Alien Resurrection

(Twentieth Century Fox)

Filmmaker Bruno Barreto (Doña Flor and Her Two Husbands) returns to 1969, when a Marxist guerrilla cadre called the October 8 Revolutionary Movement kidnapped the American ambassador to Brazil, Charles Burke Elbrick (Alan Arkin), and held him captive, demanding the release of 15 political prisoners. Barreto sticks close to the life of one of the kidnappers, Fernando Gaberia (Pedro Cardoso), which may explain why the scenes among the young revolutionaries feel so credible, and so claustrophobic. It's the kind of controlled, ideologically coherent, true-to-history political drama nobody makes any more.