Hugo Carvana Movies

This crazy Brazilian sex comedy follows the revealing travails of Professor Silvio Proenca, a noted Brazilian folklorist from Rio who through a series of mishaps finds himself the most notorious and hunted man in his country. His odyssey begins when the middle-aged academic's beautiful wife Marina refuses to accompany him to Sao Paulo to promote his latest book. At the airport, Proenca hears the irresistible sounds of folk music drifting down a corridor. He investigates and finds a group of old friends, including the sexy Marialva. Rainstorms cancel the flight and the friends go out for a few drinks and then more drinks at her house. Eventually, the revellers depart, leaving only Marialva and the professor who by then is totally potted. He is a man of habits, and the next morning he absently arises and goes into the apartment building hallway to get freshly delivered bread only to hear the door shut and lock behind him. Poor Proenca finds himself stranded with nothing on but a horrified look. When the neighbors see him, they chase him into the street where he is seen and hailed a pervert. Soon Proenca must not only flee from passersby, but also a SWAT team, police dogs, the press and Marialva, the only one interested in saving him. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Every country no doubt has its golden youths who die before they have had a chance to come to full flower and who leave a romantic legend behind them. In the U.S., one of these was James Dean. In Brazil, the fans of the actress Leila Diniz were similarly bereft when she died in the late 1960s. This biographical drama, directed and written by one of her close friends, and produced by a relative, tells the story of a very modern woman who broke new social ground in the conservative society of Brazil. Many of the people involved with the unconventional actress in real life play themselves in this film. The mood of the times are evoked: it was an era when a repressive military dictatorship governed the country, but the ideas and styles of beat poetry and aspirations for social change were fermenting among the young. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Filled with rock music from beginning to end, this teen-oriented drama tells the story of Bete Balanco's (Débora Bloch) rise to musical stardom from modest beginnings. Bete gets away from under the thumb of her parents and goes to Rio with her photographer-boyfriend to start her climb from nobody to somebody -- all with the support of her best friend Paulinho, her roommate in Rio. Her success story is told through many performances, video clips (as on MTV), and well-constructed characters who talk and act believably for their time and place. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

An exposé of the Brazilian blood-bank business, this hard-hitting documentary takes a rare look at the social strata that supplies most of the blood to the industry and details what happens from there. As director Sergio Rezende emphasizes through interviews, most of the donors are from the poorest classes who need the small amount of money they get for their blood in order to cover the basic cost of living. In other instances, the donors are drug addicts or alcoholics looking for a way to buy their next fix. In either case, the health of the donor is not called into question and as a result, hepatitis and other diseases have been passed on through transfusions. Making matters all the worse, 75 percent of blood donations go to multinational corporations who make gammaglobulin and albumine, all unaffordable to the lowest economic denominator in Brazil. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This Brazilian satire is by one of the founders of the Cinema Novo filmmaking movement, Nelson Pereira dos Santos. The film chronicles the chaos that results when a prominent American Nobel Prize winner arrives in Bahía, with nothing but praise on his lips for a long-forgotten local writer-scientist named Pedro Archanjo. When the media finally discover who Archanjo was and what he espoused, they are completely horrified to discover that he was a man who believed that the way to improve the lot of humanity was for people of various races to marry and have children by one another in mixed-race marriages. Further, Archanjo clearly acted on his beliefs. The rampant racism of Brazilians, which is almost never discussed, is completely exposed. Flashbacks show Brazilians listening with approving interest to talks by Nazi race-theoreticians in the 1930s. In the present, the American is seen to be applying Archanjo's theories, by having an affair with a local mestizo woman. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This film is by one of the founders of Brazilian "Cinema Novo," a style of filmmaking emphasizing native Brazilian themes and highly charged and stylized religious imagery. In Rio just before Carnaval (the local version of the raucous Mardi-Gras celebration) a girl deliberately smashes a small statue of the Virgin Mary. She receives an answer to her strange prayers in the form of a handsome musician. Their relationship, with its ins and outs, is taken up as a theme by the Samba Schools, and is told, to a samba beat, in the form of the story of Tristan and Isolde. By the end of the film, they have become the voodoo gods Oxossi and Iansan. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This Brazilian film is set during the period of its initial colonial discovery and settlement. The title refers to a word the native peoples used for the coastal lands: "pindorama," or "place of the small trees." A ponderous and grandiose film, it was roundly booed when it was aired at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Estevao (Paulo Jose) is the newspaper reporter sent to the capitol to cover the appointment of a government minister. Carrying some important papers for another government official, he is shadowed by two mysterious strangers. The men grab the reporter and beat him until he feels he will die. His life flashes before his eyes with special emphasis on his amorous affairs with women in this symbolic political film. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

The Brazilian Antonio Das Mortes casts Mauricio De Valle as a mercenary peacekeeper. Agreeing to hunt down and kill rebel soldiers, the mercenary becomes increasingly drawn to the rebel's cause. His 11th-hour turnaround does not prevent the film from ending in a bloodbath. Antonio das Mortes unabashedly casts its lot with such insurgents as Che Guevara. As such, this 1968 film had difficulty finding an American distributor until two years later. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The wife of a wealthy captain of industry carries on an affair with a younger man who works for a magazine in this combination romantic and political drama. A trip to her husband's factory opens her eyes to the fact that he provides for many people. She soon realizes that the young writer is taking the easy way out by always talking but never acting on his perpetual state of discontent about society. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide