While at War (Spanish: Mientras dure la guerra) is a 2019 Spanish historical drama film directed by Alejandro Amenábar. It premiered at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival.

Plot:
Revered author Miguel de Unamuno (Karra Elejalde) decides to publicly support the Spanish coup of July 1936. He is immediately removed from his position as rector at the University of Salamanca by the Government of the Second Spanish Republic. Meanwhile, Nationalists succeed in taking control of Salamanca, and General Francisco Franco moves his headquarters to the city. Some of Unamuno’s colleagues are imprisoned on charges of affiliation. Unamuno, who believes he can have the influence to liberate the innocent, heads to Franco’s Palace, determined to beg him for clemency.

10.1GB | 1h 47m | 1920×804 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/D2C935633355C9E/While.At.War.2019.SPANISH.1080p.BluRay.x264.DTS-HD.MA5.1-FGT.mkv

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English,Spanish

The post Alejandro Amenábar – Mientras dure la guerra aka While at War (2019) (HD) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

First Amenabar movie, made in 1991 (not 1992 as IMDb states), when Amenabar was 19.
The later `Tesis` is based on the same idea (obsession?).

Himenóptero

Luna

Himenóptero
274MB | 00:33:00 | 544×368 | avi
Luna
299MB | 00:30:01 | 640×368 | avi

http://nitroflare.com/view/AE7E8EABDDE5AAB/Luna.DVDRiP.Artik_SEDG_.avi
http://nitroflare.com/view/A91CFB328ACC9D1/Luna.srt
https://nitro.download/view/965503F8073F4D7/Himenoptero.DVDRiP-Artik_SEDG_.avi
http://www.nitroflare.com/view/C9BDB529EC4EF89/Himen%C3%B3ptero.DVDRiP-ArtikSEDG.srt

Language:Spanish
Subtitles:English

The post Alejandro Amenábar – Himenóptero & Luna (1992) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Spanish director and scriptwriter Alejandro Amenábar has gotten a fair amount of attention in the English-speaking world of late, and well-deserved it is. At the moment, he is probably best known for directing The Others, as well as directing and writing Open Your Eyes (Abre los ojos), the outstanding film that spawned a totally unnecessary remake in Vanilla Sky. Amenábar’s film Thesis (original title: Tesis) takes us back to 1996, where we can see that his success is no fluke: it has been in the cards from the beginning.

Thesis was director/writer Alejandro Amenábar’s first feature film, made when he was only 23 after deciding to stop studying film and start making it. The film Thesis begins with Ángela (Ana Torrent), a film student at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (as Amenábar was) who is working on a thesis on audiovisual violence in the media. Her research leads her toward more and more extreme examples of media violence, putting her in contact with a fellow student, Chema (Fele Martínez), who has an extensive collection of gory videos. But the real horror starts when she stumbles across evidence that behind the urban legend of “snuff” films there lies a horrifying reality… and that the murderous filmmakers involved know that she knows too much.

Though it is in fact a very entertaining, tension-filled thriller, Thesis is more than that; the film is self-reflective and critical, both of the film industry and of viewers themselves, even as they watch the movie. Throughout the film, Thesis circles around a dark dichotomy in human behavior: we don’t want to look, but we are compelled to anyway; we want to reject violence, but it draws us in. The opening scene of the film encapsulates this theme, hinting at the greater development of it in the film: Ángela is coming home on the Madrid subway when the train halts unexpectedly; the conductor informs them that a man has just committed suicide by throwing himself in front of the train. “Don’t look,” he says, but can’t help adding, “he’s been cut in two.” The faces of the disembarking passengers are filled with horror and disgust, yet they crowd around trying to get a look at the gruesome scene before they are herded away.

The character of Ángela is a perfect stand-in for the viewer in this way. Unlike the more openly voyeuristic Chema, she claims that her interest in violence is strictly academic: for her thesis. Yet we can’t help but realize that she is secretly drawn to it as well; realizing this, it disgusts her, but still compels her. Both Torrent and Martínez give us believable characters who also manage to break stereotyped “thriller” conventions about the behavior of male and female characters; they are, and remain, well-rounded and interesting characters who develop as the story unfolds. Thesis also features a young-looking Eduardo Noriega as Bosco; he appears in the protagonist’s role in Amenábar’s next film, Open Your Eyes.

From beginning to end, Thesis takes a hard look at “violence as entertainment,” pushing the viewer to be more self-aware, to recognize the potential for violence that exists within all of us and the possible consequences of satisfying some of our darker desires. The film asks, is “what the public wants” always right? Where should a filmmaker draw the line? Is there a hidden hypocrisy in the fact that we are both repelled and attracted by scenes of violence? Link

2.89GB | 2h 04m | 1024×552 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/4854C5C8CE1C231/Alejandro_Amenabar_-_(1996)_Thesis.mkv

Language:Spanish
Subtitles:English

The post Alejandro Amenábar – Tesis (1996) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Life story of Spaniard Ramón Sampedro, who fought a 30-year campaign to win the right to end his life with dignity. Film explores Ramón’s relationships with two women: Julia, a lawyer who supports his cause, and Rosa, a local woman who wants to convince him that life is worth living. Through the gift of his love, these two women are inspired to accomplish things they never previously thought possible. Despite his wish to die, Ramón taught everyone he encountered the meaning, value and preciousness of life. Though he could not move himself, he had an uncanny ability to move others.

