Foreign Films on DVD

Two sisters living in Madrid learn from their aunt that their mother, killed years earlier in a fire has returned.
Genre: Foreign Film - Spanish/misc SA
Rating: R
Release Date: 4-SEP-2007<br><b>Media Type: DVD

A luminous Penélope Cruz stars as an actress who sacrifices everything for true love in Broken Embraces, Academy Award -winning filmmaker (2003, Best Writing, Original Screenplay, <i>Talk to Her) Pedro Almodóvar's acclaimed tale of sex, secrets and cinema. When her father becomes gravely ill, beautiful Lena (Cruz) consents to a relationship with her boss Ernesto (José Luis Gómez), a very wealthy, much-older man who pays for her father's hospitalization and provides her a lavish lifestyle. But Lena's dream is to act and soon she falls for the director of her first film - a project bankrolled by her husband to keep her near. Upon his discovery of the affair, Ernesto stops at nothing to ruin Lena's happiness.

A luminous Penélope Cruz stars as an actress who sacrifices everything for true love in Broken Embraces, Academy Award -winning filmmaker (2003, Best Writing, Original Screenplay, <i>Talk to Her) Pedro Almodóvar's acclaimed tale of sex, secrets and cinema. When her father becomes gravely ill, beautiful Lena (Cruz) consents to a relationship with her boss Ernesto (José Luis Gómez), a very wealthy, much-older man who pays for her father's hospitalization and provides her a lavish lifestyle. But Lena's dream is to act and soon she falls for the director of her first film - a project bankrolled by her husband to keep her near. Upon his discovery of the affair, Ernesto stops at nothing to ruin Lena's happiness.

A single mother in Madrid sees her only son die on his 17th birthday as he runs to seek an actress's autograph. She goes to Barcelona to find the lad's father, a transvestite named Lola who does not know he has a child. First she finds her friend, Agrado, also a transvestite; through him she meets Rosa, a young nun bound for El Salvador, and by happenstance becomes the personal assistant of Huma Rojo, the actress her son admired. She helps Huma manage Nina, the co-star and Huma's lover, and she becomes Rosa's caretaker during a dicey pregnancy. With echoes of Lorca, <i>All About Eve, and A Streetcar Named Desire, the mothers (and fathers and actors) live out grief, love, and friendship.

The lives of four characters flow in all directions, past, present and future, dragging all of them towards an unsuspected destiny. Golden Globe WINNER: Best Foreign Language Film. Academy Award Nominee: Achievement in Directing. Academy Award WINNER: Original Screenplay. Directed by Pedro Almodovar (All About My Mother, Flower of My Secret, High Heels).

Writer/director Pedro Almodóvar's dark, sexy Hitchcock homage is his best work since his Oscar-winning All About My Mother, and deepened by a sun-dappled sadness. Handsome, enigmatic Ángel (Gael García Bernal) arrives at the Spanish movie offices of director Enrique Goded (Fele Martinez) and happily proclaims that he's actually Enrique's long-lost school chum Ignacio--an announcement that is both less than convincing and more than it seems. A novice actor, Ángel pitches a semi-autobiographical screenplay in which he's determined to star, a revenge-laden reflection of the doomed love he and Enrique shared as boys before a pedophile priest cruelly intervened. The script, and the lost days it recalls, carefully unfurls into a series of brooding movies-within-movies and memories-inside-memories, which allow the sensual, multiple-role-playing Bernal to give the performance of his young career--among other things, he makes a stunningly convincing drag queen--and Almodóvar the opportunity to movingly suggest that people will pay any price to ensure that their stories are told. <I>--Steve Wiecking

Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 01/30/2007

Ex-bullfighter who is getting turned on by killing, lady lawyer with same problem and young man driven insane by over-religious upbringing - these are the main characters in this stylish black comedy about dark sides of human nature.

From two-time Academy Award®-winner Pedro Almodovar (2003, Best Original Screenplay, Talk to Her; 2000, Best Foreign Language Film, All About My Mother) comes Volver, a comedic and compassionate tribute to women and their resilience in the face of life's most outrageous tribulations. A luminous Penelope Cruz leads an ensemble of gifted actresses, including Carmen Maura (<i>Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown). Raimunda (Cruz) and her sister Sole lost their parents in a tragic fire years ago, or did they? Superstitious villagers claim that the girls departed mother, Irene (Maura), has been seen wandering around their Aunt Paula's home. When Irene appears to Sole, she explains that she has returned to set right her daughters' troubled lives and reveal shocking secrets that will impact everyone! Raimunda has "female troubles" of her own, least of which is a corpse in the freezer! Winner of numerous film festival and critics' awards, Volver is a hilarious tale of love, loss and forgiveness.

Leo writes romance novels but with a loveless marriage she finds herself fresh out of inspiration. Angel is a tough and gruff journalist with an iron will and a heart of gold. When their paths happen to cross they discover something neither had expected a real-life love affair. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 11/24/2009 Run time: 100 minutes Rating: R