Alfredo Matas Movies

This is an off-beat, fast-paced, and well-wrought love story involving two very different people: Lucia (Assumpta Serna) is a computer operator whose sexual inclinations are alternately normal and kinky, and Arturo (Xabier Elorriaga) is a company representative from another town, with a wife and young child. After Lucia and Arturo meet, they start an affair that eventually takes on enough meaning for Arturo to split from his wife. In the meantime, Lucia is indulging her sado-masochistic tendencies on the side with at least one other partner -- knowing that if Arturo finds out, their relationship may be over. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

In his second successful starring role in 1983, Agustín Gonzalez is a father who runs a wine shop in Madrid, a city under a three-year siege (1936-1939) because the Nationalists forces of Francisco Franco need to take Madrid before the fascist dictator can be installed in power. The siege has left the Madrileños with very little food, living under the threat of bombs, and worrying about the prospects of defeat. It is the sense of impending disaster, of hunger and deprivation that is oddly missing from this cinematic interpretation of the play by Fernando Fernán Gómez. The daughter in the family (Victoria Abril) enters into a love affair with a soldier and ends up having a baby, the son (Gabino Diego) is coming of age with the maid - and life seems to go on with all its proverbial ups and downs. But without the sharp dialogue of the play itself, this film is not as tautly strung, or as convincingly real as the stage production. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

A Marquis (Luis Escobar) suddenly becomes inspired to reclaim his palace, now gone to seed, right in the heart of Madrid. He and his son head for the city, without taking into account that his wife, the aged Marquesa is thoroughly ensconsed in the palace, has been for more than 40 years, and has no intention of leaving. In order to settle the issue, the Marquis decides to get his wife committed - not an unreasonable proposition given the fact that she has preferred to stay in bed all these years. Variously eccentric characters pop in and out of the palace as the Marquis tries to implement his plan, without much success. The Marquesa, in turn, manages to force him and her former lover into a duel in the garden and pulls out a shotgun to put them out of their misery and her life. Things backfire, so to speak, and the Spanish State comes into the picture, perhaps it will have more success where its old - very old - aristocracy has failed to measure up. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Few sacred cows go un-gored in this satirical Spanish movie. In Spain, as in England, instead of getting together over a round of golf, it is customary for the power elite to gather at a country estate for a long weekend of "hunting," which basically consists of standing in one spot shooting at game which is being driven toward the hunters. Between shots, the elite converse. In the story, a Catalan businessman pays an impoverished nobleman for the use of his country estate and its game. He is hosting this party to win the goodwill of a group of investors whom he hopes will back one of his schemes. Sprinkled among the businessmen are some more twisted types, every one of them a genuine aristocrat or the member of some government or other -- even a dictator in exile from his Latin American country. A powerful but disapproving priest surveys the scene with outspoken scorn. When the businessman learns that he has backed the wrong horse, and that a new government is being formed, he scrambles to curry favor with those few of his guests who are part of the next group to come to power. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

This action adventure is based on Jules Verne's The Light at the Edge of the World. It takes place in 1865 on the chilly tip of Argentina in a lighthouse set up to guide ships around the extremely dangerous and turbulent waters of Cape Horn. The lighthouse keeper (Fernando Rey) and his assistant go out to investigate when a strange sailing ship comes too near to the island the lighthouse is on. Denton (Kirk Douglas), the lighthouse keeper's North American apprentice, is left behind. For their pains, the lighthouse keeper and his assistant are killed, and Kongre (Yul Brynner), the ship's pirate captain, goes to the lighthouse and captures Denton. Kongre shuts down the real lighthouse and sets up a false one so that his pirates can prey on the busy ships that must pass nearby. Denton, set loose by his captors on a nearby island, eventually begins to fight back. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi