Cremaster 5

Named after the muscle that raises and lowers the testes, this latest installment in artist Matthew Barney's nonsequential Cremaster series is a visually dazzling, thematically opaque jewel. With original music by Jonathan Bepler and a Hungarian libretto by Barney himself, it's really more a lavishly mounted, three-act mini-opera than a conventional feature film. The Queen of Chain (primeval Bond girl Ursula Andress), dressed in elaborate Elizabethan mourning dress topped off by a blown-glass headpiece, is escorted into the empty Budapest Opera House by her twin pages (Joanne and Susan Rha). Seated on a quilted, pink satin tuffet, she sings a mournful aria w...