José Luis Gómez Movies

Antonio Cuadri's drama La Buena Voz (aka The Good Voice) explores the relationship that develops between a father and a gay son he never knew existed -- two men suddenly and unexpectedly thrust into each other's lives. Pepe, a slightly listless, fiftysomething taxi driver with a heart condition, suddenly learns that he fathered a child, Jordi, from a quiet affair with his wife's girlfriend. Jordi, now HIV-positive, enters Pepe's world and recolors the elder's perspective and outlook on life, with his take-no-prisoners zeal for living and a restless, inquisitive spirit. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Spanish dancing sensation Joaquin Cortes plays his first major dramatic role in this story about a musician who is struggling to put personal misfortune behind him. Andres (Cortes) is a flamenco singer who has just gotten out of prison after being falsely convicted of the murder of Romero (Antonio Carmona), a member of his band. As Andres tries to reacclimate himself to freedom, he discovers things have not been going his way while he was up the river; his wife Lucia (Laetitia Casta) is having an affair with another man, while his bullying father Isidoro (Manuel de Blas) is obsessed with getting revenge against Don Manuel, who rules a local crime syndicate known as the Junco Family. Word on the street has it that members of the Junco Family killed Romero while he was defending Andres in a fight; Don Manuel is also the father of Lucia, as well as Lola (Marta Belaustegui), the wife of another of Andres' bandmates, El Peque (Gines Garcia Millan), who wants Andres to put his problems behind him and get back on the road. Andres is eager to get his career going again, but he discovers Chino (Jose Manuel Lorenzo), a cop on the take, has been following him, with record company bigwig Manfredi (Juan Fernandez) paying him to dig up dirt on the flamenco. As well as introducing Joaquin Cortes, Gitano features French supermodel Laetitia Casta in her second acting role; her voice was dubbed into Spanish by actress Ana Fernandez. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

This film within a film is based on the painting Las Meninas by Diego de Velazquez. A young boy enters the canvas of the famous picture of the Spanish king and his court. In order to return to the real world, he must convince the artist to create his famous painting. The other plot involves a film director who is not sure how his film within a film will be created. He is distracted by his troubled marriage and has difficulty focusing on his project. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Using the viewpoint of real school children slowly finding out about Federico García Lorca, director Jaime Camino unveils the life, literary works, and personality of Spain's great writer, tragically murdered by the gunfire of fascist soldiers in 1936 when he was only 38 years old. Just as important as the loss of García Lorca is the fact that the school children are not too clear on who he was or why there was a Civil War in 1936 -- both are vague and unfamiliar topics. A re-enactment of the poet's murder is shocking in its brutality, all the more so once Camino has provided excerpts from the poet's dramas and verse, and his genius and sensitivity are brought home. Included in this informative documentary are scenes from Granada, where García Lorca was born, and of places he knew well, such as New York City and Seville, with a recollection of the Spain of his day provided through old newsreels and photographs. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

While attending an international conference which seeks to reduce the incidence of the use of torture by nations around the globe, a movie director (Jose Luis Gomez) encounters a woman (Geraldine Chaplin) whom he decides to cast in a play about state torture. As events proceed, he and the woman, the wife of a dentist, become lovers. All along, however, right-wing types have been persecuting, and the whole endeavor goes sour. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Deeply layered with much symbolic and allegorical material, the generally non-narrative events in this film revolve around Ana (Ana Belen) a girl who has been diagnosed with a terminal case of cancer. In one scene, she is injured in a Madrid Public library when a police horse crashes through a plate glass window. The police have just been violently dealing with protestors who are objecting to the state's handling of the trials of six men accused of involvement in the death of a policeman. In another scene, a man claims he can cure her of cancer, but she must turn her mind over to him. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Three booze-soaked near-derelicts have a series of macabre adventures on the day when one of them was supposed to report to his new job at the mine, located near their northern Spanish town. Set at the end of the 19th century, and based on A Esmorga by Eduardo Balnacoamer, this story follows the trio on the bender to end all benders. The fellow with a new job is waylaid by his buddies who haul him off to a local bar. There, they get into a fight and wind up knifing a miner. They escape over the wall of a nobleman's villa, and have several strange adventures before settling down peaceably for a late-night drink. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

In 1976, having completed two praiseworthy projects for Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura, Geraldine Chaplin journeyed to Spain to appear in Enrique Braso's In Memoriam. Her contribution to the film is secondary to that of Jose Luis Gomez, who play Julio Montero, a man tormented by his past. In pre-war Madrid, Julio, a painfully shy writer, is competing for the love of Paulina (Chaplin), but cannot bring himself to speak. Instead, another witer, a flamboyant hothead, asks for and wins her love. Julio then leaves Madrid for Cambridge. It is not until he returns many year later that he learns to his horror that Paulina's lover murdered her in a fit of jealous rage, after she had come from seeing him off on his journey to Cambridge. The same year that he appeared in In Memoriam, Jose Luis Gomez won the Cannes Festival "best actor" award for his work in Pascal Duarte. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A follow-up to Spanish enfant terrible Pedro Almodóvar's 2006 arthouse sensation Volver, Los Abrazos Rotos finds the filmmaker re-teaming with actress Penélope Cruz and working on a canvas much broader than those of his previous outings, in terms of genres covered, narrative scope, and duration. Lluís Homar stars as the former Mateo Blanco, a screenwriter and ex-director who changed his name to Harry Caine after losing his sight in an automobile accident. A past scandal suddenly resurfaces when the news arrives that the producer of one of Harry's old movies ("Girls and Suitcases"), a corrupt stockbroker named Ernesto Martel (José Luis Gómez), has died. For mysterious reasons, this makes Harry's ex-production manager Judit (Blanca Portillo) nervous; then Ernesto's son, Ray X (Rubén Ochandiano), turns up and asks Harry to help him write a vindictive script to get back at his vile father. The film subsequently flashes back to the early '90s, when Martel became involved with his secretary, Lena (Cruz), but Mateo also began to develop feelings for her, and auditioned her for "Girls and Suitcases." In response to Mateo's interest in Lena (and her burgeoning interest in him), the jealous Martel commissioned Ray to make a documentary about the making of "Girls and Suitcases" as an excuse to spy on the director and star. This enabled him to watch Mateo spiriting off with Lena right under his nose, and set the stage for the wily producer's elaborate revenge against Mateo. As this synopsis suggests, Almodóvar uses a tricky structure laden with flashbacks to both comment on and explain the events of the present; he also interweaves a noirish sensibility throughout the picture that marks something of a first for this director. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

The events that led Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to write her horror masterpiece Frankenstein provide the basis of this haunting, romantic drama. The story opens aboard a beat up schooner as it carefully makes its way through a massive broken ice pack near the North Pole. There Shelley writes her fantastic tale and reminisces about the events of the previous summer when she was courted by the poetic Percy Byshe Shelley. They elope and go to Switzerland where they become friends with dashing Lord Byron and his companion Dr. Polidori. Shelley's sister Claire accompanies them and gets romantically entangled with Byron. The group subsequently spends some idyllic almost hedonistic weeks at Byron's villa. Over the next few years, strange, tragic and troubling events occur and whenever they do, Shelley sees her monster lurking in the shadows. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi