The Best Spanish Movies to Watch

Psychological thriller fans might find God’s Crooked Lines to be a tad derivative. Fans of the novel might find its film adaptation slightly more convoluted than the original text. But for viewers entirely new to both, the undercover psych ward investigation proves to be an intriguing mystery, twisting the plot by playing with alternating timelines […]

Some films are slow and talky because of mere indulgence, but Close Your Eyes owes its pace to naturalism and poetry. Each frame and dialogue is both beautiful and realistic. If they’re not meditating on the fickleness of life and memory, they’re honoring how cinema can encapsulate them. This is one of those movies you […]

A lot of things steal your attention in All About My Mother, Spanish director Pedro Almodovar’s ode to women. There are the colorful characters, which include a transgender sex worker, a pregnant nun, and a red-haired theater diva. There are the vibrant primary colors, the jokes that catch you off-guard, and the powerful dramatic performances. […]

When a man ends up in a house full of girls, the question in many stories is: who will that man fall for? Where Little Women provides everyone with a suitor and The Beguiled does the opposite, Belle Époque takes a much more comedic route for Fernando to pick his wife. Far from being a […]

Because of our continued interest in living, one would think that human beings would shy away from death, but the opposite seems to be the reality. There’s a certain morbid fascination with violence, to the point that some people are captivated in making it more intense, more sensational, and more dangerous. Just before his groundbreaking […]

It won’t be surprising to hear that a film called Live Flesh would be all about the body. There are, of course, the sensual scenes that make the movie an erotic drama, but filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar shifts the original psychological thriller novel into an examination of the body, how it’s perceived, and how people break […]

As a popular fairytale, Snow White has been depicted many, many times, but never quite like the 2012 Spanish film Blancanieves. For starters, it’s the only version where the titular lady is a bullfighter. It was also made as a black-and-white silent drama at a time when color and sound are the norm. But beyond […]

Is there any other filmmaker more suited to the melodrama than Pedro Almodóvar? Broken Embraces holds many of the themes he’s often played with, but this time through the cynicism of film noir, with time moving a blind man into stoic silence. As he remembers the doomed production and tragic love triangles he was caught […]

Among the gems in Pedro Almodóvar’s filmography, The Flower of My Secret can seem rather tame in comparison. After all, in the actual plot, no one dies, gets seriously injured, or has their rights horribly violated. Even the sex strictly remains within marriage. It’s an interesting choice to make, especially the film’s protagonist goes through […]