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The first 20 minutes of Close Your Eyes are better than almost every other movie this year, and they’re merely the memories of its main character—a ghost story written in celluloid. This prelude details a call to adventure, a request to seek out a dying rich man’s daughter...

Following up on their excellent Blood Money box set from last year, the folks at Arrow Video now offer the four-film collection Savage Guns, another deep dive into the vaults of the Italian western. With each of these releases, Arrow gives viewers the opportunity to form a richer and broader notion of the genre, to examine the way these films work the warp and weft of similarity and difference, providing audiences with expected payoffs of sex and violence while also playing variations (subtle or otherwise) on familiar generic themes.

Featuring sparkling new restorations based on original film elements, Savage Guns comes in another lavishly appointed package from Arrow Video, complete with hours of bonus materials, like cast and crew interviews, commentary tracks, introductions to each of the films by critic Fabio Melelli, and appreciations of two of the film scores by audiophile Lovely Jon. Also included in the slipcase are...

“Long-awaited” isn’t quite the term for Victor Erice’s “Close Your Eyes,” a film that dedicated admirers of the Spanish master may have hoped for, but didn’t dare expect. Instead, Erice’s first feature in 31 years — and only his fourth overall — arrives as something between a desert oasis and a mirage: a shimmery, nourishing culmination of ideas and ellipses in a career so elusive as to have taken on a mythic quality, to the point that his latest feels almost dreamed into being. But “Close Your Eyes” proves a disarmingly simple, emotionally direct film once its out-of-time aura settles. A story itself of disappearance and reemergence, and the potential of cinema to bridge past and present as if decades were days, it’s potent and poignant enough to reach newcomers to Erice’s work, even as fans pore over its self-reflexive details.

Having premiered at Cannes, “Close Your Eyes...

Themes of aging have always undergirded Victor Erice’s work. His feature debut, 1973’s Spirit of the Beehive, is one of the finest of all coming-of-age films, capturing a few days in the life of young girl as she struggles to understand, through nascent eyes, the evils and contradictions of life in Francoist Spain. Ten years later came El Sur, Erice’s famously incomplete adaptation of Adelaida García Morales’s novella, another story about a child who grows gradually aware of her country’s—and family’s—troubled past. And 1992’s The Quince Tree Sun saw Erice turn his attention more explicitly to art as a means of physical and spiritual preservation: the act of ossifying a moment in time in an attempt to stave off the inevitable.

Now, after three decades and a smattering of shorts (including a multipart collaboration with Abbas Kiarostami), Close Your Eyes marks the 83-year-old...

It’s been 31 years since the great Spanish auteur Victor Erice made his last feature-length film, and as Cannes topper Thierry Frémaux pointed out during a brief introduction to the 82-year-old director’s long-awaited return to the screen, Close Your Eyes (Cerrar Los Ojos), that beats a record previously set by Terrence Malick.

As amusing as Frémaux’s anecdote was, he may have to one day explain why he chose to program such a graceful and powerful tribute to cinema in his festival’s catch-all “Cannes Première” sidebar instead of the main competition, for Close Your Eyes is a consummate work of filmmaking by a major artist.

Slowly but deliberately paced, the movie builds to a crescendo in a closing act where a movie itself — a real movie shot and projected on celluloid — plays a pivotal role, resuscitating forgotten lives and memories as only the cinema can do. Erice has managed,...

Cerrar los ojos

After a three-decade-long absence from filmmaking, Victor Erice returns to cinema with what is only his fourth feature. Cerrar los ojos reunites him with the star of his last film (El sol del membrillo): Ana Torrent. Production took place in Granada, Almería, Asturias and Madrid up until December. José Coronado, María León, Petra Martínez, Soledad Villamil, Mario Pardo, Elena Miquel and José María Pou also star in the film. The story of a disappearance, the film revolves “around issues such as identity and memory.”

Gist: This tells the story of how a famous Spanish actor, (José Coronado) disappears during the shoot for a movie.…...

Based on the graphic novel, the new 6-episode Spain-produced action-adventure spy series "Garcia!" is now streaming on HBO Max:

".... based on the graphic novel by Santiago García and Luis Bustos, published by Astiberri Ediciones, the action-adventure spy series 'Garcia!'...

"...follows 'Antonia' (Veki Velilla), a young reporter who quickly becomes embroiled in an elaborate political conspiracy after accidentally defrosting a cryogenically frozen secret agent from the 1960's.

"Now finding himself thrust into a fractured modern world, Garcia (Francisco Ortiz), a former pawn in Francisco Franco’s regime...

