This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Almodóvar is famous for repeatedly and warm-heartedly depicting women, men, transgenders and homosexuals without caring much about taboos.In "All About My Mother," he does this again, with well-written dialogues, portraying people with universal problems of love, loss, sickness and death. Like few other male writers and directors, he seems able to grasp and convey the sentiments and situations of persons that, in different ways, live in the shadow of the patriarchy.

Manuela is a single mom who loses her beloved son Esteban when he gets hit by a car while chasing after actress Huma Rojo. Manuela is a nurse in charge of donor coordination. To avoid the temptation to look for Esteban's organs, she quits her job. She decides to return to Barcelona to tell transgender Lola about his son that he never knew he had. She finds her old transgender prostitute friend Agrado. She befriends pregnant nun Rosa along with Huma Rojo and her lover Nina Cruz.I love the first half of the movie. I love Pedro Almodóvar's bright colors and exuberant style. The dirt road where the prostitutes congregate is an amazing scene. I just felt the movie loses focus later on as it deals with the various characters. It's still an amazing movie.

All About My Mother is without a doubt Pedro Almodóvar's Citizen Kane. Talk to Her is incredible, but doesn't even begin to touch the sheer brilliance of the acting, writing, and emotional intensity that All About My Mother has. It was internationally, critically, and commercially appreciated and arguably the greatest film of 1999.Everything about the film is so exemplary that pointing out the film's strengths seems rather redundant. The film features all its stars at their best, their zeniths. The film was so phenomenal that I wouldn't have been surprised if Almodóvar retired after completing it. Thankfully, though, he didn't and has continued making top quality films with the same heart he had making All About My Mother.

After her only son dies in an accident, a single mother (Cecilia Roth) goes searching for the boy's father, a randy transvestite, and falls back into her old group of friends including drag queens, prostitutes and actresses.There isn't a very strong plot in this follow-up to Carne Tremula, but there's tons of atmosphere and fascinating characters, and everybody acts their hearts out, especially Roth and Antonia San Juan. Penelope Cruz is also good as a social worker with AIDS whom Roth takes under her wing. It's a continuation of the themes of grief, helplessness and fate from Almodovar's 1997 masterpiece but it's much less stylized, more sensitive and character-centered.