The best João Bénard da Costa’s movies
We present our ranking of the best João Bénard da Costa’s movies. Do you love cinema? Or are you looking for a movie of your favorite actor to watch tonight? Surely you have some to see or that you did not know yet about João Bénard da Costa.
To Each His Own Cinema
6.8/10
A collective film of 33 shorts directed by different directors about their feeling about cinema.
The Convent
5.9/10
The journey of Michael Padovic, an American professor who arrives with his wife, Helene, at a Portuguese convent where he expects to find the documents needed to prove his theory: Shakespeare was born in Spain; not in England.
Doomed Love
7.4/10
A story about doomed love between two people from different worlds and the impact in their lives.
Francisca
7.1/10
The life of a young man, son of an English officer who lets himself become a prisoner of love resulting in fatalism and disgrace.
Magic Mirror
6.8/10
Luciano, fresh out of jail, was taken by his brother, Flórido, to serve in the home of wealthy Alfreda. He was surprised when she told him that her greatest desire was to see the Virgin Mary. Now comes this rich land owner with her sublime pretensions. Isn't it enough for her to have an Aston Martin and a Jaguar in the garage and ten different dresses per season? It was all professor Heschel's fault. Or someone else's. Anyway, to go beyond the promise is heresy. Alfreda said that she wouldn't rest until she saw the Virgin and made her some questions. Filipe Quinta, the Forger, says he has a solution. Meanwhile, Bahia, her husband, listens do music.
Porto of My Childhood
7.1/10
Manoel de Oliveira's autobiographical documentary about returning to his hometown.
The Mountains of the Moon
5.9/10
This visually striking drama is taken from the classic Japanese novel Tales Of Genji by Marasaki Shikibu. Set in modern Portugal, Joao (Luis Miguel Cintra) is a left-wing political leader and ladies man with a bright future. His ex-wife Isabel (Manuela de Freitas) both loves and hates him as Joao plays on her wavering emotional state. He is sent to Italy to retrieve wayward family member Antonia (Caroline Chaniolleau), the beautiful young woman with a terrorist boyfriend. Joao is forced to recognize his feelings as the political and amorous climate changes around him.
The Territory
6.3/10
A small group of well-to-do vacationers go on a hiking trip into the woods. Foolishly unprepared to deal with Mother Nature and their situation, they wander around lost for days and weeks, becoming more and more fatigued, hungry, and desperate. A brief encounter with a pair of epicureans on a bridge fails to garner them any of the gluttons' feast due to a language barrier. Eventually their party begins to die, and the survivors ration their meat among them, attaching a religious-type ritual to its dispensation.
Blind Man's Bluff
6.8/10
A blind beggar is robbed of his chest of money. The theft leads to a dramatic situation in the street where he begs every day.
Cinemaamor
5.3/10
Joaquim is a romantic supermarket employee. He has only one friend Gaspar, who speaks almost only for cinematic quotes. At leisure, go around town looking for the right woman. But when found, she throws herself from a balcony. Then comes a dance, as in a musical, and an obvious surprise...
A movie about beauty and glory that has more love stories.
Word and Utopia
6.5/10
The story of Father Antonio Vieira, a 17th-century Portuguese priest who lived in Brazil and worked for better treatment of the Indians and to abolish slavery.
No, or the Vain Glory of Command
7.2/10
Episodes from entire military history of Portugal are told through flashbacks as a professorish soldier recounts them while marching through a Portuguese African colony in 1973.
The Satin Slipper
6.9/10
During the century of the Spanish Gold, Doña Prouhèze, wife of a nobleman, deeply loves Don Rodrigo, who is forced to leave Spain and go to America. Meanwhile Prouhèze is sent to Africa to rule the city of Mogador. Ten years later Rodrigo leaves America and travels to Africa in search of Prouhèze to find out that she died and eventually meeting her daughter.
City of Pirates
7.3/10
A surreal odyssey in which a melancholic maidservant crosses paths with a homicidal little boy, travels to a tiny island of pirates and encounters a man with multiple personalities.
Love Torn in Dreams
7.1/10
A serious young man of free spirit is forced by his surroundings to become rich at all costs. A group of blind children tries to open the eyes of the unbelievers to the Christian faith. Retired nuns who open a brothel, to pay the running costs of the convent. These rather ironic paradoxes turn this fairytale into a philosophical fable.
Oxalá
6.7/10
A man exiled in Paris makes various trips to Portugal after the Carnation Revolution. Each trip is represented by a woman.
Fragile as the World
7/10
An impossible love. Two young people who love each other. Vera and João can’t find in this life the space, time, or identity to resolve their love story.
The Uncertainty Principle
6.7/10
Having lost her place among the social elite, a widow remarries and starts a family.
Aqui D'El Rei!
6.1/10
At the end of the nineteenth century, an army force led by Major Mouzinho de Albuquerque, a cavalry officer, imprisoned in Mozambique the great regulative Governor Gungunhana, who had rebelled against Portuguese government and sovereignty
Past and Present
7.1/10
This is an intriguing avant-garde look at what motivates the leisurely classes in Portugal, for better or worse, by director Manoel de Oliveira. Set in a spacious country home peopled with a wide-ranging cast of characters, the drama begins as the friends of a widow come to console her on the loss of her husband. But at one point, the widow goes upstairs, encounters her husband, and is faced with his accusations about the past. This event and others provide the means of revealing the petty, self-serving, egocentric, and romantic pursuits of the melange of people in the house. - Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
