Jay Harris This is not a happy, joyful film. There was a period where innocent people were arrested & brutally questioned & subsequently disappeared.This tragedy occurred in many countries around the world,Antonio Bandares & Emma Thompson are a happily married couple with a teen aged daughter. Emma is arrested for no good reason, The rest of film is Antonio's search. It is a very grim search.This is perhaps Antonio Bandares' best role to date.Why this had such a poor release in the US or anywhere is beyond me.The Director & screenplay writer is Christopher Hampton, an Oscar winner for Dangerous Liassons, Emma Thompsin is an Oscar winner, & Antonio Bandares is a major star.This is an excellently acted & made film. It is not for children, as it is quite violent & there are more than a few scary images.It is a fine drama & should be see, It is in English.rating:***1/2 (out of 4)91 points (out or 100) IMDb 8 (out of 10)

dy158 History classes had taught me some of the darkest moments in modern history. And I always seemed to be gasping away when learning about it. Don't even get me started talking about it.We had been living in a civilised society and we should be thankful for it. History had shown us how sometimes life can be just...not really the way we want to live at times.The movie, which is based on Lawerence Thorton's work of the same name, tells about the military dictatorship that Argentina went through during 1976-1983 through the eyes of a theatre director husband Carlos (Antonio Banderas) and his journalist wife Cecilia (Emma Thompson).During those darkest moments, many were captured and Cecilia were among the targets as well where unfortunately, she was captured too. Given she is a journalist herself and she wanted to report about the suffering. At the same time, Carlos seemed to have this psychic power about knowing the future and where his wife might be. He knew he had to find her, no matter what happens.Even to the point that the theatre that he owned had to be closed down.The price of human suffering through military dictatorship is clear for all to see. You get people who are living in fear. And those who dare to defy the dictatorship.Maybe speaking from someone like me who was once a History student, I felt even more horrified and aghast when watching this movie. It's just, scary.

jimmylee-1 So, I'm not the best at keeping up with current events. I have a job that I spent most of my time at to keep from being laid off. Local newspaper information about other countries and governments tends to be skimpy and colored by what the newspaper thinks we're interested in seeing.I am eternally grateful to live where I do, but it's only through books like "House of Spirits" and "Bitter Winds" that I really hear about other regimes.Because I spend a lot of time at a job that isn't exactly relaxing, I'm not hot on movies that are stressful. Classic musicals, comedies, and movies that have big names or get a lot of buzz are movies I'm likely to see. If this move had been made in Spanish and lacked Thompson and Banderas, I wouldn't have seen it. If that means the movie wasn't true to Argentina as some of the reviewers have indicated, well, at least the story reached one more person this way.Maybe the story had some holes in it (OK, the ESP thing was a little far fetched), but the overall impression of the method used to administer "political" power in a oppressive regime will never leave me. (And the movie reminded me why isolating armaments to a military group is a really bad idea.) Several comments from the reviewers were incredibly moving, made me appreciate all the more that I live where I do, and made me very glad that I did see this movie.

kessingler Id say 4/10 is a generous rating for this one. The subject the movie is based on is a very serious one, and most importantly, something that no one ever talks about.Around the 70s most Latin American countries turned to socialism/Marxism governments, but by the time it was 1975 all of the same countries were under a harsh right-wing dictatorship supported by the U.S., in cases like in Chile or Brazil, the U.S. spend millions to overthrown socialist governments. It was the middle of the cold war and the battlefield was third world countries, for us Latin-Americans, we only get one side of the story, and usually is the American side.The best weapon of any harsh dictatorship has always been to suppress anyone who speaks against it. It happens in Cuba with dissidents, it happens in Middle East with "infidels", it happens in Asia with communist regimes and those who want to turn them into democracies, it happened in Nazi Germany and it happened in Latin America as well.Imagining Argentina is about that, is about people who "disappear" and about the government who then lies shamelessly about it. Its a great material for any movie, yet its just so poorly treated on this movie.Banderas is a man who lost his wife, and suddenly gains the mysterious psychic power of miss Cleo and can see what happened to people who disappeared, so he makes up a support group on Thursdays to share his talents with others like him (who have also lost a loved one). The directing is amateurish as the acting of the thing, we see talented and gifted actors like Thompson, Blades and Banderas acting very woodenly (specially Thompson), to top that the soundtrack is very generic; if there is a sad scene, guitar will do it, if there's an even sadder scene, violins will do then.One thing to reckon to this type of movies that seem to come straight out of "Amnesty International Films", is that they WILL educate you about what is wrong with the world and that you haven't seen (such as the current genocide in Sudan for example, which although takes the life of 10000 people every month, is still labeled as a "clan war" by U.S. media), yet devices, tricks and metaphors are usually used to accomplish that, yet none of that is used on this movie and when it is, you bet your first born you've seen it before in "Schindler's List". There was a tremendous opportunity on this movie, yet a crappy production and a even crappier direction ruined that. I wouldn't recommend this one, these are serious issues that should be taken seriously, not with psychic powers...