This is a continuation of my list of must-see Italian movies.
Il Divo
I'd recommend seeing anything and everything by Sorrentino, LOVE him.
Tutta la vita davanti
Virzi is another brilliant young Italian director.
Grande, grosso e Verdone
Verdone always delivers...
La ragazza del lago
Worth it.
and lastly Gomorra
I'm not 100% sold on this film, I read the book (most of it) and I'm not sure this was the best approach for the subject matter BUT it's definitely worth seeing. I would also highly suggest seeing some of Garrone's other films, he's got serious talent.
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*not for the faint of heart
About Me
- Romerican
- My love affair with Rome began over 15 years ago when I moved here... and as often happens with love affairs, the honeymoon is over! This blog is all about my love/hate relationship with Rome and Italy.
4 comments:
Il Divo and Gomorra picked up some major awards at Cannes yesterday. I want to see all the films you mentioned today.
I really like Virzi's Caterina Va in City (he did direct that right?). What is the plot of Tutta la Vita davanti?
I checked out your other list. Best of Youth is one of my favorites as is I'm Not Scared. At least they were released in the States. I was reading an American writer's review of Il Divo (he praised it) and he was saying the chances of anyone in America seeing it are slim. Fewer and fewer foreign films are getting distributed in the States. That number is going to drop now that Picturehouse has been shut down by Warner Bros. sigh!
I also wrote a post on how we lost two giants of cinema on the same day and the state of Hollywood films. I hate to sound like some old fogey but it's sad. A movie can be brilliant and commercial. The studios used to do it all the time. Today it's all about comic books and tentpole movie and maybe the "indie" divisions will do something interesting.
Yeah, I read about their success in Cannes too. Hopefully Italian cinema is on the upswing!
Gotta tell you, I was not of fan of Caterina Va in Citta. It was chock full of annoying cliches and stereotypes, I'm not sure if that came across to people who aren't familiar with the different social/political classes in Italy. All in all, I found it an annoying movie. Sorry =(
Tutta la vita davanti is about the sad state of the Italian workplace. Here's a good link in english about it:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/10/arts/fmvita.php
I'm also a huge fan of Best of Youth & I'm not Scared. I did the official translation for both films and enjoyed every minute of it! What version of Best of Youth did you see? I know in the States they showed a shorter cut on on TV (I think it was on Sundance channel maybe?).
Sadly for me and for people in my field, there are fewer and fewer films to translate because of the reasons you mentioned. It's getting rough here, even my friends who work in production are feeling it.
Even though not all Hollywood films are not masterpieces, I still think new Italian directors could learn a thing or two from them about photography and directing. A majority of modern Italian films are flat- I don't just mean the plot, I mean visually too. It's sooooo sad given that Italians were top notch cinema masters a mere 40 years ago....
no need to apologize :) Compared to most of our teen movies it seemed Oscar worthy.
re: Best of Youth, I bought the 2-DVD set that Miramax released in the States so I have seen the entire thing, a few times. I just loved that movie. Very moving at times.
Interesting what you said about how the movies look. We get so few overseas so I think the ones we tend to get are the award winning/stronger films like I'm Not Scared or Respiro.
I read Gomorra (the english version) and I am very curious to see how that was adapted to a film.
"We get so few overseas so I think the ones we tend to get are the award winning/stronger films like I'm Not Scared or Respiro."
Esatto. You're spared all the crap that gets released here ;)
Humm, maybe I should also compile a list of the worst Italian films!
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