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Caballos Salvajes (English: Wild Horses) is a 1995 Argentine road movie directed by Marcelo Piñeyro and written by Piñeyro and Aída Bortnik. It stars Héctor Alterio, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Cecilia Dopazo and Federico Luppi in a cameo appearance. The film chronicles the five days of two fugitives on the run after robbing a corporation and being targeted by the media.
José is an ageing anarchist who decides to get even with the corporation that stole 15,344$ from his family 18 years ago. When confronted by the yuppie manager, Pedro Mendoza, José threatens to kill himself and orders him to hand in the requested amount of money. In the ensuing chaos, Pedro stumbles upon a drawer holding half a million dollars, and puts it all in the bag. He then asks José to take him hostage so that the police won't shoot them, and both drive away successfully.
After the heist, Pedro is confronted with a dilemma: he can't turn himself in, because the stolen money is laundered money and he will thus have trouble with the mafia, so he decides to join José on a road trip to the Patagonia as they run away from police and mafia alike.
On their way to the border they bond and decide to correct those claims made erroneous by the media so as to clean their names and justify their actions. They tape a message and send it to the TV, and along the way to safety they are aided by gas station attendants who view the couple as modern-day Robin Hoods. They are nicknamed by the press coverage "Los Indomables" - The Untameable. Their car, however, ends wrecked in a river due to a mishap.
They decide to take a bus that will get them closer to the border. Aboard they meet a punk girl, Ana, who steels the bag containing the half million, but promptly returns it when they catch up with her. They decide to let her into their society, and she steels a jeep for them. The three decide to "return" the money to the people, and rain the half-million on a cheering crowd, keeping only what's necessary for the trip. After that they are on the run again.
"Los Indomables" manage to get to the border after dodging a pursuing helicopter; with the aid of the gas station attendants they avoid road blocks and the two hitmen sent by the mafia, whom they finally encounter and get rid of. Once at the border they meet with Eustaquio, husband to the sister of José's long dead wife. After reconciling with him, he reveals his profession - kept secret throughout the film - to Pedro: horse breeder.
In the final moments of the movie, José bids farewell to Pedro and Ana, who have fallen in love, as they ride away on two horses to the Chilean border. José then frees all of his horses, and as he sets the last one going is shot by a person offscreen at the back. He dies, and the end is a montage of José's horses running free, and José himself dancing (from a previous scene in the movie) and shouting to the skies how good it feels to feel alive.
Nine Queens (Spanish: Nueve reinas) (2000) is a Argentine crime drama film written and directed by Fabián Bielinsky. The picture features Gastón Pauls, Ricardo Darín, Leticia Brédice, Tomás Fonzi, among others.
The film was nominated for twenty-eight awards and won twenty-one of them.
It tells the story of two con artists who meet by chance and decide to cooperate in a scam.
Two con men, Marcos and Juan meet, apparently by chance, in a gas station mini-market, early in the morning. Juan attempts to scam the cashier, but makes a mistake when he comes back to pull the same scam on the next shift, too.
Marcos, who has been observing this the whole time, steps in pretending to be a police officer, and takes Juan away. As soon as they are far enough from the shop, Marcos tells Juan he is not a cop but a fellow con man. Juan asks Marcos to show him the ropes, because, Juan tells us, his father was a con man, too, but he got locked up in jail for trying to swindle somebody. Juan tells Marcos that he needs the money, because there is a certain judge that accepts bribes and if the money is right, his dad can be released within 6 months, instead of serving 10 years.
Then a once-in-a-lifetime scheme seemingly falls into their laps: the sale of some rare forged stamps, called "The Nine Queens", to a rich Spaniard who is leaving the country the next morning and therefore is unable to check if the stamps are legitimate.
The plot thickens when Marcos' sister, Marcos' younger brother and various thieves, con men and pickpockets -- old friends of Juan's father -- get involved, and the forged stamps get stolen.
At the end, the film makes a dramatic plot change by showing that all the operation was a scam made by Juan.
Luna de Avellaneda (English: Moon of Avellaneda and Avellaneda's Moon) (2004) is an Argentine film, directed by Juan José Campanella, and written by Campanella, Fernando Castets and Juan Pablo Domenech. The film stars Ricardo Darín in his third collaboration with Campanella and Eduardo Blanco in his fourth collaboration, as well as Mercedes Morán and Valeria Bertuccelli.Román Maldonado (Ricardo Darín) has been born and bred in "Luna de Avellaneda," a social club situated in Avellaneda, Buenos Aires.
The club used to have over 8,000 members, but cuuently has little over 300. The place is decaying and the gatherings are hardly what they used to be. To top things off, Román discovers his wife is having an affair, and their marriage finds itself at its worst.
Together with Amadeo Grimberg (Eduardo Blanco) and Graciela (Mercedes Morán), friends from the club, he must fight fight for the survival of the place before it is bought and a casino is built in its place.
The film chronicles the ups and downs of this fight, as well as Amadeo's struggling relationship with Cristina (Valeria Bertuccelli) and Román's family crisis. In the end, the motion to keep the club standing is outvoted 33 to 26, and the main characters find themselves parting ways in a bittersweet manner. The ending is however upbeat, as Román finds hope in finding his old club credential, and together with Amadeo hints that they will start a new one.
From films that show the tango culture in it's golden age (often protagonized by the greatest tango singers and dancers of the time), to modern films that use tango as a resource to tell a story, all these movies have their place in the history and development of tango as an artform.
Assassination Tango (2003): More "tango" than "assassination". An aging hit man (Robert Duvall) travels to Buenos Aires for a job and discovers the wonders of the titular dance.
This Duvall-directed film feels more like a laid-back documentary than like a story, lacking tension but featuring lots of dancing, and even more talk about dancing.
Tango Movies:
Tango (1998): Set in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the film tells the story a director's quest to make the ultimate tango film.
Lonely after his wife left him, he must find the themes that will hold the film together, while simultaneously permitting his musicians and dancers the freedom of expression that is necessary to satisfy the tango-hungry Argentine audience.
His creative vision is challenged by his investors when he plans a scene that recreates Argentina's dark years of political suppression and "disappearances".
Directed by Carlos Saura.
The Tango Lesson (1997): This beautiful movie about a film maker who abandons her hot Hollywood screenplay when she meets a seductive tango dancer. Inspired by the writer/director/actress Sally Potter's own experience with the dancer Pablo Veron, the film brilliantly reveals the challenges of filmmaking, the seductions of the tango, and the complexities of love.
Arrabalera (1950): The film is a great classic of Argentine cinema, with figures like Tita Merello and Raul del Valle.
Directed by Tulio Demicheli.
Madreselva (1938): Another movie that figures among the best tango films ever done during tango's golden age in Argentina.
Includes singed songs by Libertad Lamarque and Hugo del Carril (great stars from that times).
Directed by Luis Cesar Amadori