Alfonso Arau Filmography

Born:: January 11, 1932 in Mexico City, Mexico
Occupation:: Actor, Director, Producer
Biography:: Mexican actor and director Alfonso Arau's first American film role was as bloodthirsty bandit Herrera in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969), a role he would later parody (albeit with a straight face) in the 1986 comedy Three Amigos! U.S. filmgoers were by and large unaware that Arau had long...Read More

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Tin Tan

Actors: Carlos Monsivais, Jorge Ayala Blanco, Rafael Avina, Froylan Lopez Narvaez, Jacobo Zabludovsky

Synopsis: Manuel Marquez's documentary Tin Tan tells the life story of the beloved Mexican film star who rocketed to fame in his native country soon after the end of WWII. The film shows how the success and decline of the actor's fortunes were intertwined with Mexican cinema as a whole. ~ Perry Seibert, All Read More

2005
A Painted House

Crew: Director

Actors: Logan Lerman, Scott Glenn, Robert Sean Leonard, Arija Bareikis, Melinda Dillon

Synopsis: Based on John Grisham's semi-autobiographical novel (which he regarded as his favorite because it "contains no lawyers"), A Painted House is set in the rural community of Oak Park, AR, in 1952. The story is told through the eyes of ten-year-old Luke Chandler (Logan Lerman), who lives and works on Read More

2003
The Magnificent Ambersons

Crew: Director

Actors: Madeleine Stowe, Bruce Greenwood, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Gretchen Mol, Jennifer Tilly

Synopsis: This lavish, cable-TV remake of Orson Welles' The Magnficent Ambersons endeavored to prove Welles right by adhering to his original screenplay, restoring several scenes which provided additional substance and significance to the story and deepened the characterizations. Set in Indianapolis at the Read More

2001
Committed

Actors: Heather Graham, Casey Affleck, Luke Wilson, Goran Visnjic, Patricia Velasquez

Synopsis: Heather Graham stars in this indie exploration of love and marital commitment directed by Lisa Krueger. A hardcore believer in the sanctity of marriage, plucky Joline (Graham) is stunned when her husband Carl (Luke Wilson) abruptly dumps her, leaving only a vaguely-worded note to explain himself. Read More

4/28/00
Catch a Falling Star

Crew: Director

Actors: Sela Ward, Rebecca Jenkins, Andrew Jackson, Jane Curtin, John Slattery

Synopsis: While on a location shoot, spoiled movie actress Sydney Clarke (Sela Ward) clashes with her equally temperamental director. Storming off the set in a snit, Sydney gets lost in the woods, then hitches a ride to a small New England steel town -- where, amazingly, no one seems to recognize her. Read More

2000
Picking Up the Pieces

Crew: Director

Actors: Woody Allen, David Schwimmer, Maria Grazia Cucinotta, Cheech Marin, Kiefer Sutherland

Synopsis: A crime of passion unwittingly leads to a "miracle" in this satirical comedy. Tex (Woody Allen) is a butcher who is married to Candy (Sharon Stone), a former exotic dancer who has no skill or enthusiasm for fidelity. Unhappy with her extramarital affairs, Tex kills Candy while performing a "sawing Read More

2000
A Walk in the Clouds

Crew: Director

Actors: Keanu Reeves, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, Anthony Quinn, Giancarlo Giannini, Angélica Aragón

Synopsis: In this atmospheric romantic drama, Keanu Reeves plays Paul Sutton, who has just returned home from a stretch in the Army during World War II. Still reeling from the horrors of war, Paul wants to settle down and start a farm, but his wife Betty (Debra Messing), whom he met and impulsively married Read More

1995
Like Water for Chocolate

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Lumi Cavazos, Marco Leonardi, Regina Torne, M. Martinez, Ada Carrasco

Synopsis: Based on the best-selling novel by Laura Esquival, this internationally popular romantic fable from Mexico centers on a young woman who discovers that her cooking has magical effects. The tale's heroine, Tita, is the youngest of three daughters in a traditional Mexican family. Bound by tradition Read More

1993
Camino Largo a Tijuana

Actors: Pedro Armendariz, Jr., Ofelia Medina

Synopsis: Lila (Patricia Pereyra) is a teenaged heroin addict who is on the run from some rough customers. It doesn't matter to her that these unpleasant characters were hired by her parents to drag her back to her home. She stumbles into an auto junkyard and is befriended by the manager, Juan (Pedro Armendariz, Jr. Read More

1988
Stones for Ibarra

Actors: Glenn Close, Keith Carradine

Synopsis: Glenn Close and Keith Carradine are the only non-Latino cast members of the made-for-TV Stones for Ibarra. Close and Carradine portray a San Francisco couple who feel they've lost touch with life's meaning. They journey to a tiny Mexican village, where they find themselves sharing the Read More

1988
Dynamite and Gold

Actors: Jack Elam, Alfonso Arau, Willie Nelson

Synopsis: Dynamite & Gold is the videocassette title of the made-for-TV western comedy Where the Hell's That Gold? Willie Nelson plays a bank robber, Delta Burke his "moll" and Jack Elam and all-around gol-durned sidewinder. The three stars scrounge for a hidden fortune in stolen gold, fending off other Read More

