Women In Trouble Reveiew -- Nylon Magazine

Lovely review, positive overall -- but they made young Isabella 40?
Go figure.

PHOTO BY SCREEN MEDIA FILMS

MOVIE REVIEW: WOMEN IN TROUBLE

Mix chick flick with soft core, and stir in some unexpectedly good dialogue.

Being one of two guys on the digital team, I was a bit skeptical when I was sent to a screening of Women in Trouble, directed by Sebastian Gutierrez. I suddenly realized the last five films I saw all starred explosions instead of actors. I was even more shaken during the film’s bizarre opening: A scene with an imprisoned nun and cowgirl duo – a set-up for a racy movie (okay, a movie-within-a-movie) starring Elektra Luxx and Holly Rocket (played by Carla Gugino and Adrianne Palicki).

Women in Trouble follows a strange day in the lives of 10 women, with an ensemble cast made up of a porn star, a psychiatrist and her patient, a flight attendant, and a pair of call girls.  It’s a comedy saturated with “I can’t believe she just said that” moments, which you might expect from Juno or Little Miss Sunshine.   

The film also stars Emmanuel Chriqui, Marley Shelton, and, the real highlight, Isabella Gutierrez, a forty-year-old actress playing a sassy tween named Charlotte. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (of 500 Days of Summer fame) also makes a hilarious after-credit cameo, interviewing Elektra Luxx and Holly Rocket for his porn blog.

I didn’t think I would like a movie with a title sequence entirely in pink, but Women in Trouble was definitely as exciting as any Terminator / Transformer movie I saw this year.
--TYLAN CUNNINGHAM
http://www.nylonmag.com/?section=article&parid=3840

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WEDNESDAY'S PINUP

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Some folks still haven't caught on to the sun-soaked genius of Howe Gelb, Tucson's answer to Neil Young. For some 20 years he's been spitting out dusty surreal poetry and crazy guitar riffs and here he is with a gospel choir and my goodness, he makes it all look so easy.
Hats off to Mr. Gelb!

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I know it's been around forever, but I still think it's funny.

Women In Trouble -- Los Angeles Times

Review: 'Women in Trouble'

Sebastian Gutierrez's movie is a soap opera-ish vehicle for hilarity and depth. A sequel is already in the works.

Carla Gugino plays porn star Elektra Luxx. (Rya Kihlstedt / August 8, 2009)

By Kevin Thomas

November 13, 2009

"Women in Trouble" plays like George Cukor's "The Women" brought raunchily up to date; this film, however, is not without men, and its three key actors -- "The Mentalist's" Simon Baker, Josh Brolin and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who turns up in an amusingly preposterous post-end-credit sequence) -- who appear in cameos are the film's most familiar names.

The cast finds itself playing it straight in increasingly outrageous circumstances. Carla Gugino heads the cast as porn star Elektra Luxx, currently filming a scene with adult newcomer Holly Rocket (Adrianne Palicki), who, in turn, teams with Bambi (Emmanuelle Chriqui) in hooking gigs. Elektra gets stuck in an elevator with Doris (Connie Britton), angry at her sister Addy (Caitlin Keats), who's having an affair with the husband (Baker) of her therapist (Sarah Clarke). Meanwhile, Elektra's erstwhile boyfriend, a British rock star (Brolin) is seducing a flight attendant (Marley Shelton). And this is just the beginning. The cast also includes Isabella Gutierrez -- the filmmaker's daughter -- as a remarkably mature 13-year-old.

The sexual humor is often bawdy, and Gutierrez goes right up to the edge of camp. Amid the laughter, Gutierrez can show intense pain, never more so than when a wife discovers her husband's infidelity. "Women in Trouble" has sleeper written all over it and a sequel is already in the works.