"...must rely on Antonia’s help to fit in – and decide where his loyalties lie amid a conspiracy to upend the Spanish government..."

Cast also includes Emilio Gutiérrez Caba, Francisco Reyes, Nico Romero, Helio Pedregal, Mario Pardo, Miki Molina, Marina Gatell, Pepe Ocio and Silvia Abascal.

Click the images to enlarge...

With all the different streaming services in operation these days, there’s an awful lot of TV out there, so much so that plenty of shows can easily slip your notice. If you’re hungry for a fast-paced, action series featuring cryogenically frozen secret agents, political conspiracies, and Spain’s fascist dictator Francisco Franco, then you should check out the trailer for Garcia!, a six-episode series streaming on HBO Max.

Garcia! is based on the graphic novel of the same name by Santiago García and Luis Bustos and spans six decades in Spain’s tumultuous political history, seamlessly blending satire and suspense for a genre-bending adventure of epic proportions. The series follows “Antonia (Veki Velilla), a young reporter who quickly becomes embroiled in an elaborate political conspiracy after accidentally defrosting a cryogenically frozen secret agent from the 1960s. Finding himself thrust into a fractured modern world, Garcia (Francisco Ortiz), a...

"The past is what it is, we can't change it." HBO Max has revealed a new US trailer for a streaming series from Spain titled ¡García!, or just Garcia! in the US. How is this for a pitch: what if someone decided to remake that 90s film Forever Young, but turn it into an action adventure thriller series set in Madrid, Spain instead?? Garcia is a Spanish mini-series for HBO Max about a cryogenically frozen super spy from the '60s who is thrust into modern-day Madrid when he is re-awakened. Set in a version of current-day Spain at the verge of societal collapse, the series follows Antonia, a reporter who accidentally unravels a decades-old plot concerning a super-agent created in the 1950s by the Francoist secret services. Starring Francisco Ortiz as Garcia and Veki Velilla as Atonia, with a series cast including Emilio Gutiérrez Caba, Francisco Reyes, Nico Romero,...

Streaming

HBO Max has revealed the first teaser for Max original “García!” (6 x 60′), which will have its world premiere at Austin’s Fantastic Fest in September and European premiere at Sitges.

Based on the graphic novel of the same name by Santiago García and Luis Bustos, the series is set in a present-day Spain, which is divided and on the brink of political chaos. It follows an inquisitive millennial investigative reporter Antonia (Veki Velilla) who stumbles on a decades-old conspiracy: the existence of a cryogenically frozen super-agent, García (Francisco Ortiz), created in a laboratory in the 1950s by General Franco’s fascist secret services. After sixty years in deep sleep, this perfect soldier with incredible physical strength, programmed to obey orders without question, is woken by Antonia. García finds himself disoriented and confused in a Spain that has changed beyond recognition. The old-world collides with the new as García and...

Set to launch in Europe later this year, HBO Max has bolstered its originals pipeline with the announcement of “García!” a new series to be produced in Spain based on the popular graphic novel of the same name by authors Santiago García and Luis Bustos.

Miguel Salvat, Steve Matthews and Antony Root, the trio behind HBO España’s fan-favorite horror thriller “30 Coins” from Spanish maestro Alex de la Iglesia, are teaming once again as executive producers on the six-hour series.

“’García!’ is a project with enormous narrative and epic visual ambition. The tiniest details combine to become an action-packed adventure series, sometimes honoring the great genre traditions, but sometimes blowing them up. In ‘García!’ whilst we see a Spain that has changed somewhat in the last few decades, some elements remain the same,” said Salvat.

Set in modern-day Spain, the novel, published by Astiberri Ediciones, plays on cultural and...

The Spanish actors are reuniting in this countryside-set comedy directed by Jesús del Cerro, which is currently in post-production. Shot over the final two months of 2020, not only does Dos vacas y una burra (lit. “Two Cows and a She-donkey”) mark a return to Spain for Jesús del Cerro (Carlitos and the Chance of a Lifetime), but it also sees two popular actors, Pablo Puyol (Boystown) and Miguel Ángel Muñoz (El crack Cero), working together again, as they did more than a decade ago in the TV series Un paso adelante, which catapulted them to stardom, garnering them untold hordes of fans of both sexes. These strapping young lads are joined by Mexican thesp Esmeralda Pimentel, Catalan actors Mario Pardo and Adriana Torrebejano (Gun City), and Romania’s Codin Maticiuc (Do It or Shut Up) on the billing of this feature. With a budget of €2 million, the rural comedy...