Antonio P. Perez Movies
Having just recently been released from the orphanage where he spend the vast majority of his childhood, a young thief named Alex befriends a pretty kleptomaniac named Sara in this tender tale of love among the nimble-fingered. Ten years ago, Alex's mother taught him to be the perfect thief. Now, after growing up and striking out on his own, Alex ventures into the supermarket where burgeoning thief Sara is attempting to perfect her skills. Eventually entering into a "professional" agreement in which they partner in theft and subsequently split the take, Alex and Sara gradually find their attraction to one another eclipsing their criminal ambition. But the leap from partners in crime to lovers in life won't be an easy one, because despite the fact that Alex has little to lose and no prospects for the future, Sara comes from a respectable background with loving parents and a chance for further education. As the relationship becomes more intense, Alex soon finds himself forced to make Sara's decision for her. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Juan José Ballesta, Maria Valverde, (more)
Filmmaker F. Javier Gutiérrez crafts this apocalyptic thriller that finds panic sweeping the world after the Secretary General of the United Nations announces that a meteorite will wipe out all life on Earth in just seventy-two hours. Life as we know it is about to end. Mankind made a good run of it, but now destruction is about to rain down from outer space; wiping the slate clean for a new era. While most folks react to the grim announcement by rioting in the streets, a young man named Ale decides to spend his last three days getting drunk and listening to his favorite records. Ale lives in the remote town of Laguna with his mother, and earns his living by performing a series of thankless odd jobs around town. Now, as crime soars, suicide rates shoot through the roof, and panicked hordes greet Armageddon with guns blazing, Ale's mother Rosa announces that she has decided to spend her final hours with Ale's brother Tomás and his family on the outskirts of town. But the journey to Tomás' house won't be an easy one, because in all the chaos a number of convicts have managed to escape from prison and now set about terrorizing everyone unfortunate enough to cross their paths. One criminal in particular seems intimately tied to Tomás' past. When Rosa arrives at Tomás' home to find the children all alone and cowering in fear, Ale's plans of drinking his way though the apocalypse quickly take a back seat as he races to protect the children from a horrifying fate at the hands of sadistic marauders. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Victor Clavijo, Mariana Cordero, (more)
- 2006
A sullen doctor who is teetering on the cusp of middle-age is forced to revisit his painful family past in director Gerardo Herrero's adaptation of Almudena Grandes' best-selling novel. As children, Juan and Charo (Natalia Sanchez) were sweethearts until Charo was swept away by the charms of Juan's older brother Dami. Though Dami and Charo eventually marry, their union was simply not meant to be. Soon after the unhappy wife comes seeking solace in the arms of her husband's brother, tragedy strikes and Charo is killed in a deadly car accident. Years later, Juan is a forty-year old doctor who has relocated his family from Madrid to the village of Cádiz on Spain's Atlantic coast. In addition to caring for he and Dami's mentally handicapped younger brother Alfonso (Andres Gertrudix), Juan also acts as guardian to his young niece Tamara. When a relationship begins to develop between Juan and his Andalusian maid Maribel (Cuca Escribano), Juan's troubled past soon begins to work its way to the surface of things despite his best efforts to keep it under lock and key. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- José Luis García Pérez, Cuca Escribano, (more)
Benito Zambrano's musical drama Habana Blues tells the story of two Cuban musicians who make a career breakthrough in the States. But soon their label asks them to compromise their musical integrity in order to hit the big time. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alberto Yoel Garcia Osorio
Director Emilio Maille's relentlessly brutal action thriller Rosario Tijeras unfurls in Medellin, Colombia, circa 1989 - a point when that metropolis stood as one of the most relentlessly dangerous, crime-ridden cities on Earth, plagued by the widespread phenomenon of urban drug lords hiring teenage footmen known as sicarios to act as hit men. Flora Martinez essays the title role - a troubled woman with a history of intense, ugly sexual abuse at the hands of male oppressors (both during childhood and after) , who works through her demons by packing firearms and enlisting as a sicario. The position enables her to turn her guns on the world that abused her, and cut a bloody, brutal swath of revenge through Medellin; she gains almost legendary status as a seductive vamp who lures men into a submissive, vulnerable position by kissing them and undertaking her hit during the kiss. The titular name (her nom de guerre) translates into English as 'Bloody Scissors,' and refers to her particularly ugly and nauseating method of elimination for one particular victim. Screenwriter Marcelo Figueras adapted the novel by Jorge Franco Ramos; Unax Ugalde, Manolo Cardona and Rodrigo Oviedo co-star. Rosario Tijeras reportedly became the second highest-grossing film in Colombian history after it premiered in 2005. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Flora Martinez, Unax Ugalde, (more)
Juan Carlos Cremata's comic look at how the Cuban government affects its citizens, Nada + (Nothing More), is a film about a female postal worker. Thais Valdes plays the woman who dreams of living with her mother and father in Miami while dealing with her horrible boss (Daisy Granados). She livens up her existence by romantically responding to the correspondence she is supposed to deliver. Nothing More was screened during the Director's Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Thais Valdes, Nacho Lugo, (more)
- 2000