3.07GB | 2h 05m | 1024×434 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/D3A33A100DF4C3D/Mar.Adentro.AKA.The.Sea.Inside.2004.576p.BluRay.x264.mkv

Language:Spanish
Subtitles:English

The post Alejandro Amenábar – Mar adentro AKA The Sea Inside (2004) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

What is waking? What is dream? What is reality? What is fantasy? What is sanity? What is madness?

Such questions pervade “Open Your Eyes,” a psychological thriller directed by Alejandro Amenabar. “Open Your Eyes,” which darts among such relative novelties as virtual reality and cryogenics, is at bottom a retelling of the story of Job for a vain, materialistic, selfish age.

Handsomely filmed in Madrid with an attractive cast, this Spanish feature is unlikely to satisfy those who insist on linear storytelling and pat endings. But in its deliberately vexing way, “Open Your Eyes” is a film with enough intellectual meat on its stylish bones to give more adventurous moviegoers something to chew on afterward.

2.84GB | 1h 53m | 716×412 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/F9D625C634DD466/Open.Your.Eyes.1997.DVDRip.Special.Edition.x264.mkv

Language:Spanish+commentary
Subtitles:English

The post Alejandro Amenábar – Abre los ojos AKA Open Your Eyes (1997) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
A historical drama set in Roman Egypt, concerning a slave who turns to the rising tide of Christianity in the hope of pursuing freedom while falling in love with his mistress, the famous philosophy and mathematics professor Hypatia of Alexandria.

Quote:

I went to see “Agora” expecting an epic with swords, sandals and sex. I found swords and sandals, some unexpected opinions about sex, and a great deal more. This is a movie about ideas, a drama based on the ancient war between science and superstition. At its center is a woman who in the fourth century A.D. was a scientist, mathematician, philosopher, astronomer and teacher, respected in Egypt, although women were not expected to be any of those things.

Hypatia (Rachel Weisz) was born into the family business. Her father Theon (Michael Lonsdale) was the curator of the Library of Alexandria, which had as its mission “collecting all the world’s knowledge.” Scholars traveled there from across the ancient world, doing research and donating manuscripts. It was destroyed by Christians in 391 A.D., and “Agora” takes place in the years surrounding that incalculable loss.

The film’s title refers to a name for the public assembly places in ancient Greek city-states. The library was such an agora, and we see Hypatia teaching a class of young men who listen to her with open admiration.

There’s an early indication that this won’t be a routine “Troy”-like exercise in CGI action scenes: Hypatia actually does teach something, using the first scale model of planetary motion to deduce, centuries before Galileo, that the Earth cannot be the center of the universe.

Hypatia has three students completely under her spell: Davus (Max Minghella), Synesius (Rupert Evans) and Orestes (Oscar Isaac). All make the error of feeling lust, Orestes least subtly. Hypatia seems devoid of sexual feeling; perhaps she believes her vocation prohibits it. Her method of rejecting Orestes is brutally direct. Although Rachel Weisz may be beautiful, in the performance she makes no effort to exploit that, and is singleminded in her dedication to knowledge.

The film’s director and co-writer, Alejandro Amenabar, re-creates the Alexandria of Hypatia’s time with a mixture of sets and effects, showing it at the tipping point between Greek and Roman paganism and the new religion of Christianity. As she studies with and under her father, drawing from countless parchment scrolls in the library, in the city the Christians burn with a fearful intensity. Hypatia herself is not interested in religion; she feels passion only for her ideas.

Neither the pagans nor Christians are pacifists. Both sides possess that peculiar certainty that their opponents must by definition be evil. Blood is shed. Foolishly believing they hold the upper hand, the pagans, led by Orestes, conduct a bloodletting, only to learn in a savage lesson that there are now more Christians than they imagined. This warfare culminates in the destruction of the library. Hypatia races with her students to rescue armloads of scrolls, a few of which may literally have been responsible for our surviving texts from Aristotle and other Greeks.

In sword-and-sandal epics, the Christians are without fail the good guys. Not here. Christians and pagans are equally blinded by the conviction that those who disagree deserve death. After the rise of the Christians, the factions grow even more militant; one group wears black robes and searches streets for dissenters, heretics and Jews.

There is historical truth here. The actual teachings of Jesus are often imperfectly observed by his followers. The film also has unmistakable parallels to militant Islam and to the sectarian conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere. The movie doesn’t make as much as you might expect about Hypatia’s gender; possibly the subjugation of women was so unconsciously and universally accepted that, in some sense, she was seen less as a woman than as a daughter teaching the lessons of her father.

That Hypatia was a genius seems beyond question. Her invention, the hydrometer, is being used in the Gulf at this moment to distinguish oil from water by their specific densities. Although “Agora” avoids the temptation to sneak in a romantic subplot, it gets mileage out of her character as a focus of emotional intrigue for her male students, who would have never seen a woman anything like her.

Alejandro Amenabar seems drawn to stories about the determination of the intellect to work in the real world. His “The Sea Inside” (2004) starred Javier Bardem as a paralyzed man who fought for the right to die. In “Open Your Eyes” (1997), a disfigured man struggles to express his love for a woman. The underrated “The Others” (2001) starred Nicole Kidman as a woman compelled to prove her ideas of ghosts have objective reality. Here a woman finds the Earth circles the sun, but moves in indifference to her ideas.

http://nitroflare.com/view/1ADA5A38225BE70/Alejandro_Amenabar_-_%282009%29_Agora.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Alejandro Amenábar – Agora (2009) first appeared on Cinema of the World.