Director José Luis Garci has turned his camera inward on filmmakers and screenwriters to portray them as so self-absorbed in the creative process that there is no other world, no other human relationship that can compete. As José (Adolfo Marsillach) and Federico (Jesus Puente) work together on a new screenplay, their interactions with their family (José's teen daughters, Federico's wife) disappear under the all-consuming task of creation. The daughters give up and go off on their own, and the wife joins a convent while Federico barely notices. And when the producer is interrupted by profound grief at the sudden death of his older son, he almost automatically returns to thinking about the film project when the funeral has ended. Garci honors many great directors at the beginning of this film, and the film continues to play out as an elaboration on this homage -- an illustration both of the dedication and the cost of filmmaking, no judgments given.
Private detective Germán Areta el Piojo investigates the life of a gay man who has apparently abandoned his partner. When they both turn up dead, it seems one killed the other before committing suicide, but Areta is not convinced.
As in the novel of the same title from Camilo Jose Cela, "La Colmena" is a sad composition with the stories of many people in the Madrid of 1942, just the postwar of the spanish civil war. The main theme of the film is the contrast between the poets, surviving close to misery under the Franco's regime, and the winners of the war, the emerging class of the people that makes easy money with illegal business.
A Nobel prize winner returns to his natal city looking for his home.
Private detective Germán Areta el Piojo gets a terminally ill client who wishes to see his long lost, runaway daughter before he dies.
Arms dealer Yolaf Peterson aims to make a sale to guerilla Mongo, but the money is locked in a bank safe, the combination known only to Professor Xantos, a prisoner of the Americans. Yolaf agrees to free Xantos, accompanied by reluctant guerilla Basco, but a former business partner of Yolaf's- John 'The Wooden Hand', has other ideas.
Like every night, Manuel remembers the old days of glory, when after the war he was a famous bullfighter. He and his friend Juan were the fashionable couple. Now Juan is a prominent businessman in bullfighting. But Manuel's feelings toward him have changed radically: an inexplicable hated seizes him when someone mentions his name. It has been more than twenty years since that afternoon, when Manuel was bullfighting and fell to the ground.
When a group of isolated people in the Greek mountains set off a cave explosion, they are menaced by an invisible shrieking dinosaur that had been buried for eons
In a desert region, Martin, bound to a wheelchair, is served by a gang of desperados to collect rents and kill anybody who resists. Then Lassiter arrives, telling Martin that he knows where Frank is, the man who made him a cripple. A reward is promised for his head. Then Frank smells danger... Source: SWDB www.spaghetti-western.net
Mario, the son of a police captain killed in the line of duty, is completely surrendered to the police organization. Instructing some errands meet Elsa, original and fascinating beauty, beginning an illicit affair and exciting. This makes his firmest principles are shaken, transformed his life completely absurd entering a maelstrom revolving around the existence of Elsa surface.
In a village in the mountains of Urbión, brothers John and Martin, driven by greed and abetted by Candelas, Martin's wife, kill his father and sink the body in the Black Lagoon. His wife and one daughter of the victim does not know anything. In the village would get missing. However, from now weigh a curse on the land for which they have committed the crime, predicting each year misfortunes and bad harvests.
1808. During the Spanish Independence war the city of Zaragoza is besieged by French troops. Spanish forces under General Palafox are scarce. Brave Agustina doesn't hesitate to lead the battle and even fire a cannon to stop the invaders when others run away. Based on historical facts.