Ruben Moreno Movies

Georgina Garcia Riedel's comedy How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer stars Lucy Gallardo, Elizabeth Peña, and America Ferrara as three generations in a family. Teenager Blanca (Ferrara) detests the boys in her small town and takes on a boyfriend from another town in the hopes that he might be different. Her mother, Rosa (Peña), is so sexually frustrated that she begins to put the moves on her best friend's husband, a man who has had an ongoing problem with sexual fidelity. Rosa's mother, Dona (Gallardo), embarrasses her daughter by refusing to settle down into a quiet elderly life. The 80-year-old takes driving lessons from a local gardener, although their relationship turns out to be far more. This film was screened in competition at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

When the Brazilian rainforest home of young Princess Nisa (Laura Herring) is threatened by greedy American businesses, she travels to Los Angeles with Joa the shaman (Sid Haig). There Joa is thrown in jail, and Nisa must find a way to stop the rainforest destruction herself. When a young man who loves to dance crosses her path, and together they enter a televised lambada contest, Nisa might have found the answer to her prayers. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide

This ghostly made-for-television romance tells the story of a struggling widower who finds that life becomes easier once his beloved comes back from the grave to assist him. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This delightfully bad made-for-TV movie throws together an assortment of television stalwarts and movie has-beens for what is essentially a horror version of The Love Boat. The plot involves a vacation cruise in the Gulf of Mexico, during which some of the passengers find an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus in an underwater cavern. Instead of "wasting time" explaining what Egyptian ruins are doing so far from Northern Africa, the writers decide to make things easy by making the coffin's occupant none other than the Devil himself. This stirs things up a bit for the hapless vacationers -- particularly for the fire-and-brimstone preacher (John Forsythe) who happens to be aboard. Cheap, campy, and topped off with a ridiculous ending, the film, at least, is not as boring as most TV movies of the sort. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

The scene is Canada in the 1940s. Fledgling reporter Harry Barnes (Stuart Gillard) finds his dreams of journalistic fame dampened by the disillusioned older journalists surrounding him. Harry never does get that "big scoop," but he does excel in the romance department. After a brief assignation with the publisher's wife (Patricia Gage) he thrills coworker Julia Martin (Tiiu Leek) by becoming a firebrand leader of the newspaper union movement (never mind that he's drunk at the time). Why Rock the Boat? is a 1974 release of the National Film Board of Canada. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

While Stone (Karl Malden) is on disability leave, Keller (Michael Douglas) is partnered with Inspector Jim Martin (played by future Starsky and Hutch costar David Soul), a man notorious for his short temper and strongarm tactics. Conducting a manhunt in the Barrio, Keller is taken aback by the intensity of Martin's conviction that the Latino murder suspect they are searching for is guilty beyond all doubt--and all redemption. Though sidelined by injury, Stone does some investigating on his own to determine the source of Martin's personal demons. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Television newsman Harry Walsh (Leslie Nielsen) holds fast to the maxim "seeing is believing" in this political/medical thriller, with science-fiction overtones. Harry saw a well-known U.S. Senator (Bradford Dillman) have a car accident, and took video coverage on the scene. When he arrives at the hospital to follow up on the story, he is told that no such person is, or ever was there. Since the senator is a presidential hopeful, this is a very important story, and Harry keeps at it. His TV station, which ran a report on the accident, retracts the story with an apology when the senator's office calls with the story that the senator is on a fishing trip. Harry doesn't believe it. In a parallel story, the senator wakes up in a hospital with all sorts of transplanted organs, etc., when he should simply be dead. He discovers that his survival is part of a worldwide medical blackmail scheme involving world political leaders. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In the second episode of a three part story, the family is still in Spain, where Bill (Brian Keith) has fallen for attractive senorita Ana (Anna Navarro) and Cissy (Kathy Garver) has been swept off her feet by a lad named Ricardo (John Aladdin). Meanwhile, Mr. French (Sebastian Cabot) conducts a frantic search for Buffy (Annisa Jones) and Jody (Johnnie Whitaker), who have somehow gotten on the wrong bus during a sightseeing tour. After an encounter with a nun and some Spanish schoolchildren, and a spooky experience in an empty church, the worn-out twins seek refuge in an old barn, hoping against hope that somewhere, somehow, they'll come across someone who speaks English! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Having struck pay dirt with his 1958 western Rio Bravo, Howard Hawks more or less remade the picture twice in the 1960s. The first of these rehashes was El Dorado, with Rio Bravo star John Wayne back for more. Wayne plays a gunfighter who rides into El Dorado to link up with his old pal, sheriff Robert Mitchum ("It's the big one with the big two!" declared the film's advertisements). Wayne has turned down a job with evil land baron Ed Asner, who'd hoped to drive a family off the land that he needed for its water. That family, headed by R.G. Armstrong, is convinced that Wayne is working with Asner; when Armstrong's son Johnny Crawford dies, Wayne is held responsible, earning him a bullet in the spine from Crawford's sister Michele Carey. A year passes: Wayne returns to El Dorado, in the company of his new saddle pal James Caan. They find that Asner is still up to his old tricks, and that Mitchum has descended into alcoholism. Several plot twists and power shifts ensue, leading to the slam-bang climax, with the partially paralyzed Wayne, the newly crippled Mitchum (on crutches), and the concussion-suffering Caan battling together to stave off Asner's minions. The final long-shot, of Wayne and Mitchum limping off together arm-in-arm, is one of the most enduring images in the entire Hawks canon. If they loved it twice they'll love it thrice: in 1969, John Wayne and Howard Hawks teamed up for a third Rio Bravo derivation, Rio Lobo--which, like the first two films, was scripted by Leigh Brackett. Incidentally, that's famed artist Olaf Weighorst (whose paintings appear in the title sequence) in a cameo as the gunsmith. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Lana Turner takes the lead in the seventh film version of Alexandre Bisson's glossy soap opera. Holly Parker (Turner) is married to respected diplomat Clay Anderson (John Forsythe), but his busy schedule prevents them from seeing each other very often. Distracted and lonely, Holly allows her head to be turned by carefree playboy Phil Benton (Ricardo Montalban), who dies in a freak accident during an assignation. In a panic, Holly contacts her mother-in-law, Estelle Anderson (Constance Bennett) and asks what she should do. Estelle, a joyless woman who has never cared for her daughter-in-law, tells Holly that unless she wants to destroy her husband's life and career, she should flee the country and never return. Tearfully, Holly follows Estelle's advice, leaving behind her young son. Many years later, Holly has fallen on hard times; addicted to drugs, she scrapes out a meager living as a prostitute in a cheap hotel in Mexico. Devious criminal Dan Sullivan (Burgess Meredith) tries to involve Holly in a blackmail scheme; at the last minute, she finds out that Clay is the target, and she kills Sullivan. She cannot afford to hire a lawyer to defend her, so she is assigned a dedicated young public defender, whom she soon recognizes as her son, Clay Anderson, Jr. (Keir Dullea). Not wanting Clay, Jr. to know her true identity, Holly is tried as "Madame X," but she has trouble keeping her composure given the trial and her mixed joy and shame at seeing her son. Madame X was Constance Bennett's first film in 12 years and the last she would ever make; she died of a cerebral hemorrhage shortly after completing her work on the picture, nine months before it was released. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide