Goya's Ghosts

Mr. Bardem gives such an excellent performance, you hate him, but you can't take your eyes off him, feeling much like a bird being mesmerized by a snake. There is a very interesting behind the scenes featurette included. ... Full Review

Besides inserting fictional storylines into real people's lives, "Goya's Ghosts" has a few fatal flaws. Goya's Ghosts" is a flawed and overlong, but passionately made, movie, that's not even a bit boring. ... Full Review

The film's best scenes are when the blithe hypocrite Brother Lorenzo (Bardem) has the tables turned on him by the girl's family.....Randy Quaid is delightfully cast against type as the hunt-happy King Carlos IV, and Lonsdale suggests.... ... Full Review

Bardem is convincingly cunning....Fragmented and uneven, the film falters from lack of a strong point of a view.....In an era of eroding civil liberties, Goya's Ghosts could have been a cautionary nightmare of how bad things can get..... ... Full Review

Goya finds Lorenzo, who has returned from France with Enlightenment ideals but is too busy exacting revenge against the church hierarchy to be bothered by this wretched reminder of his own hypocrisy. Fifteen years later, when Napoleon's army marches into Spain and releases the political prisoners, the ghostly Ines finds the now-deaf Goya and tells him that she bore a daughter, who was confiscated by the church. ... Full Review

Javier Bardem is absolutely amazing here: his downcast eyes and half-mumbled speech convey more about his tragic character than any dialogue could. My favorite political jab: casting doofus Randy Quaid as the roguish head of state. ... Full Review

Without seeing strong relationships develop and characters change at all, there is little in Goya's Ghosts to enjoy, except the thought that Forman has done better, and hopefully will again. Fueled by political anger and lacking in a strong narrative story or any kind of character development, Goya's Ghosts muddles along, throwing in occasional torture scenes that are less moving than sickening. ... Full Review

But I hope it's a think-good movie. So here is Randy Quaid, this hillbilly from Texas, with a banjo in his hands, and he was perfect! And he worked on several films with the great Spanish filmmaker Luis Bunuel. ... Full Review

But Lorenzo, and the movie, get sidetracked when the wealthy father of Ins (Natalie Portman), Goya's muse, tries to buy Lorenzo's intercession on his daughter's behalf with the artist's reluctant help. It's one of many ridiculous and unintentionally funny scenes (including a jaw-dropping appearance by Randy Quaid, of all people, as the violin-playing King Carlos IV) that would have worked better in Brooks' "History of the World: Part 1," where that musical number came from. ... Full Review

Lavish production and wardrobe design, as well as beautiful cinematography by Javier Aguirresarobe make "Goya's Ghosts" lovely to look at, but as a portrait of the artist, the movie is a letdown. Forman's Goya paints with the same brutal frankness but displays none of it in life. ... Full Review