Jose Manuel Cervino Movies

Set amidst the austere volcanic splendor of Spain's island of Lanzarote, this period piece successfully vacillates between drama and high tragedy as it follows the romantic obsession felt by two very different men for an innocent but seductive local girl. The tale is set in a ramshackle island village during the Spanish Civil War. No sooner does young, conservative, and high-moraled Dr. Fermin (Carmelo Gomez) arrive at the pueblo than he is under in Mararia's (Goya Toledo) bewitching spell. She is interested in him too, and they briefly flirt. Freewheeling, roguish English surveyor Bertrand (Ian Glen) has also come to town on a job for the Royal Geographic Society. He too is enchanted by Mararia, and they become lovers. When Mararia becomes pregnant with Beretrand's child, the stage is set for tragedy. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

This is the fascinating study of a woman in early colonial-era Spain who suffers from the usual grievance of women of that period -- a profound lack of choices. On reaching maturity, she has exactly two: get married to someone of her family's choosing, or become a nun. However, noblewoman Catalina de Erauso was not happy with those choices to begin with, though she chooses the nun option, and after the nun she has fallen in love with dies, she escapes the convent dressed as a man. Then she enters the Spanish military, travels to the New World, and fends off advances from women who find "him" irresistible. Since this is an era when women's cross-dressing can result in charges of heresy or the death penalty, what happens next is truly amazing. When she is finally revealed as a woman, the King of Spain asks to meet with her. Instead of killing her, he grants her a pension, the rank of lieutenant in the Spanish army, and gives her lifelong permission to dress as a man. It may appear to viewers that two different women play Catalina. This is correct: one plays her when dressed as a woman, and Esperanza Roy plays her in male attire. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

A group of asylum inmates escape with a truck during the Spanish Civil War in this actioner. The escaped lunatics first join a group of farmers loyal to the crown. After the local village doctor is killed, the group vents their wrath on both loyalists and rebels who align themselves with the forces of Franco. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

German Areta (Alfredo Landa) is an ex-cop detective with a tiny office in a part of Madrid going to seed - a scenario inspired by Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961), to whom Crack is dedicated. Areta is trying to track down a young woman who has basically disappeared into the world of high-class courtesans in the city, and he is told to lay off the search by some powerful types who do not want any negative publicity. Unwilling to leave it at that, Areta' s enemies decide to bring home the message in an unsavory manner, through some nasty business with his girlfriend's daughter. Enraged at their tactics, Areta puts his manhunt into high gear and heads off to New York City to track down the bad guys. In another tip of the hat to Dashiell Hammett the "look and feel" of the film evokes the 1930s mystery movies. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

In a gross miscarriage of justice, based on an actual event, two men are falsely accused and convicted of the murder of a missing shepherd from a small Spanish village. A despotic district court judge and a right-wing congressman orchestrate the trial. The two men are subjected to brutal torture by sadistic guards to exact a confession of guilt. The men serve 6 years of a 15-year prison term before they are released, and they later discover their alleged victim is alive and well in a neighboring village. The 15-minute torture scene is harrowing, as is the subsequent passage of the exhuming of human corpses. ~ Dan Pavlides, 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