If you’re looking for some good Spanish movies to watch, you won’t be disappointed with the three that we are going to share with you. Watch them on a three-day weekend, one for each night, and see what you think. Romantic comedy, adventure, drama, history, and mystery are what you have in store if you get a chance to check out these films. Read on for the titles and full details.
Ocho Apellidos Vascos (Eight Basque Surnames, or “Spanish Affair”) is a 2014 Spanish romantic comedy in which Rafa, a young Andalusian man, has to do what he has never done: leave his beautiful Seville hometown, his so-called finery, his hair gel, his accent, and even his favorite Spanish soccer club (the Real Betis), to get the Basque girl that he loves. Her opposition is what sparks his interest – all the other women in his life have been too easy to get close to. She presents a challenge and he claims that he can bring her back to his native southern Spain in as little as three days. He is surprised when he finds that he must cross the cultural divide between his original homeland and her northern country! He quickly realizes that it will take a lot more to conquer her love, so he pretends to be Basque to get past her resistance. He goes so far to even adopt the first name Antxon and, off the top of his head, eight Basque last names (an act which lends to the title of the film!): Arguiñano, Igartiburu, Erentxun, Gabilondo, Urdangarín, Otegi, Zubizarreta, and Clemente. The comedic action runs throughout the movie (with accents, politics, memes, and stereotypes) till the very end – if you want to get the most out of the movie, familiarize yourself with these ahead of time. This film is one of the highest grossing in Spanish Box Office history. The director, Emilio Martínez-Lázaro, simply gave the public what they wanted: laughter. Although it is more about how the Spanish view the Basque, it ultimately provides a message of uniting with others (no matter how different they are!) through love.
Perhaps it is another type of love that differentiates the previous movie and the next. Alatriste (or “Captain Alatriste: The Spanish Musketeer”) is a 2006 film set in 17th century Spain in which Diego Alatriste serves in the Eighty Years War for the King of his country. It is based on the writings of Arturo Pérez-Reverte, that is, Las aventuras del Capitán Alatriste (The Adventures of Captain Alatriste); it artistically combines elements from each of the five books of the series it is inspired from. There is blood, sweat, and tears, along with love, loyalty, and intrigue. Torn clothes and swordfights, scars and skin, this movie depicts the rawness and vulnerability of living the troubled life of a soldier turned mercenary. For the 21st Goya Awards, it was the winner of Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, and Best Supervision of Production. For the beautiful visuals that recreate the book’s atmosphere, there isn’t much that the director, Agustín Díaz Yanes, can be questioned on, except one: the length of the film. Be prepared to sit for a little more than two hours!
There are story characters who shouldn’t feel prepared to sit beyond what they should, but they do anyways and lose themselves for it. Hable Con Ella (Talk to Her) is a 2002 Spanish film that explores the way in which emotions can overpower one’s thoughts and actions. Two men find themselves facing the silence of the women for whom they’ve become drawn towards: Benigno Martín is a nurse obsessed with his beautiful comatose patient Alicia Roncero, a ballet student, while Marco Zuluaga is a traveling writer lost in the short entertwining story between him and Lydia González – a female bullfighter whose attraction and fear pull at him, even after she becomes gored and comatose. They first meet at the private clinic in which the comatose women are being cared for, and become friends. There is beauty and sadness in the strange intimacy of the characters, and yet it gives off a mysterious realism in the coincidences and encounters at the beginning and end of the film. Pedro Almodóvar’s directing will pull you in to the story; he will have you contemplating the lives of others and the subjectiveness of love.
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