FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Janis One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

diomavro I can understand what this whole movie is going for, the bare camera shots, the excessive colors and the excessive drama. It all seems like it could be quite fun, when looked from aback. Unfortunately the glue that would tie this all together is the wit, and there is obviously a good amount of wit, unfortunately its not particularly interesting in English subs, much of the conversations come off as trying too hard to be funny. This is just how I feel about it, and I think there is a good chance the issue is that i'm not a native language speaker. The worst I can say about a movie is that its boring, unfortunately this approaches that description, I am however leaving some leeway because I think it is my own fault for not speaking native Spanish.

gavin6942 A woman's lover leaves her, and she tries to contact him to find out why he has left. She confronts his wife and son, who are as clueless as she. Meanwhile her girlfriend is afraid the police are looking for her because of her boyfriend's criminal activities.What I have to say about this film is really a side note. I could talk about the film as a whole, and how it strikes me as a sophisticated soap opera. But that is not what I found interesting.I found it interesting that the film kept saying "Shiite terrorist" rather than "Muslim terrorist". This makes me wonder if people in other countries are more knowledgeable with regard to different faiths. Most likely, yes. But it is my impression that few people in America know the difference between Shiite and Sunni, and even fewer knew before 2001.

lastliberal With the Toronto Film Festival going on this weekend, it is appropriate that this is my second venture into Pedro Almodóvar's films, as it won the People's Choice Award at that festival in 1989.Almodóvar wrote and directed this very funny film that is a far cry from Matador. Antonio Banderas is back, this time with a Lyle Lovette haircut, as the son of a philandering husband (Fernando Guillén), who also cheats on his girlfriends.Carmen Maura (Volver0 leads a superb cast as the girlfriend that just got dumped. She is hilarious as she appears to be losing it. In comes her girlfriend (María Barranco), who is afraid of being arrested for harboring Shiite terrorists (this is 1998!). Add Banderas and his mother to the mix, and you have one laugh after another.It even had a great line reminiscent of "A woman needs a man, like a fish needs a bicycle.":Ana (Ana Leza, who was married to Banderas before Melanie Griffith came along): I'm fed up. I'm gonna get myself some quick cash, buy myself his bike and split. With a bike, who needs a man? Pepa (Carmen Maura): Learning mechanics is easier than learning male psychology. You can figure out a bike, but you can never figure out a man.It is almost misogynistic to say the movie was very funny as all the women were hysterical, but it was.

nycritic MUJERES AL BORDE DE UN ATAQUE DE NERVIOS is, from its classic opening title sequence in which Lola Beltran belts out her powerhouse ranchera ballad "Soy infeliz" to a montage of pictures taken from women's fashion catalogues to its appropriate closing with La Lupe (a gay icon herself in Latin America) singing her diatribe, "Puro Teatro", a perfect parenthesis that encapsulates a gay man's wet dream: the assortment of strong femininity, filmed to the beat of a potboiler, seen through the eyes of Douglas Sirk, and the heart and essence of farce taken to its limits. Seeing Almodovar's comedic masterpiece is not enough: it has to be savored like the fine wine it's become as it approaches its twentieth year from when it first exploded into theatres and rocked Spanish cinema to its core. Quite frankly, this is the greatest screwball comedy ever filmed, and for a genre created in the United States, this one trumps even Preston Sturges in sheer craziness that just builds upon momentum until it veers out of control.As a matter of fact, television audiences who follow the satirical "Desperate Housewives" should make an effort to see Almodovar's WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN and appreciate the genius run amok during the approximate 90 minutes it takes to tell its frantic story. It's the only real way to appreciate what goes on ABC's hit show. From the moment our heroine, Pepa (Carmen Maura, in a role that has defined her career) awakens from her slumber and frantically runs to the phone to get that hungrily awaited phone call from Ivan (Fernando Guillen) who has abandoned her and faints in the middle of dubbing Joan Crawford as Vienna in JOHNNY GUITAR, as she crosses paths with the scared Candela (Maria Barranco), the lunatic Lucia (Julietta Serrano), anal Marisa (Rossy de Palma), and feminist Paulina (Kiti Manver) during the course of two days, we're in the same league as the five women of "Housewives." They might even serve as parenthetical bookmarks due to the twin nature of women in the throes of despair pushed to the extreme. This is, as a matter of fact, what THE WOMEN would have looked like had it been filmed fifty years later. Less stagy than Cukor's film but no less effective even when it pokes good fun at artifice, camp, and itself, WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN is smart, witty, ferociously funny and oddly touching -- a tough thing to do in comedies. It marked the movie which brought Pedro Almodovar to international fame, such that MATADOR was re-released in order to bring its equally bizarre story to the public who had discovered a wunderkind in the avant-garde director. For years, plans for an American remake floated about and actresses names were on a continuous shuffle. Thankfully, the idea has not come through and audiences can enjoy this very Spanish, very quirky movie in its original form and see why the term "Almodovarian" exists in cinema today. This is what started it all, proper.