Rene Pereyra Movies
Informed by a Chicago police detective that her sister Diane has recently gone missing in Tijuana, Mexico, successful lawyer Nadine Roberts (Poppy Montgomery) travels south of the border on a desperate mission to locate her lost sibling, and instead finds her sanity slipping amidst an unsetting series of strange circumstances. Immediately after learning that her sister has disappeared, Nadine informs her husband James (Adam Kaufman) that she will be leaving for Mexico, and will not return until she discovers what fate befell Diane. While Tijuana Detective Campos (Jose Yenque) is adamant that Nadine return home immediately and leave the search to the authorities, she outwardly rejects his advice -- instead choosing to navigate the labyrinthine streets with instinct as her only guide. Later, after waking in a strange hotel room, Nadine has a series of bizarre run-ins with such mysterious figures as idiosyncratic hotel clerk Victor (Danny Pino) and enigmatic Old Tijuana matriarch Mrs. Gonzalez (Patricia Reyes Spindola). Driven near the point of insanity due to the indecipherable language spoken by Victor and Mrs. Gonzalez, Nadine is momentarily snapped back to reality due to the surprise appearance of her husband James. But no one can be trusted when the only thing dividing dreams from reality is a single, spare thread, and now Nadine is about to discover what really lies in that mysterious zone between life and death. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Poppy Montgomery, Adam Kaufman, (more)
Paulina Cruz Suarez, raised near Veracruz in the village of Puntilla, was raped at age 8 by Puntilla's mayor. Her impoverished parents saw his interest in her not as evil but as a barter for material gain. Although the mayor had two wives, Suarez was held against her will for two years before she managed to escape to Mexico City where she worked as a maid and gave birth during her 20s to her daughter Rose Marie. U.S. filmmaker Vicky Funari, whose family once employed Suarez as a housekeeper, returned to Mexico to shoot 16mm documentary scenes, intercut with contrived re-creations of key events in Suarez's life. Shown at the 1998 Guadalajara Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paulina Cruz Suarez, Mathyselene Heredia Castillo, (more)
Noted Mexican filmmaker Arturo Ripstein directed this darkly comic drama of love and murder. Coral Fabre (Regina Orozco) is an overweight, emotionally unstable nurse raising two children on her own. Coral is desperately lonely, and through a "Lonely Hearts" club, she begins corresponding with Nicolas Estrella (Daniel Gimenez Cacho). When Coral finally meets Nicolas, she decides that he resembles her favorite actor, Charles Boyer (at least when he wears his toupee) -- and is convinced that they were destined to be together. The fact that Nicolas stole Coral's money after spending the night together does nothing to dissuade her; she learns that Nicolas makes his living by finding rich women and, using his charm, taking their savings before abandoning them. Leaving her children with an orphanage, Coral joins Nicolas as his lover and partner in crime, posing as his sister as he continues his work. Nicolas finds Coral's passion for him exciting, but their amour fou turns deadly when Coral's all-consuming jealousy leads her to murder Nicolas' victims. Profundo Carmesi was based on the true story of American multiple murderers Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez, which also inspired the film The Honeymoon Killers (1969). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Regina Orozco, Daniel Jiménez Cacho, (more)
Director Clare Peploe (wife of Bernardo Bertolucci) adapted this blend of noir mystery and magical realism from the story Miss Shumway Waves a Wand by James Hadley Chase. Bridget Fonda stars as Myra Shumway, an apprentice to a magician (Kenneth Mars) in 1952 Los Angeles. Myra is unhappily engaged to Cliff Wyatt (D.W. Moffett), a sleazy, Howard Hughes-like uranium heir who wants to run for president. After her fiancée accidentally kills her boss, Myra flees to Mexico in search of a renowned female shaman who may be able to teach her the secrets of magic. Wyatt sends an investigator, Alex Ross (Russell Crowe), to find Myra and bring her back. A former photojournalist traumatized by the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Ross finds Myra but falls for her and joins her on the quest to find the medicine woman, as does Doc Ansell (Jim Broadbent), an eccentric patent medicine salesman seeking an ancient Mayan cure for constipation. During the journey, a series of mystical events occur, including levitation during sex, a dog with the power of speech, a human being laying a blue egg, and the transformation of an assailant into a sausage. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bridget Fonda, Russell Crowe, (more)
Lorenzo O'Brien wrote this scathing black comedy about a naive Mexican highway patrolman who is irresistibly drawn into corruption and violence. ~ Nicole Gagne, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Roberto Sosa, Bruno Bichir, (more)
In this made-for-cable docudrama, Anthony Hopkins stars as Joel Filartiga, a Paraguayan doctor battling against human rights abuses and political corruption in his native land. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anthony Hopkins, Norma Aleandro, (more)
In El Salvador in the late '70s, the wealthy few rule the impoverished many. To maintain the status quo against peasant insurgents and labor organizations, the military regime brutalizes the populace, in particular, rebels who espouse Marxism. Assassinations, executions, and disappearances become commonplace. When the Vatican elevates conservative Oscar Arnulfo Romero (Raul Julia) to archbishop, the military rulers believe he will quiet the masses and the activist priests who support them. "Blessed are the peacemakers," he will preach. At first, that is precisely what he does. But when soldiers thwart voters, shoot indiscriminately into crowds, torture dissidents, and kill a dedicated priest and friend of Romero, the archbishop condemns the regime in radio messages, rebukes quisling bishops, and leads a peasant march into a church occupied by soldiers. He also insults and defies the El Salvadoran president (Harold Cannon), an iron-fisted general, who, ironically, has the same last name as the archbishop Romero, but is not related. The country by this time is in the throes of civil war. In 1980, when military death squads continue their reign of terror even though the government institutes so-called reforms, Romero continues to speak out, gaining international attention. The film then builds to its climax, a scene recreating the events of Monday, March 25, 1980, when Romero is saying mass for his recently deceased mother. Attendees include four men who have no intention of reciting mea culpas or receiving the Holy Eucharist. ~ Mike Cummings, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Raul Julia, Richard Jordan, (more)
In this historical drama based on Carlos Fuentes' novel, Harriet Winslow (Jane Fonda) is a naive woman who, hoping to broaden her horizons, accepts a job as a governess in Mexico in 1913. However, Harriet unknowingly finds herself thrown into the middle of the Mexican revolution, where she attracts the attentions of two very different men: an elderly American gentleman (Gregory Peck) who has come to Mexico to die, and Tomas Arroyo (Jimmy Smits), a general with Pancho Villa's army of rebels who is fighting for the freedom of his people. The American's attraction to Harriet is more intellectual (though he unmistakably finds her attractive), while Arroyo holds a greater romantic allure to Harriet, who is still a stranger to the ways of love. In time, she gains a new sense of freedom and self-knowledge in Mexico, but while the victories of Villa's forces bring out an unseemly arrogance in Arroyo, Harriet makes a surprising discovery about the Old Gringo -- that he is in fact the fabled author Ambrose Bierce, who vanished years before. Old Gringo was the first American film for director Luis Puenzo, and the next-to-last for star Jane Fonda. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jane Fonda, Gregory Peck, (more)
After discovering that his terrorist brother has committed suicide, Marco (John Savage) travels to Columbia to investigate, in this action film. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Savage, Robert Duvall, (more)
Agatha Christie's Murder in Three Acts represents Peter Ustinov's fifth appearance as Dame Agatha's brilliant, insufferable Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The scene is Acapulco, where retired actor Tony Curtis hosts two separate parties--both of them were blighted by the fatal poisoning of a guest. The police think the butler did it (honest!), but Poirot activates his "little grey cells" to pinpoint the killer amongst a group of wealthy and eccentric suspects. Filmed in Mexico, Murder in Three Acts was the latest (and to some reviewers the least) in a long line of Agatha Christie TV-movie specials produced by Stan Marguiles. Ustinov was Poirot in three of these, having first essayed the role in the theatrical feature Death on the Nile (78). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Ustinov
A doctor (Tom Conti) and his wife (Teri Garr), recently divorced, are kidnapped and brought to South America by an inept jewel thief (Paul Rodriguez), just in time to help cure a tribal chief's daughter of appendicitis. Then, a series of circumstances brings the entire family together. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide



















