Juan Carlos Colombo Movies

Filmmaking duo Andres Leon Becker and Javier Solar took home top prize at the Guadalajara and Montreal Film Festivals for this visually inventive tale the warm relationship shared between a seven-year old girl and her single mother, and what becomes of their bond when the imaginative daughter becomes convinced that mom has been possessed by a vampire. Alicia and her mother live alone in a small apartment, yet despite the absence of a father figure, their close relationship between the pair provides all the emotional nourishment that a mother and her daughter could ever hope for. When mom unexpectedly comes home with one boyfriend, and then another, however, Alicia becomes convinced by a classmate that the depression and romantic problems that her mother are currently experiencing are a surefire sign that that a nefarious supernatural force is at work. Soon convinced that her sickly old neighbor is in fact a devious bloodsucker who has cast an evil spell on her once-happy mom, Alicia boldly determines to sneak into the apartment of the "vampire" and break the curse by placing a crucifix on the old man's chest. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Humor and tragedy mingle in this film, which examines the lives of a handful of people living in a large Mexico City apartment complex. Teresa (Lorena Rojas) has an unexpected encounter with a boy she knew from high school; where she once taunted him as a bookworm, she now finds herself attracted to him sexually. Horacio (Rafael Sanchez Navarro) loses his job, and his wife Eva (Veronica Merchant) responds by demanding a divorce. Josafat (Salvador Garcini) and his wife Ruth (Toni Marcin) are a deeply religious couple who are not sure how to react to their new upstairs neighbors (Cristina Michaus and Odiseo Bichir), who have sex loudly, enthusiastically, and frequently. Celina (Ana Martin) is a prostitute who finds herself attracted to her teenage son Santiago (Jairo Gomez); Santiago, on the other hand, seems uncertain about his sexuality, and sometimes plays peeping Tom with one of the gay men in the building when he isn't trying on Celina's clothes. And elderly Mr. Cano (Jorge Galvan) finds his children rushing to his side after he has a stroke, though they aren't as interested in helping him once they discover he's lost his money and there is no inheritance for them. Corazones Rotos was shown at the 2001 Guadalajara Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The healing power of the sexual act is the focus of this magic-realist entry, shot in Mexico and produced in Spain by writer-director Laura Mana. Evoking films as disparate as Wings of Desire, Like Water for Chocolate, and Breaking the Waves, Sexo Por Compasion switches from black and white to color as it relays the tale of Dolores (Elisabeth Margoni), a woman who begins a series of affairs after her husband walks out on her. She begins her trysts "out of compassion," as it were, for men who have been wronged by their women. As word of her carnal benevolence spreads, Dolores notices her small village changing: the invalid Leocadia (Leticia Huijada) is suddenly able to walk; a feuding couple makes amends; and Dolores' suitors donate money to the local church. Everything goes well until the local prostitutes accuse Dolores of noodling in on their business. Sexo world-premiered at the 2000 Malaga Film Festival before moving to festivals in Canada and the U.S. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

Mexican director Arturo Ripstein helmed this Mexican-Argentine-Spanish religious drama with Buñuelian overtones. Based on true events that took place in Mexico during the '70s, the film is updated to the present. Mama Dorita (Katy Jurado) leads the New Jerusalem cult with film-buff Papa Basilio (Francisco Rabal). Basilio's worship of movies explains the cult's costumes, imitative of Hollywood Biblical epics. When Dorita dies, she chooses teen Tomasa (Edwarda Gurrola) to give birth to the New Messiah. Unable to handle this sudden power, Tomasa instead proclaims herself to be the Whore of Babylon, forcing male cultists to have sex with her. Shown in the Certain Regard section at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

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, All Movie Guide

This is the third film based on Tom Clancy's high-tech espionage potboilers starring CIA deputy director Jack Ryan. Harrison Ford, returning to the Ryan role after his first go-round in 1992's Patriot Games, is assigned to a delicate anti-drug investigation after a close friend of the President (a Reaganesque Donald Moffat) is murdered by a Colombian drug cartel. When Ryan discovers that the President's wealthy friend was in league with the cartel, the President's devious national security adviser (Harris Yulin) and an ambitious CIA deputy director (Henry Czerny) send a secret paramilitary force into Colombia to wipe out the drug lords. The force is captured and then abandoned by the President's lackeys. It falls to Ryan to enter Colombia and rescue them, aided only by a renegade operative named Clark (Willem Dafoe), with both his life and career on the line. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide

The legendary life of Mexican singer Lucha Reyes is the basis of this fictionalized biography ( or as director Arturo Ripstein puts it "an imaginary biography"). Lucha Reyes was an unconventional, and sexually liberated woman, most famous for her "cancion ranchera" style singing. Her story begins in 1939, where at 33 she still lived at home with her mother, Dona Victora, the madame of a renowned Mexico City whorehouse. Lucha marries the liberal Pedro Calderon and then buys a beggar's daughter. She becomes the mother to this child, Luzma. Lucha craves lasting love like junkies crave heroin. But for her loyal daughter, she never finds it and in the end no one can help her. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This surreal variant on the classic vampire tale is the directorial debut of Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, who garnered international acclaim and several awards. The film tells the story of elderly antique dealer Jesus Gris (Federico Luppi, in a role originally written for Max Von Sydow) who, with his eight-year-old granddaughter Aurora (Tamara Shanath), discovers an ancient artifact secreted within a statue obtained from the estate of a 16th-century alchemist. Unbeknownst to Gris, the device -- which resembles an ornate, gilded mechanical beetle -- houses an immortal parasite which will grant eternal life to its host. Naturally, there is a terrible price for this gift, which Gris is doomed to discover after the object anchors itself to his body. He begins to develop an extreme aversion to daylight, as well as an agonizing thirst for human blood. To compound matters, dying millionaire Dieter de la Guardia (Claudio Brook) has learned of the device's existence -- thanks to an occult tome obtained from its inventor -- and wishes to obtain it for his own use. To this end he employs his vain, brutish nephew Angel (Ron Perlman) to retrieve it for him. Angel's techniques are less than subtle, and he inevitably winds up killing Gris in his futile search for the artifact... but death is not permanent for the host of the Cronos, and he rises from the mortuary slab to reunite with the long-suffering Aurora. Together they confront de la Guardia and his nephew one last time, hoping to find a way to reverse the horrible process before Gris suffers the same monstrous fate as the device's creator. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

As all too many people know from painful experience, or can figure out with a little math, the friendly people who offer Easy Monthly Payments know that they've got you paying through the nose for their little conveniences. Unfortunately for Jose, even though he was on the fast-track at work, he felt obligated to marry his pregnant girlfriend, and he now has so many new obligations to attend to immediately that he swiftly falls prey to the lure of comodas mensualidades. He finally realizes that he's in serious trouble when he can't get their newborn baby out of the hospital until he pays the bill -- and he can't pay the bill! This comedy which pokes fun at the pretensions of Mexico's "yuppie" class, includes such rituals as the inexplicable visits of Japanese businessmen, and the mad cheeriness of the dialogues taught by instructors in business English classes. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide