Salvador Sanchez Movies

This historical drama depicts the waning days of the life of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the 19th century president of Mexico who, in 1847, waged a war against the United States that ultimately cost his nation half of its territory. Su Alteza Serenísima finds Santa Anna (Alejandro Parodi) in poor health in 1876, wracked with pain after losing a leg but holding on to his hopes of regaining his political power and winning back Texas from the United States. As Santa Anna discusses both his past and his ambitions for the future with his colleagues, his wife Dolores (Ana Bertha Espin) introduces visitors who declare their enthusiastic support for Santa Anna's schemes, not knowing that his wife has paid paupers to speak to her husband posing as his allies. Su Alteza Serenísima was the first feature in nine years from veteran Mexican filmmaker Felipe Cazals. The film garnered 11 Mexican Academy Awards, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Actress.
~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Poverty-stricken women struggle with hardships at the lowest levels of Mexican society in this low-budget drama. Middle-aged Esperanza (Adriana Roel) has a mute son, two daughters, and an abusive husband. Esperanza and her friend Nicolasa (Angelica Aragon) recall past dreams and desires, before they were confronted by economic realities. Begun in 1987, this film was halted by a different incoming administration at IMCINE (Mexican Institute of Cinematography) but eventually completed in 1994. Shown at the 1998 Guadalajara Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

Those who enjoy religious allegories like Pilgrim's Progress will have an easier time with this carefully constructed drama than those looking simply for a straightforward story. In the movie, circus-born Alma is a performer at the Fantasia Circus. Her mother has left her, and she is having an affair with her father, who is ill. When he dies, she is pregnant by him, which everyone in the troupe can easily figure out. Shunned by her peers, she takes to the streets as a fire-eater and then joins up with a wandering marionette troupe, led by Refugio, a very strict woman who learns of Alma's situation and requires that she follow very careful guidelines in order to have any standing in her eyes. She works with the leader's puppeteer son Sacramento to put on complex performances of Old Testament stories. As in similar allegories, characters in the movie embody the essence of their names; Alma = soul, Refugio = refuge, Sacramento = sacrament. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

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, Rovi

The Mexican "Desarrollo de Investigacion para la Planeacion Familiar" or Diplaf, a state-funded family-planning agency, funded this cautionary drama, filmed in a somewhat avant-garde and experimental manner. In the story, a childless couple suffer endlessly, and their relationship deteriorates as they watch their friends and neighbors breeding prolifically. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

While Salvador wasn't Oliver Stone's first film (a pair of offbeat horror stories preceded it), it defined his style of fiercely dramatic, politically oriented filmmaking, staked out his territory as one of the major directors of the 1980s and 1990s, and remains one of his strongest works to date. Veteran photojournalist Richard Boyle (James Woods) has been taking his camera to the world's trouble spots for over 20 years; while he does good work, Boyle's fondness for booze and drugs, and his colossal arrogance, have given him a reputation that's left him practically unemployable. Broke and with no immediate prospects, Boyle and his buddy Doctor Rock (Jim Belushi), an out-of-work disc jockey, head to El Salvador, where Boyle is convinced that he can scare up some lucrative freelance work amidst the nation's political turmoil. However, when Boyle and Rock witness the execution of a student by government troops just as they enter the country, it becomes clear that this war is more serious than they were expecting. Increasingly convinced that El Salvador is a disaster starting to happen, Boyle eventually decides that it's time to get out; but he has fallen in love with a woman named Maria (Elpidia Carrillo), and he doesn't want to leave her behind. James Woods gives one of his best performances as Boyle; and the passion of Stone's message, aided by the power of its truth (the film is based on actual events), propels the film forward. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A strange, hallucinatory adaptation of the Malcolm Lowry novel of the same name, John Huston's bleak drama is set during the Mexican "Day of the Dead" ceremony in 1939. Albert Finney stars as Geoffrey Firmin, the booze-besotted former British consul to Cuernevarca, who has cut himself off from his loved ones, the better to drink himself to death while surrounded by all manner of skull-and-skeleton decorations. At the urging of his wife Yvonne (Jacqueline Bisset), his half-brother Hugh (Anthony Andrews) goes on a "heart of darkness" search for his missing sibling. Novelist Lowry was himself a suicidal alcoholic, who poured every drop of his embittered philosophy into the Firmin character. If any director could bring Lowry's difficult novel to life, it was Huston, whose own record for drunken self-destruction is the source of legend. (Huston was actually the seventh director to tackle the novel, which had originally been optioned in 1957 by actor Zachary Scott.) Artists contributing to the fascinating Under the Volcano include the brilliant Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, screenwriter Guy Gallo, composer Alex North, and director Emilio Fernandez, cast in a significant cameo as a bartender. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this detective venture, a gumshoe looks into the killing of a wealthy socialite. It is difficult as the killer was careful to leave few clues. The investigation leads the detective to a lonely motel run by an eccentric young couple. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Set in the early 1900s, this film charts the rule of a Latin American dictator as he moves from being a charming despot to a tyrannical ruler before he is finally ousted, only to die in obscurity in Paris. Early in his regime, the resources and agricultural products his country sells command high prices, and he is a reasonably confident, even gentle, ruler who likes to take long vacations with his daughter in Paris. After World War I, with falling prices and a number of coup attempts behind him, his rule becomes quite cruel. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

In this anti-religious Mexican movie, based on a play by Carlos Solorzano, the actors who, every year, re-enact the Passion Play during Holy Week in Ixtapapalapa are shown to be deformed and stupid. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

A prison drama full of juvenile-delinquent blood and violence. Spanish. ~ Rovi

Originally Actas De Marusia, this Mexican film re-creates a dark chapter in the history of Chile. The scene is a small Chilean mining town in 1907. Suffering under the despotic rule of the British mine owners, the workers stage a revolt. The government's solution is to utterly destroy the town rather than allow the rebellion to spread. Letters from Marusia was adapted from a novel by Patricio Manns, which in turn was based on eyewitness accounts of the 1907 massacre. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi