José Alonso Movies
In this wildly stylized look at love, sex, family, and community, an absent husband comes home late one night to make up with his wife, and they make love into the wee hours of the morning. As the new day dawns, the children of the household realize their father has come home -- and they're not especially happy about it. One of the older kids decides to pack up and leave, while the others stay home and fantasize about exacting revenge against their dad. Meanwhile, their neighbors deal with romantic and sexual problems of their own as they struggle through their morning meal and prepare for another day. Cronica de un Desayuno received its American premiere at the 2000 Chicago Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- María Rojo, Bruno Bichir, (more)
Maten Al Candidato concerns a gangster who plots the assassination of a political candidate. A mime suffering through some serious problem with his wife becomes embroiled in the plan. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi
This Mexican political thriller follows the feud of a mobster and a noble politician intent on bringing down organized crime. When congressman Jose Ramirez (Hector Bonilla) has Ramon Alvarado (Manuel Ojeda) arrested and jailed, Alvarado retaliates by having Ramirez' brother Julian (Rafael Rojas) kidnapped and killed. Meanwhile, mime Jorge Zepeda (Jose Alonso) is conned into believing that he has leukemia, with only a few months left to live, and will receive money in advance if he kills Ramirez. Shown at the 1998 Guadalajara Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi
- Starring:
- José Alonso, Hector Bonilla, (more)
- 1995
Four Mexican women set forth on an emancipatory journey to Guadalajara in this upbeat drama. The story begins in the tiny pueblo of Comala. Ema, a bank teller, persuades her three friends Chayo, Isabelle and Clotilde to leave their brutish spouses and accompany her on a trip to Guadalajara to find freedom. Once there Isabelle, worried about her mentally-retarded daughter, goes home. The other three decide to stay and look for work and a place to stay. They find both in the restaurant and nightclub of Rosa 4. While there, Rosa begins falling for Homero, a womanizing drug runner pretending to be a student. Ema is unaware of his true identity. She is also unaware that her husband Felipe has gone looking for her. When Ema learns the truth about Homero, she beats him senseless, flushes his drugs down the toilet, and steals his money. The three women use part of the cash to fly to Los Angeles; the rest of it they use to start up a Mexican Restaurant. Meanwhile Felipe continues his search. At one point he runs into Homero and Felipe is almost killed. Felipe escapes and finally makes it to the restaurant in LA where he begs Ema for a second chance. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Lourdes Elizarraras, Regina Orozco, (more)
Three couples learn some difficult lessons about the cost of infidelity in this drama from Mexico. Mujeres Infieles offers three stories of spouses who stray, each from a different point in the couple's relationship -- the first concerns two people about to be wed, the second looks at a couple who have been married for several years, and the last follows a man and woman who are only going through the motions after decades together. In each story, looking for adventure outside of a committed relationship brings passion, excitement -- and tragic consequences. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- 1993
The son of one of Columbus' soldiers, Bartolomé de las Casas was educated at the University of Salamanca, taking a law degree there. In 1502 he joined conquistador Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo in what was then the largest military expedition ever to set sail from Spain. In 1510, he became the first man consecrated to the priesthood in the New World. He was 36 at the time. The next year he went along with the men who set out to occupy Cuba. There, he witnessed the brutal treatment and enslavement of that island's native people, including the execution of one of their great chiefs, a man whose life he tried to save. At the time of the early Spanish conquests, it was customary for the conquerors to take any natives they captured who survived the ordeal and give them as slaves to reward the conquerors, along with grants of land. The brutality of this practice, along with many similar ones, moved de las Casas to journey back to Spain to try and win support from the monarchy for more humane treatment of the indigenous people coming under the yoke of Spanish rule. Though he largely succeeded in his appeals to the monarch, eventually winning approval of an edict mandating better treatment, it was widely ignored by the military rulers of the New World colonies. Despite this, he devoted much of the rest of his life to improving conditions for "indios," or native people in the new Spanish colonies in the Caribbean and in Central America. This biographical drama is based on a play which celebrated the life of this pioneer, whose name is used today as a banner for indigenous peoples' rights movements throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Fr. de las Casas wrote several important works during these early days of the conquest, in particular his "Hístory of the Indies." ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- José Alonso, German Robles, (more)
Toto's cousin Azucena has come into town to stay with his family and recover from an unhappy love affair. This couldn't suit Toto better, since he's just reaching adolescence, and he can't help noticing that she's a very attractive girl. She seems friendly to him, too. Eventually they have a brief sexual liaison (his first) in this male coming-of-age story which is, oddly enough, directed by a woman. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Leticia Perdigón, Martin Altomaro, (more)
- 1990
Virginia (Maria Rojo) is taking a class at film school, and has decided on her solo project for the class. She will film herself and her ex-husband Marcelo (Jose Alonso) (who likes to leave the light on) while they make love. She carefully positions a camera under a chair, and maneuvers her ex-husband into making love to her in front of it. Eventually her strategems lead him to discover the camera and the ruse. At first, he is outraged, but eventually he gets into the spirit of the thing, and gets in a plug for his undertaking business while he's at it. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- María Rojo, José Alonso, (more)
- 1990