1988
Walker

Actors: Ed Harris, Marlee Matlin, Peter Boyle, Blanca Guerra, Keith Szarabajka, Richard Masur, Sy Richardson

Synopsis: Alex Cox directed this hallucinatory bio-pic starring Ed Harris as 19th-century American adventurer William Walker, who abandoned a series of careers in law, politics, journalism, and medicine to become a soldier of fortune and eventually a Nicaraguan dictator. When his deaf wife (Marlee Matlin) Read More

12/4/87
Aviso Inoportuno

Synopsis: Mexico City does not hold jobs for two actors as related in this story. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

1987
Three Amigos!

Actors: Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, Martin Short, Patrice Martinez, Alfonso Arau

Synopsis: This slapstick farce features Dusty Bottoms (Chevy Chase), Lucky Day (Steve Martin), and Ned Nederlander (Martin Short), as three silent movie cowboy stars who get the axe from their Hollywood studio. Just at that opportune moment, a woman named Carmen (Patrice Martinez) asks them to come to her Read More

12/12/86
Tacos De Oro

Crew: Director

1986
Romancing the Stone

Actors: Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, Danny DeVito, Zack Norman, Alfonso Arau

Synopsis: Kathleen Turner plays a writer of adventure stories, Joan Wilder, who has been having trouble selling her works of late because they aren't remotely believable. The basic problem is that the mousy Joan has never had any real adventure in her life. All this changes when she receives a frantic phone Read More

1984
El Dia Que Murió Pedro Infante

Actors: Humberto Zurita, Delia Casanova, Luz Maria Jerez, Tina Baker

Synopsis: Adeptly manipulating images and scenes, director Claudio Isaac has fashioned an existential story about the aspirations of Pablo Rueda (Humberto Zurita), born on the day that Pedro Infante died. (Infante was a popular, well-loved Mexican singer and actor who died in a 1957 plane crash.) Rueda's Read More

1982
Used Cars

Actors: Kurt Russell, Jack Warden, Frank McRae, Gerritt Graham, Deborah Harmon, Michael McKean

Synopsis: Used Cars is one of Robert Zemeckis' pre-Roger Rabbit and pre-Forrest Gump efforts starring Kurt Russell is a devious car salesman who goes to work for affable but monumentally unsuccessful used car dealer Jack Warden. Warden's principal rival is his more prosperous twin brother, also played by Read More

1980
Mojado Power

Crew: Director, Producer

1979
Posse

Actors: Kirk Douglas, Bruce Dern, Bo Hopkins, James Stacy, Luke Askew

Synopsis: Kirk Douglas produced, directed, and starred in this cynical western concerning Howard Nightingale (Kirk Douglas) a United States marshal who uses the pursuit of an outlaw to further his political career. Nightingale organizes a posse to track down Jack Strawhorn (Bruce Dern), a notorious bank Read More

1975
El Rincon de las Virgines

Synopsis: In rural Mexico, during the silent-film era, people who could read were delegated to narrate the films' story cards. In this film, Lucas Lucatero not only performed that chore, but traveled around with a charismatic peddler, Anacieto Morones (Emilio Fernandes) who at some point began to pass Read More

1974
Calzonzin Inspector

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Synopsis: Based on the comic strip "The Super Machos," this fun tale is about a man who comes into a small town and is mistaken for a government inspector. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide Read More

1973
Bonanza: Customs of the Country

Actors: Lorne Greene, Michael Landon, Dan Blocker, Alfonso Arau, Alan Oppenheimer

Synopsis: Hoss and Joe Cartwright are arrested in a Mexican border town and thrown in jail. Hoss is all for expediting the trial, but Joe is in no hurry: He's being treated like a king, with beautiful Ines (Pilar Seurat) and various other senoritas waiting on him hand and foot. Only when it is almost too Read More

1972
Run, Cougar, Run

Synopsis: In this nature adventure, a courageous cougar must struggle to survive after a cruel human hunter kills her mate. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

1972
Scandalous John

Actors: Freddie Hernandez, Brian Keith

Synopsis: The Old West is just not the same, what with so few cattle being run, and law-abiding folk running around like they own everything. In this family comedy drama, it's too much for John McCanless (Brian Keith). He is a cranky old rancher and former gunslinger who has no intention of selling his Read More

1971
El Topo

Actors: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Brontis Jodorowsky, Alfonso Arau, Jose Luis Fernandez, Gerardo Cepeda, Rene Barrera

Synopsis: This violent and allegorical Mexican western attracted a cult following in its day. It is the story of El Topo, a gunslinger who sets out for revenge against the outlaws who slew his wife. He ends up getting his revenge and saving the life of a woman who is being terrorized by bandits. She leads Read More

1971
The Wild Bunch

Actors: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien, Warren Oates

Synopsis: "If they move, kill 'em!" Beginning and ending with two of the bloodiest battles in screen history, Sam Peckinpah's classic revisionist Western ruthlessly takes apart the myths of the West. Released in the late '60s discord over Vietnam, in the wake of the controversial Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Read More

1969
Operacion Carambola

1967
Viaje A La Luna

1958
El Casto Susano

Actors: Antonio Aguilar, Joaquin Pardave, Silvia Pinal, Fernando Fernandez, Fanny Schiller

1952
El Jardin De La Tia Isabel
Jovenes En La Zona Rosa