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Political terror hits home, as a Buenos Aires teacher and housewife discovers that her family life is not only a lie, it’s a lie grounded in government treachery and murder. Forget conspiracy foolishness, for Luis Puenzo’s Oscar-winning tale is based on solid, documented truth, with an American connection. This is one of the first of the modern filmic political exposés from Latin America.

The Official Story

Blu-ray

The Cohen Collection

1985 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 112 min. / La historia oficial / Street Date October 9, 2018 / 25.99

Starring: Héctor Alterio, Norma Aleandro, Chunchuna Villafañe,

Hugo Arana, Guillermo Battaglia, Chela Ruíz.

Cinematography: Félix Monti

Film Editor: Juan Carlos Macías

Original Music: Atilio Stampone, María Elena Walsh

Written by Aída Bortnik, Luis Puenzo

Produced by Marcelo Piñeyro

Directed by Luis Puenzo

In 1986, Luis Puenzo’s film The Official Story won both an Oscar and a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. A few years earlier, any...

Best known to most cinephiles as the director behind one of the great out of print Criterion Collection releases, director Carlos Saura is so very much more than just the auteur at the center of Criterion’s sixth Eclipse series release. Making films starting in the late 50’s, the now 84-year-old filmmaker has been behind some of the most visually striking works spanning fiction and non-fiction storytelling. Be it his bravura Flamenco Trilogy for which he is most widely known, or the features like Cria Cuervos featuring one of star Geraldine Chaplin’s greatest performances, Saura’s filmography is filled to the brim with singular visions truly without comparison.

Argentina is the latest film from Saura, and this owes more to his aforementioned documentary work than some of his narrative features. In the vein of a film like Flamenco, Flamenco, Argentina takes an approach to discussing the history of Argentina...

The Eyes Have It: Ray’s Unnecessary Remakes Pales Next to Source

Thanks to mainstream America’s huffy dismissal of subtitles when it comes to cinema, we continue with another unnecessary remake of a foreign film, Secret in Their Eyes, an English language, celebrity studded face-lift of Argentinean Juan Jose Campanella’s 2009 title (which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film that year). Screenwriter Billy Ray, after snagging his own Oscar nod in 2014 for penning Captain Philips, makes his third directorial effort here, following 2007’s Breach and 2003’s Shattered Glass. Reworking Campanella’s pulpy subtext into a post 9/11 Los Angeles neo noir, kudos to Ray for revisiting a particularly awkward moment within a provocative framework. But the result is a glossy, Hollywood reworking which never feels better than a subpar rehash of something much greater. To be fair, Campanella’s original has its own set of problems, with...

This Oscar-winning Argentinian thriller packs emotional punch and a dazzlingly virtuosic narrative

There is usually, and often with justification, serious criticism of the movie voted by the American Film Academy to receive its Oscar for best film in a foreign language. It happened again this year when the international critics' anointed contenders – Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon and Jacques Audiard's A Prophet – were ignored in favour of Juan José Campanella's The Secret in Their Eyes. Well, Haneke's picture is certainly more original and Audiard's altogether harsher, but Campanella's Argentinian thriller is a film of subtlety, distinction and depth that in most other years would have made it appear a very worthy recipient. Moreover, it seems an apt choice to mark what Sight & Sound celebrates on the front page of its September edition as "The Rise and Rise of Latin American Cinema" over the past decade.

The film's...

Release Date: Out Now (Limited) Director: Juan José Campanella Writers: Campanella, Eduardo Sacheri Starring: Ricardo Darín, Soledad Villamil, Pablo Rago, Javier Godino, Guillermo Francella Cinematographer: Félix Monti Studio/Run Time: Sony Pictures Classics, 127 min. A great secret For its first hour, The Secret in Their Eyes is a conventional crime thriller focusing on the investigation of a rape/murder case that goes awry in exactly the ways audiences have learned to expect: with a frame-up, red tape and bad luck preventing the suspect’s arrest. And then writer-director Juan José Campanella takes the gloves off and delivers one of the...