Guerilla wars against the major powers have been a factor in Central American politics for a long time. This biographical drama is based on the life of Nicaragua's prototypical 20th century guerilla, Augusto C. Sandino (born as Augusto Nicolás Calderón Sandino). His name and life were the inspiration for the anti-U.S. forces in that country fifty years after his death: they called themselves the Sandanistas. It is helpful to remember, and this movie demonstrates, that the U.S. military has been actively involved with the domestic politics of Nicaragua many times in this century, most notably during the 1912 invasion which resulted in over twenty continuous years of U.S. military intervention. In the story, Sandino loves two women: his wife, who remains at home, and his warlike mistress, a guerilla who accompanies him into the jungle. He has a tendency (common at the time) of wanting to trust politicians. As a result, he was betrayed by Anastasio Somoza in 1933, and vanished from sight. Somoza soon became the sole ruler of Nicaragua (from 1936 to 1956). The free-thinking rebel, who renamed himself Augusto César Sandino in the late 1920s, identified strongly with the indios or indigenous people of the region, and proposed a political agenda under which the countries of the Central America would unite against European exploitation. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Kris Kristofferson, Dean Stockwell, (more)
- 1987
Twenty years ago, Juan witnessed his father's death in a smuggling operation across the U.S. border and knows that he was obviously lured to his death in a plot concocted by Rojas, his father's partner, in collusion with an American policeman. These days, Juan is a successful gun-runner, and things are fine until he hears that Rojas is still around and is doing better than ever, having moved to Durango. He decides to go to where his father's treacherous partner now lives and even the score a bit. Along the way, he encounters others whose lives have been harmed by Rojas, and they aid him in his efforts. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- José Alonso, Blanca Guerra, (more)
- 1983
In this detective venture, a gumshoe looks into the killing of a wealthy socialite. It is difficult as the killer was careful to leave few clues. The investigation leads the detective to a lonely motel run by an eccentric young couple. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- José Alonso, Salvador Sanchez, (more)
- 1979
With a screenplay by the Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez and noted Mexican director Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, who also directed this film, there are several inventive and whimsical facets to this story about an ill-fated love. When Hector (Hector Bonilla) comes back from his usual night of burglarizing houses, he is surprised to find his former love María (María Rojo) in his apartment, dressed in a wedding gown. María breaks down as she tells Hector how she has been jilted at the altar, and later she turns on some tap water and milk comes pouring out -- for María is a real magician. The two soon re-establish their affection for each other, and María convinces Hector to give up his life as a cat burglar and join her in putting on a magic show. Hector agrees, and the couple begin a new career together. But just as their show becomes better known, María's van breaks down on the road and she hitches a ride with a busload of very strange-looking people, disembarking at an insane asylum. The more she argues that she is perfectly sane, the less anyone believes her -- sanity is not easily recognizable, apparently. So María is literally imprisoned, while Hector becomes convinced she has left him for good. Time goes by. Will Hector find María at the asylum? And if so, what happens then? Classic García-Márquez all the way, the political and sociological aspects of this ultimately absurd situation are told with a wry sense of humor. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Hector Bonilla, María Rojo, (more)
- 1977
As Spanish power waned in Europe, one of the favored games of European powers was to replace one Spanish king with another. By the time of Napoleon, the Spanish monarch was Fernando VII (1784-1833), who held and lost that throne many times at the whim of his father, Napoleon, European powers, and the Spanish people themselves. This epic war film tells of the exploits of Mina (Jose Alonzo), a Spanish guerrilla who fought against Napoleon and later struggled against Fernando VII in Mexico, as that nation fought for independence. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- José Alonso, Pedro Armendariz, Jr., (more)
- 1976
This Mexican vaquero (cowboy) film centers on a group of no-good, dirty, low-down varmints who want to drive a group of law-abiding folks away from where they live in order to pull off a land deal. They will stop at nothing: not rape, not murder, in order to accomplish this feat. However, they are opposed by a good-hearted if peculiar gunman who gets his opponents under his control and then makes certain he gets a good look at their naked buttocks. He is searching for the man who killed his parents, who apparently bore a branding mark in that location. Though completely earnest and sincere, this goofy drama could enjoy some cross-over viewership among those who enjoy campy cowboy dramas and those with a yen to view male backsides without all those distracting clothes on them. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Barry Coe, José Alonso, (more)
- 1976
When a worker is found murdered on the construction side, the investigation swiftly turns from things criminal to the political circumstances surrounding the building itself. Widespread corruption and neglect by the builder himself are seen to have brought the situation about. Much of the movie is filmed using hand-held cameras, and the majority of the dialogue is in the difficult-to-understand and very slangy Spanish dialect of Mexico City's bricklayers. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Ignacio Tarso, Jaime Fernandez, (more)
A man who has been mutilated in boyhood encounters numerous difficulties because of it. Jose Alonso plays a man whose lower limbs, including his sexual organs, were savaged by a Great Dane in boyhood. Unfortunately for him, his sex drive developed unabated and his frustration at being unable to culminate his relationships with women eventually drives him to drastic action because he has no alternative or compensating interests. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- José Alonso, Helena Rojo, (more)
Volatile, home-grown Mexican director and actor Emilio "El Indio" Fernández guides this simple melodrama through its paces to put across a relatively effective -- though idealistic -- story about social change. Set in a backwater village, the tale begins when an architect arrives in town, sent by the government. It turns out that the local schoolteacher is fed up with holding classes in a ramshackle lean-to that barely keeps a roof over the students' heads. The architect's job is to make sure a decent school is built. But on the opposite side of the fence is a local landowner who is against the project. Battle lines are drawn, and the conflict over the school starts to galvanize the villagers. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Fernando Soler, Lilia Prado, (more)