A group of men with little left to lose turn to a football pool in a bid to turn their lives around in this drama from Spain. Angel (Jorge Bosch) is a genial loser who, like many of his friends, has fallen on hard times. Angel's pals Paco (Santiago Roamos) and Andres (Manuel Alexandre) barely support themselves by selling snacks outside football stadiums, and Paco will soon have to support a new addition to the family, as his teenage daughter is pregnant. Things are even worse for Juan (Juan Jesus Valverde); out of work and drinking heavily, Juan has learned that his wife Esther (Lola Duenas) has become a prostitute in order to support the family. One of the few bright spots in Angel's life is his uncanny knack for picking the winners at the weekly football matches, though he never bets money on the outcome of the games. Angel is convinced that actually placing a wager would jinx him and he'd be certain to lose, but his friends are convinced otherwise, and Paco hatches a scheme to raise $2,000 to put Angel's talent for prognostication to work. Terca Vida was the first feature film in 15 years from director Fernando Huertas, who made his debut in 1985 with El Elegido. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Santiago Ramos, Manuel Alexandre, (more)
Tony (Laia Marull) is a young crook preparing for a bank robbery with her boyfriend Juanjo (Jesus Olmedo) and their low-life partners Maxi (Miguel Hermoso Arnao) and Moco (Roberto Cairo). Right before they commit the crime, Juanjo informs Tony that his prostitute sister wants him to take her young daughter Laura (Beatriz Coronel) to visit the girl's father, a flamenco singer in the Spanish southern coastal town of Tarifa. Juanjo persuades the initially reluctant Tony that Laura will provide the couple with a perfect cover after they relieve their partners of the robbery's earnings. Unfortunately, though the robbery comes off without a hitch, the duplicitous Juanjo absconds with the cash, making Tony and Laura fugitives both from the law and from the psychotically angry Maxi and Moco. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Laia Marull, Juan Diego, (more)
Mateo Gil, screenwriter of the acclaimed Spanish work Open Your Eyes (1997) directs this flashy, bizarre psychological thriller set during the stunning spectacle of Seville's Holy Week. Fledging novelist Simon (Eduardo Noriega) makes a living by writing crossword puzzles for the local newspaper and lives with spoiled rich kid weirdo Sapo (Jordi Molla). One day, Simon gets an ominous phone call informing him that if he does not include the word "adversary" in his next crossword there will be hell to pay. Meanwhile, a local leading figure is mysteriously killed when poison gas is released from a Virgin Mary statue. From there, the film spirals into a dazzling parade of nightmarish images such as a naked priest cozying up to another Virgin Mary and a legion of hooded penitents shooting toy guns at trapped and frightened Simon. Noted Spanish filmmaker Alejandro Amenabar provides the music. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eduardo Noriega, Jordi Mollà, (more)
Maria (Ana Fernandez), whose parents live in the country, cannot stand her father's authoritarian ways and moves to the city. She finds a job as a cleaner and tries to survive in a wretched apartment in the shabby part of a big city. She is pregnant, and the fact that her boyfriend has abandoned her does not help matters. When her father goes to the hospital for an operation, her mother comes to stay with her. Her neighbor, an old recluse whose only friend is his dog, begins to come out of his shell and these three lost souls try to give each other (and especially Maria) the strength to start over. A sensitive portrait of urban isolation and loneliness, Solas received the Panorama People's Choice Award at the 49th International Berlin Film Festival, 1999. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ana Fernandez, Maria Galiana, (more)
- 1998
Argentine director Alejando Agresti directed this surreal, allegorical Argentine-French-Dutch- Spanish comedy-drama. Winner of the "Golden Shell Grand Prize" at the 1998 San Sebastian Film Festival, the absurdist tale is set during the '70s. Young Buenos Aires cabdriver Soledad (Vera Fogwill), tired of fending off molesting passengers and dealing with her exploitative boss, keeps driving her cab straight out of the city and into the mountains, arriving at a remote and dusty Patagonian village, Rio Pico. The town's only contact with the outside world is a cinema which shows film reels out of sequence or upside-down -- as referenced in the title's reversal of Gone With the Wind. This has impacted on local inhabitants, causing them to speak in non sequiturs. Soledad checks into an inn run by Doña Maria (Angela Molina), and when locals find out she was a journalism student, they ask her to host their newsreels about life in Rio Pico. Her new job as news anchor leads to a romance with film critic Pedro (Fabian Vena). Doña Marie finds love blossoming when faded French film star Edgar Wexley (Jean Rochefort) arrives in town as a result of massive amounts of fan mail. Village scientist Antonio (Ulises Dumont) makes regular jaunts to Buenos Aires with his discoveries (such as the theory of relativity), only to be told these were previously discovered in earlier decades. Change comes to Rio Pico when electricity and television arrive, and the town's magical, idiosyncratic appeal begins to fade. Also shown at the 1998 Chicago Film Festival. Spanish and French dialogue. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Vera Fogwill, Ángela Molina, (more)
- 1997
This French-Spanish drama depicts a flat marriage that picks up a few new wrinkles. Nicole (Miou-Miou) and Jean-Marie Kunstler (Charles Berling) have run their small-town dry-cleaning shop for 15 years. When they visit a local night club, they see the brother-sister act of Loic (Stanislas Merhar) and Marilyn (Mathilde Seigner), who perform under the name Queens of the Night, and the four soon become friends. Later, the Kuntslers visit Basel, Switzerland, where the siblings are appearing. They learn the team is splitting up and invite the bisexual Loic to help at their shop. He accepts, and his presence alters their outlook on life. Shown at the 1997 Venice and Toronto film festivals. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Miou-Miou, Charles Berling, (more)
