Rating: 
Summary: Hard to review this one
Review: OK, I saw "Vanilla Sky" first, and thought that Cameron Crowe went overboard in that one to make it much more confusing than it had to be, even though, it's almost the same movie, shot for shot as this. But this one gets credit for doing the idea first. That is, of a well-to-do young man who gets horribly disfigured in an auto accident caused by a jealous lover. Or does he? Well, it's because he's become enamored by another lady. Or has he? And then he kills the jealous lover. Or is it the new girlfriend? This is the challenge of this movie.I will admit that watching this one after seeing "Vanilla Sky" makes a big difference, and now I'll probably never know my original reaction to this one had I seen it cold. I will say, though, that even though some things are clearer because of the previous viewing, I really believe this one explains things a little more clearly, which was the problem with "Vanilla Sky". Plus, Penelope Cruz, as the new interest, seems to like her man here a lot more than in "Vanilla Sky". So, yes, I think this one is worth seeing. And maybe the only debate left is in which movie Penelope Cruz looks better without her clothes in. As the two movies are shot almost exactly the same, we "see" Ms. Cruz in exactly the same scenes. I'll put my vote on this one as better for that reason also. You get to see her in a much clearer view, and, even though this brings out the pig in me, she's a few years younger in the original.
Rating: 
Summary: Falto el trailer
Review: La pelicula es, a mi humilde gusto,la mejor.
La calidad del video no es excelente pero para mi esto le da un valor agregado, solo se le puede criticar la falta del trailer. El precio me encanto y me permitio adquirir este DVD junto con el de tesis que siendo un poco mas costoso, adolece de varias de las bondades de este dvd pero creo que tambien es de adquisicion obligatoria. Me felicito de haberlo adquirido....mas nada tengo que decir.
Rating:
Summary: Brillante: una joya de guión
Review: El chileno Alejandro Amenábar (Tesis) nos trae una producción donde derrocha todo su talento como escritor, productor ejecutivo, director y hasta co-compositor de la música de esta producción que serviría tres años más tarde como base fundamental para la película "Vanilla Sky" de Cameron Crowe. Con la participación de Eduardo Noriega en el papel de César, y la hermosa Penélope Cruz como Sofía (quien también fue interpretada por la actriz española en la versión norteamericana), la historia se desenvuelve de manera totalmente impredecible, haciendo casi imposible para protagonistas y espectadores discernir entre la realidad y los sueños de Eduardo. Otro director cuyo trabajo seguirá dando mucho de que hablar, sin duda alguna.
Rating:
Summary: Saw After Its Remake as Vanilla Sky & Both Are Superb
Review: I loved "Vanilla Sky" and wasn't expecting to like this as well. However, it too is an excellent film. The differences between the two are very slight. In fact, I am surprised that Vanilla Sky director Cameron Crowe was willing to film someone else's source written work when he himself is so well known and regarded as a writer. However, he is dedicated to Cruise as an actor and that must have made the difference. I'm going to give a slight edge to Tom Cruise as the male lead although Noriega does a splendid job in this original film version. In fact, Noriega may even be more believably damaged by what occurs in the film. However, Cruise has charisma and magnetism to spare and that comes through in "Vanilla Sky." I have to be very careful what I say about the plot because every time you think you may be getting a handle on what is really happening in this film, you later find out something else entirely is going on. It is a masterpiece of slight of hand and point of view. I will say that the handsome male lead DOES experience a major car crash which disfigures him. This occurs because of his involvment with the wrong woman. Everything else flows from that event and will keep you guessing until the very end of the film. Crowe did insert an outstanding soundtrack into "Vanilla Sky" which is absent from "Open Your Eyes." Since he began as a "Rolling Stone" rock writer though and is married to rock star Nancy Wilson of Heart, he has a decided advantage to coming up with stellar movie soundtracks.
Rating: 
Summary: This is the raw talent of Amenabar in full force...
Review: Open your eyes indeed...this was truly one unique film. The first twenty minutes is romance, while the rest is a psychological thriller/sci-fi...although those terms only vaguely describe it. Think of it as an EXPERIENCE...I don't think there is any way you can really give a better description of it than that. It reminded me, like others have said, of The Phantom of the Opera, and another movie which I shall not name. However, Open Your Eyes came out before this "other" movie (Open your Eyes came out in 1997), so Open Your Eyes is the more original version. This cast did a very satisfying job. I cannot say anything about how "good" they sound as it was in Spanish with subtitles, but their facial expressions, everything was amazing. I ESPECIALLY thought that the performance by Chete Lera for Antonio (the doctor) was incredible...He really moved me towards the ending with his facial expressions, etc. Penelope Cruz and Eduardo Noreiga both did incredible work as well, although Cruz in this movie does not have a lot more to do besides look good and smile. This score was incredible in the movie too. As it neared the climax, it was perfect. Another seamless score by Amenabar. Great cinematography, especially at the end...quite brilliant. This was also made before The Others, and in a way, I think of this as showing the raw talent of Amenabar, while The Others showed a much more refined style; proving that he does learn from each previous movie. But many of the ideas here in this movie also made you think a bit more. The two-face concept (in the club) was a very meaningful thing, and I also liked how he wove mimes into the movie, and what they signify. Beautifully thought out, and shown. This movie seems a bit "disjointed" and although everything was good, it just had that feeling to it that made it seem a bit "scatterbrained". This is not a big thing, just something I noticed. Like Peter Travers of Rolling Stone said about Vanilla Sky-the American remake of this, this movie has "mind bending secrets" that "no reviewer should give away", and I think this also applies to this movie. My advice to you is to see this before those secrets are given away by some other review. However, I do have to say that I did guess at some of the secrets, and I did come pretty darn close...but it is still an excellent film that was certainly very original (at the time anyway). I hope Vanilla Sky is as good, just for the sake of introducing movies like these to the North American cinema. I was saddened to find out that Amenabar's beautiful music won't be gracing the new version, however I am confident that Crowe will add his own touch, as I have heard he is quite brilliant choosing/using music in his movies. I know most of this review didn't really deal too much with the concepts of the movie, but I didn't want to say anything...there were many examples of each thing (the cinematography, the score at its climax, etc...) that I wanted to talk about, but I shouldn't because this is a film that you can barely talk about without giving away something...so all I can really say is see this movie. Open your eyes...and see the brilliance of Abre Los Ojos. (Note: this is a review I wrote when I actually saw the movie back in November which is why it mentions hoping Vanilla Sky will be just as good...I still have not got around to seeing Vanilla Sky yet)
Rating:
Summary: Great; also check out Troy's SACRED SKY DVD and CD
Review: This is an incredible film with awesome music. Also check out SACRED SKY.
Rating:
Summary: Will definitely reward repeated viewing.
Review: This film created such a strong impression on Tom Cruise that not only did he remake the movie under the silly title "Vanilla Sky," but in a truly bizarre example of life imitating art, he has begun to exhibit the behavior of the film's main character in his personal life! "Open Your Eyes" is an original, intelligent thriller which offers an interesting meditation on immortality to those willing to look beyond the main story.
Rating:
Summary: Una de las peliculas mas inteligentes que se han realizado
Review: Esta pelicula es una obra maestra que no puede faltar en la colección de ningun cinefilo. Si te gustó "Tesis", tambien dirigida por Alejandro Amenábar, esta pelicula sin duda te fascinara. Es un film sicologico, que muestra hasta que punto podemos dintingir la realidad de la fantasia, puede ser que en este mismo momento todo lo que esta a nuestro alrededor es una ilusion ¿ Cómo saberlo?. Es un thriller apasionante, que te agarra y no te suelta en ningun momento. Tiene grandes actuaciones, una excelente fotografia, un impecable guion y una mirada innovadora de parte del director. En resumen, una pelicula que no defraudara a nadie, con un guion inteligente, interesante y novedoso, en donde como es de costumbre de Amenábar, al final, mucho o nada es como pareciera que era.
Rating:
Summary: Bunuel?
Review: This was a real surprise movie to me. In a way it feels like a Bunuel movie and the surrealism is very good described and you have to be concentrated all the way to understand when the movie is reality or dream. This is a must see if you like movies that challenges you.
Rating:
Summary: Be warned: this film can damage your health (fact!)
Review: In all three Alejandro Amenebar films ('Thesis', 'Open Your Eyes' and 'The Others'), the hero or heroine is introduced as part of a sharply defined background (be it a house, family, lifestyle or whatever), and put through a plot in which everything s/he takes for granted, everything s/he takes for 'normal' and 'real' is undermined. Their disorientation is shared by the viewers, not in the usual sense of empathising with the characters and vicariously experiencing their ordeals (Amenebar characters are usually unlikable or unyielding), but in having to negotiate a narrative in which the traditional elements and boundaries - character, plot, reality, time, place, image, motivation - are ineradicably displaced. Just as the lead can't tell whether what is happening is real or dream, whether the person standing beside him is a friend or mental projection, so the viewer is confronted with the unstable status of every frame. The lead in 'Open Your Eyes' is a man who lives his life by appearances - the trappings of wealth; the beauty of one night stands; the reflection of his own good looks - who finds his life overturned by appearances. In true 'Fatal Attraction' style, his masculine crises are caused by the revenge of a lover he very publicly dumped and humiliated. The subsequent narrative can be seen as a (Catholic?) morality tale in which the hero is put through a purgatorial nightmare as punishment for material complacency and indifference to other people, with Penelope Cruz as a kind of redemptive angel, the Beatrice who will guide him to Paradise. Not quite. 'Open' is a vast improvement on Amenebar's debut 'Thesis', even if it doesn't quite achieve the perfection of 'The Others'. Mystery and ambiguity are expertly and plausibly generated from the start - a disembodied voice whispering 'open your eyes' over a blank screen - so its seems a shame that, like the earlier film, the final quarter opts for the preposterous and excessive in the move to resolution. Amenebar's grasp of tone and mise-en-scene is much more assured; environment, for instance, is more than just a setting or pat signifer, and plays into the weird mechanism of the story and its themes. Amenebar reminds us that, although Surrealism was a French movement, some of its greatest exponents (especially Bunuel) were Spanish. 'Eyes', er, opens with a famous dream sequence, in which the self-confident young hero in his expensive car gradually realises that the capital city centre he drives through is empty. More fundamentally, Amenebar's film collapses the boundary between unconscious and conscious, dream and reality, and subverts the role of the Freudian psychoanalyst: instead of shaping and interpreting the patient's unconscious, he gets sucked into it. One frame, a naked, headless female corpse, would have made a fine Surrealist photograph. Amenebar's narrative trickery could have fallen on its face if, as a Hollywood movie might do, he had spent too long building up his hero, his background and his 'motivation'. By imposing the plot-scuppering flash-forwards from the beginning, but leaving the details about the lead character sketchy, the shifts and tricks become more acceptable, because 'reality' has been shaken from the start. Still, I wish Julio Medem had got his hands on this material - what a film that might have been. A small anecdote to illustrate the ambiguous power of 'Eyes': I was made watch it by my wife, who has become recently enamoured of dashing young actor Eduardo Noriega. Five minutes into the grotesque facial disfigurment that results from the pivotal kamikaze car crash, she felt genuinely nauseous and had to lie down. I don't know what to think about that one...
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