Manuel de Blas Movies

French writer/director Bernard Rapp (Une Affaire de Goût) creates a neo-fable, of sorts, with his 2003 film, Pas Si Grave (No Big Deal). About a quarter of a century ago, Spanish artist Pablo (director Alejandro Jodorowsky) and his musician wife, Pilar (Pascale Roberts), escaped their native country and its civil war for sanctuary in Belgium. Shortly after arriving in their new home, the couple adopted three five-year-old boys from different ethnic backgrounds and raised them to become artists in their own right. Now grown, Charlie (Sami Bouajila), Max (Jean-Michel Portal), and Leo (Romain Duris) are brought together by their father, who has begun to feel his age and now spends a fair amount of time pondering how much longer he has to live. In an attempt to bring his sons closer together, Pablo gives them a mission: travel to Spain and steal a famous and well-guarded bust of the Virgin Mary and return it to Belgium. Immediately complying, the men set about to accomplish their assignment, while managing to truly get to know each other in the process. No Big Deal was a participating film at the 2003 New York Film Festival. ~ Ryan Shriver, All Movie Guide

A mournful look at the last days of opera diva Maria Callas, director Franco Zeffirelli's biographical drama attempts to explore the irresistible allure of a comeback for a fallen star who hungers for the success of her past. Weathered from the excess of the previous decade and with her best performances long behind her, Callas (Fanny Ardant) withdraws to her Paris apartment to live her final days in seclusion. Despite being ravaged by a throat disease and being stuck in an extended period of mourning following the death of her true love, Callas' manager Larry Kelly (Jeremy Irons) nevertheless suggests that the former reigning queen of opera attempt a spectacular comeback. Though she is physically unable to perform the pieces the way that she once did, the suggestion to lip-sync to recordings of her previous performances offers a tentative chance for latter day fame. Despite her belief that lip-syncing her performance would be dishonest to her fans, the prospect of performing Carmen, an opera that she once recorded but never performed on stage, offers Callas one last shot at reliving her former glory. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Spanish dancing sensation Joaquin Cortes plays his first major dramatic role in this story about a musician who is struggling to put personal misfortune behind him. Andres (Cortes) is a flamenco singer who has just gotten out of prison after being falsely convicted of the murder of Romero (Antonio Carmona), a member of his band. As Andres tries to reacclimate himself to freedom, he discovers things have not been going his way while he was up the river; his wife Lucia (Laetitia Casta) is having an affair with another man, while his bullying father Isidoro (Manuel de Blas) is obsessed with getting revenge against Don Manuel, who rules a local crime syndicate known as the Junco Family. Word on the street has it that members of the Junco Family killed Romero while he was defending Andres in a fight; Don Manuel is also the father of Lucia, as well as Lola (Marta Belaustegui), the wife of another of Andres' bandmates, El Peque (Gines Garcia Millan), who wants Andres to put his problems behind him and get back on the road. Andres is eager to get his career going again, but he discovers Chino (Jose Manuel Lorenzo), a cop on the take, has been following him, with record company bigwig Manfredi (Juan Fernandez) paying him to dig up dirt on the flamenco. As well as introducing Joaquin Cortes, Gitano features French supermodel Laetitia Casta in her second acting role; her voice was dubbed into Spanish by actress Ana Fernandez. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

John Glen directed this throwback to the costume dramas of the 1930s and 1940s, but without a smidgen of their energy and verve. George Corraface plays Christopher Columbus as a dynamic and muscular comic-book hero. He has a dream to set sail to find a new passageway to India, but he needs the backing of the Spanish government to do it. First, he must undergo a grilling by Tomas de Torquemada (Marlon Brando in, hands down, his worst performance). After passing muster with Torquemada, he gets the blessing of Queen Isabella (Rachel Ward) and King Ferdinand (Tom Selleck). Columbus then sets sail in a series of picture-postcard travelogue shots as he sails the ocean blue and discovers a new world of wonders -- particularly the Indian chief's well-endowed daughter. As a sop to revisionists, a rat is seen scampering down the plank as Columbus' vessel lands on "undiscovered" turf. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Pantheon filmmaker Carlos Saura bounced back from a handful of failures with 1989's La Noche Oscura (The Dark Night). Juan Diego stars as San Juan de la Cruz (St. John of the Cross), the legendary 16th-century poet-prophet. Galvanized into action by the spirit of Santa Teresa de Jesus, San Juan fought to install reforms in the Carmelite Order. Like many another visionary, he was regarded as a heretic, and promptly subjected to the most appalling of tortures. Writer-director Saura manages to draw several parallels between the religious persecution of the 1700s and the political despotism of Fascist Spain. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Manuel (Miguel Molina) is a young man who feels depressed for unspecified reasons while having his dinner one night. While sitting in the dentist's chair, he witnesses the murder of a young woman thrown off the top of a building. Manuel is silent about the incident but later encounters the estranged husband and killer of the victim, and the murderer slashes Manuel's face with a knife and is arrested. The uneven story is told in flashbacks. The feature was greeted with a cacophony of boos from disgruntled viewers at the 1988 San Sebastian Film Festival. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

An absolutely grotesque horror film based on the book by Shaun Hutson, this bloody shocker from Juan Piquer Simon (Pieces) is set in a small town in upstate New York but has a mostly European cast. Hordes of mutant flesh-eating slugs are having the citizenry for lunch until a trio of public officials takes action, as is standard procedure in the post-Jaws ecokill film. The gore is excessive and quite well-handled, particularly a scene in which two nude lovers are literally ripped to bloody bits in a bedroom full of slimy horrors, but otherwise the film is surprisingly uninvolving. Fans of gross-out cinema will still want to catch it for a scene in which a restaurant patron's eye blows out, revealing swarming baby slugs. Needless to say, such doings will not appeal to everyone. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

This is a comprehensive docudrama (focusing more on truth than fiction) on the two weeks in 1936 that preceded Francisco Franco's war for control of Spain. The "Dragon Rapide" was the name of the plane that carried the fascist Generalissimo to Morocco and the beginning of the end of the Republican government in Spain. Plots and counterplots by a seemingly infinite array of militarists plague Spanish politics as Franco gathers his forces together and makes his plans. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

José Maria Gil Ramos (Patrick Newell) is a noted attorney who agrees to defend a minor government official accused of stealing 4,000 tons of oil. As Ramos investigates, the trail leads to possible wrongdoing orchestrated by the brother of military dictator Franco. High government officials try to impede the investigation and derail the defense of Ramos' client. This intricate investigative drama is based on a 1972 incident which was investigated by the famous Spanish liberal Gil Robles. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

The title of this comedy refers to a section of Madrid known for its posh restaurants. When a German chef chops off his wife's head with a meat cleaver on the last night before the business closes for the season, the owner takes pity on the chef's only child and hides the high-school student in his home. The boy leaves with his pretty math tutor after impregnating his own godmother. The owner throws a lavish dance to end the season, as the chef appears throughout the film seemingly unmolested by the justice system. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

The Emperor of Japan has sent the U.S. President a very special Asian horse. Three incredible rogues hear of this horse and decide to kidnap it for a $500,000 ransom. One of them, the "white" is Giuliano Gemma, a grandiose kleptomaniac. Tomás Milian is the "yellow," a Japanese samurai, and the last ("black") is Eli Wallach, a goofy and gullible sheriff who has been victimized by "white" before, and will be again. The alliance between the three is a shaky thing, but "black" will have stumbled into clover. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This is the third installment in Amando de Ossorio's "Blind Dead" series featuring the legions of the undead Knights Templar -- a sect of medieval monks who were executed in the 15th century for their occult practices and who periodically rise from their tombs to torment the living. This chapter puts the Templars on a ghostly Spanish galleon (which looks like it was built from a ship-in-a-bottle kit), cloaked in perpetual fog and roaming the seas in search of victims. When two bikini models are set adrift as part of a sporting-good chain's publicity stunt, they are seized by the flesh-eating ghouls. The company's frantic CEO sets out in his yacht to find them, accompanied by the head of the modeling agency, one of the models' friends, and an expert on Templar lore. They eventually collide with the galleon, whereupon the meandering plot finally gets down to business. The blind, slow-moving zombies shamble up from below decks and wait patiently, as always, for their shrieking, flailing victims to stumble into their clutches. This is one of the creepier entries in the series, making good use of the confined, fog-shrouded sets (presaging very similar scenes in John Carpenter's The Fog), and only wavers during long shots of the cheesy-looking model ship. The shock ending is also remarkably effective. Followed by the final chapter, Night of the Seagulls. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide