Todas las mujeres (2013)
Director: Mariano Barroso
Written by: Alejandro Hernández and Mariano Barroso
Starring: Eduard Fernández, Michelle Jenner, Lucía Quintana, María Morales, Petra Martínez, Marta Larralde, Nathalie Poza.
BY REBECCA NAUGHTEN
Adapted from the TV series of the same name in which veterinarian Nacho (Eduard Fernández) interacted with a different woman in each episode, Mariano Barroso’s film compresses the story down into not much more than a 24 hour period wherein Nacho’s life implodes. I’m not going to say what the exact turn of events are, because it’s something that is revealed gradually, but ‘plot’ is also somewhat superfluous to the real point of the film: a study in character. Read More…
Sigo Siendo – Kachkaniraqmi (I am still here, 2012)
Directed by Javier Corcuera
Written by Javier Corcuera and Ana de la Prada
Starring: Máximo Damián, Félix Quispe “Duco”, “Palomita”
BY ÚRSULA COX
In Quechua Chanka (from the Ayacucho province in the Peruvian Andes) when two dear old friends meet after a long time the chosen greeting is “¡Kachkaniraqmi!” to express that, despite everything, one still is, still exists, is still here or, in its plural version (Quechua in all its forms doesn’t differentiate between plural and singular), we are still here, we are still, despite the odds. Read More…
Los amantes pasajeros (I’m So Excited, 2013)
Written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar
Starring: Javier Cámara, Cecilia Roth, Carlos Areces, Antonio de la Torre
BY FIONA NOBLE
Pedro Almodóvar’s Los amantes pasajeros/I’m So Excited is, on the surface, a comedic, drug-fuelled romp of a film, that for Paul Julian Smith ‘marks a much heralded return to the transgressive and corrosive comedies of Almodóvar’s early period’. Like the director’s early films, produced in the aftermath of the Movida madrileña, Read More…
El Bola (Pellet, 2000)
Directed by Achero Mañas
Written by Verónica Fernández and Achero Mañas
Starring: Juan José Ballesta, Pablo Galán, Alberto Jiménez, Manuel Morón, Ana Wagener
BY PAUL HUNTER
Playing potentially lethal games with express trains may not be everyone’s idea of fun, but for the eponymous 12 year old boy it’s where he can feel some rare companionship with his peers. It’s also safer, than being with his father. For the boy, nicknamed El Bola (Pellet) after the lucky ball bearing he always carries, is a victim of Read More…
Balada Triste de Trompeta (The Last Circus, 2010)
Written and directed by Alex de la Iglesia.
Starring: Carlos Areces, Antonio de la Torre, Carolina Bang, Manuel Tafallé
BY ANDRÉS ROMERO – JODAR
During the first half of the twentieth century, Europe was engaged in an atrocious fight against fascism. Fortunately, the Second World War put an end to some of those terror regimes, but sadly enough, in the Iberian Peninsula the wrong guys won the war. For more than forty years, both Portugal under Salazar and Spain under Franco Read More…
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