Gato Barbieri Movies
Filmmaker Fernando Trueba was introduced to Latin jazz in the 1980s, when he was beginning his career as a director, and he has since become a devoted fan of the music. After employing noted jazz artists to score some of his films, Trueba took his love of the music one step further with the documentary Calle 54, in which he gathered together a number of his favorite Latin jazz artists for a series of interviews and performances at the Sony Music recording studios in New York City. The artists include two pioneering Latin jazz stars, percussionist Tito Puente and horn player Paquito D'Rivera, as well as father-and-son piano duo Bebo Valdes and Chucho Valdes, Gato Barbieri and his tenor sax, the New York-based ensemble Jerry Gonzalez and the Fort Apache Band, and veteran pianists Chico O'Farrill and Eliane Elias. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eliane Elias, Chano Dominguez, (more)
- 1996
A very strange dream about a wealthy man preparing for death inspired director Daryush Shokof to make this off-beat and highly esoteric art film. Archie (Anthony Quinn) receives inner peace by being touched by people of four different racial groups. The film shows the five of them conducting daily activities as Quinn endures having their fingers in his nose and ears constantly for 10 days. Archie invites two old friends of his to be present at his death and reveals his secret for inner peace to them. The man goes off in a huff, but the woman stays around and finds her own enjoyment in the situation. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- 1993
In this stylish and offbeat black comedy, Benito ( Jerry Calà) keeps a diary of his sexual fantasies and cravings. As a result of his on-again, off-again relationship with the beautiful and insatiable Luigia (Sabrina Ferilli), his thoughts along these lines have grown increasingly bizarre. For his own part, he is driven to pick up and bed women at almost every opportunity. As the fantasies recorded in his diary consume more and more of his life, and grow darker and darker, his ordinary waking life becomes flatter and duller, until he disappears altogether. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jerry Calà, Sabrina Ferilli, (more)
- 1993
Unemployed newpaperman George Murphy's frantic search for an infusion of cash to help him pay the rent on his apartment so that his wife and child can move back in with him turns into a philosophical journey through all the neighborhoods and subcultures of the island of Manhattan. At first, he goes to look up a fellow journalist, who lives in a rundown building where all the apartment numbers have been destroyed. As he follows one lead after another, his search becomes more generalized, until he finally achieves some sort of catharsis on Wall Street. This independent, largely experimental film is the first of a trilogy by director Amir Naderi, all set in Manhattan. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Wojda
- 1983
- R
Strangers Kiss stars Peter Coyote as an obsessive independent filmmaker who will allow nothing to interfere with the completion of his B-flick "masterpiece." Gangster Richard Romanus agrees to bankroll the film, provided that his girlfriend Victoria Tennant is cast in the leading role. Aware that there is no rapport whatsoever between Tennant and leading man Blaine Novak, Coyote stage-manages a real-life romance between the two--even though this will mean disaster for Novak should Romanus find out. Best described as a whimsical roller-coaster, Strangers Kiss doggedly avoids predictability throughout. The film might make an intriguing double feature with Woody Allen's similarly-themed Bullets Over Broadway (1994). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Coyote, Victoria Tennant, (more)
- 1979
- R
Set in the Caribbean, Firepower is one of those "celebrity salads," featuring a glittering all-star cast. Sophia Loren heads the ensemble as Adele, the widow of a murdered chemist. Believing that a multimillionaire industrialist is the culprit, Adele determines that she can expect no help from the authorities. Thus she engages the services of retired professional assassin Jerry Fanori (James Coburn), who in turn enlists the aid of troubleshooter Catlett (O.J. Simpson). Watch for Jake LaMotta, the ex-prizefighter whose life was dramatized in Raging Bull, in a supporting part. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sophia Loren, James Coburn, (more)
In Bernardo Bertolucci's art-house classic, Marlon Brando delivers one of his characteristically idiosyncratic performances as Paul, a middle-aged American in "emotional exile" who comes to Paris when his estranged wife commits suicide. Chancing to meet young Frenchwoman Jeanne (Maria Schneider), Paul enters into a sadomasochistic, carnal relationship with her, indirectly attacking the hypocrisy all around him through his raw, outrageous sexual behavior. Paul also hopes to purge himself of his own feelings of guilt, brilliantly (and profanely) articulated in a largely ad-libbed monologue at his wife's coffin. If the sexual content in Last Tango is uncomfortably explicit (once seen, the infamous "butter scene" is never forgotten), the combination of Brando's acting, Bertolucci's direction, Vittorio Storaro's cinematography, and Gato Barbieri's music is unbeatable, creating one of the classic European art movies of the 1970s, albeit one that is not for all viewers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider, (more)
- 1971
This Brazilian film is set during the period of its initial colonial discovery and settlement. The title refers to a word the native peoples used for the coastal lands: "pindorama," or "place of the small trees." A ponderous and grandiose film, it was roundly booed when it was aired at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- 1970
Leave it to iconoclastic Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini to make a feature-length movie out of his production notes! Fascinated by the ancient Greek legend of Orestes, Pasolini travels not to Greece but to Africa. Here he films background footage of tribal customs and rituals, vaguely intending to use these shots for a film about an "African Orestes." That picture is never made, but what he winds up with is fascinating enough to compensate for the loss. The film's original Italian title was Appunti per una Orestiade Africana. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Pier Paolo Pasolini, Gato Barbieri, (more)
- 1965
Future director Francesco Barilli stars in this film about a young radical torn between his rebellious political views and the easy middle-class lifestyle to which he has become accustomed. Barilli rebels in another way as well, engaging in a love affair with his pretty aunt (Adriana Asti), but soon becomes conflicted in that area as well, choosing in the end to conform to traditional expectations. This early Bernardo Bertolucci film makes a bit too much of its protagonist's philosophical underpinnings, but is filled with amusing allusions to various films and literary works in its attempt to explore themes of man's surrender to societal pressures. Bertolucci later explored the same themes on a much larger canvas in his controversial classic 1900. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Adriana Asti, Francesco Barilli, (more)
- Add Gato Barbieri: Live From the Latin Quarter to QueueAdd Gato Barbieri: Live From the Latin Quarter to top of Queue
This program presents Argentinean jazz legend Gato Barbieri in a live performance. The show takes place in the Latin quarter in New York. The dancers move to the hot sounds of Barbieri's band. Gato Barbieri is sonorous on the saxophone. The evening of Latin jazz features a host of other great musicians, including Robbie Gonzalez, Mario Rodriguez, Mark Soskin, and Frank Colon. ~ Rose of Sharon Winter, All Movie Guide
