbed-down commercial (read:U.S.) crap featured in our cinemas here; and not even in their original English-language versions. I speak French fluently but I'll be damned if I'm going to go to pay and see French-dubbed version of a film with Connnery or Caine or any Scots or Irish actor speaking French with a Parisian accent! Cheers!Hugh Corston

vampyrelaynereeves I saw this movie today and I absolutely adored it!Originally, I watched it for Gael Garcia Bernal, who was quite good as the operations manager of hell. Victoria Abril played a wonderful Lola and Penelope Cruz, who I'm not very partial to, almost made me like her as the little hellion, Carmen.The only horrid part of the movie was Manny. I absolutely loathed that character. He was such a pig!Anyway, even though the movie was a bit confusing and odd at parts, I still found it wonderful.*** out of ****