Italy

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The contemporary architecture of Rome – rather than the traditionally seen Roman viaducts and amphitheatres – are at the heart of the beautifully shot and winsomely appealing Nina, which charts the oddball escapades of a young woman in a depopulated Rome during one hot summer.

The film is a playfully familiar story of a young woman drifting through life as she tries to find some sort of direction, but debut director Elisa Fuksas – a trained architect and daughter of famed Italian architects Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas – shoots with a real eye for structure and shape, making this Roman holiday interlude an enjoyable and often heart-warming tale. The film had its world premiere in competition at the Tokyo International Film Festival.Read More »

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However trivial – or downright ridiculous – the plot may become, Freda shows a mastery of sheer cinematic style that puts most of the more highly-touted Italian directors to shame. Like Minnelli or Sirk, Mizoguchi or Ophuls, Visconti or Fellini, he is in love with the visual and sensuous possibilities of the camera itself. The breathtaking decor and costumes (by Vittorio Nino Novarese, who went on to dress the most elephantine of Hollywood epics) are as strong a dramatic presence as the actors themselves. That’s no slight against the cast: Gassman was as great an actor as Marcello Mastroianni; Sanson and Canale are as strong as they are sensual, as gutsy as they are glamorous – a world away from the insipid sex objects that decorate most action movies!Read More »

L’Inconsolable
2010, 14 minutes 44 secondes, couleur
D’après L’inconsolabile, Dialogues avec Leucò de Cesare Pavese.

Sept des Dialogues avec Leucò (1947) sont mis en scène dans De la Nuée à la résistance (1979), cinq le sont dans Ces rencontres avec eux (2006). Le genou d’Artémide (2009), Femmes entre elles (2009) puis L’inconsolable (2011) en constituent donc les treizième, quatorzième et quinzième adaptations.Read More »

Synopsis:
Director Pier Paolo Pasolini visits the original sites of the Gospel: Lake Tiberius, the Jordan River and Jerusalem., looking for the locations for The Gospel According To St. Matthew.Read More »

Assola is an imaginary village on the border between Italy and France and the borderline crosses the village itself. The French customs agent Ferdinand is always trying to catch the Italian smuggler Giuseppe. Giuseppe discovers that Ferdinand was actually born in Italy and therefore he can’t be a French customs agent.Read More »

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Greek Sea, World War II. An Italian ship leaves a handful of soldiers in a little island; their mission is to spot enemy ships and to hold the island in case of attack. The village of the island seems abandoned and there isn’t a single enemy in sight, so the soldiers begin to relax a little. Things change when their ship is hit and destroyed by the enemy, and the soldiers find themselves abandoned there. Actually, the island isn’t deserted and when the Greeks understand that those Italians are harmless, they came out of their hiding places in the mountains and continue their peaceful lives. Soon the soldiers discover that being left behind in a God-forgotten Greek island isn’t such a bad thing, after all…Read More »

This tiresome comedy features pop singer Enzo Jannacci as Amedeo, a country rube who comes to Vatican City seeking a personal audience with the Pope. Detailing Amedeo’s battle with officious Vatican bureaucrats and bungling attempts to catch the Pope off-guard, the film rarely rises to the level of director Marco Ferreri’s more subversive farces and resembles nothing more than a 1970s Neapolitan-style Pauly Shore vehicle. Italian film buffs will still appreciate the cast, which includes Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Piccoli of La Cage aux Folles as well as Claudia Cardinale, Vittorio Gassman, and Alain Cuny. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie GuideRead More »

“Laughing Water – Mine Ha-Ha” is based on “Mine-Haha or Physical Education of Young Girls” by German author Frank Wedekind (Spring Awakening, Lulu, Pandora’s Vase). Thuringia, Germany, in the early 20th century. A group of young girls are brought up in a college withinh dark forests and gloomy lakes. Young Hidalla and her friends Irene, Vera, Blanka, Melusine and Rain are brought up in an isolated world: the girls don’t know anything about live outside the college’s high walls. At the age of 16, some of them start asking questions about their origins, their parents and the true purposes of the Headmistresses strict rules. When two of them disappear mysteriously, the initial fairytale atmosphere grows more and more eerie. Will the inspector from the nearby city discover the real purpose of the college? Will Hidalla be successful in her revolt against the destiny assigned to her by the Headmistress?Read More »

In this stylish and offbeat black comedy, Benito ( Jerry Calà) keeps a diary of his sexual fantasies and cravings. As a result of his on-again, off-again relationship with the beautiful and insatiable Luigia (Sabrina Ferilli), his thoughts along these lines have grown increasingly bizarre. For his own part, he is driven to pick up and bed women at almost every opportunity. As the fantasies recorded in his diary consume more and more of his life, and grow darker and darker, his ordinary waking life becomes flatter and duller, until he disappears altogether.
Clarke Fountain, All Movie GuideRead More »