Italy

IMDb user comments
A rather unusual agenda from Tinto Brass who obviously found later his niche in “t&a” movies. Col cuore in Gola is a psychedelic, pop art giallo that can just come from the great era of the late 60´s/70´s. Starting from the nice credits and music you immediately like this film and this is just the beginning! Trintignant founds in a nightclub a corpse beside the lovely Aulin who just says “I wasn’t it”. Convinced that she is innocent he wants to help her and want to find out the murderer, Aulins brother should solve this case and both are searching for him. Though not quite without problems… a dwarf in raincoat is following them in companion with some gangsters who kidnap Aulin. Jean is now searching for Aulin, Aulins brother and (of course) the murderer. The Story itself is not that convincing (rather unimportant) but what here is really of interest is the unconvential style of brass : splitscreen (even tripple split screens!) some scenes in black and dark yellow filter and more.., and in the “middle” of course the presence of two very convincing leads: cool Trintignant and hot Ewa Aulin.Read More »

Claudio is a blue-collar builder, almost blissfully happy with his ordinary family life, with his wife and two children. Then, tragedy strikes and Claudio sets off on an obsessive quest to become rich and successful by taking on an almost impossible-to-complete contract to construct an apartment block in record time. Claudio uses all his own, his friend’s and his family’s resources to try and succeed, while in fact coming closer and closer to disaster and ruin. Anchored by an intense and very impressive performance by Elio Germano (Romanze Criminale, Quo Vadis Baby) as Claudio, Our Life is a gritty, yet warm and human story. Almost like an Italian Ken Loach, director Daniele Luchetti depicts authentically working class life in Italy and the struggles of one man to rise above the corruption and compromises that beset him. Following on from Luchetti’s acclaimed previous film My Brother is an Only Child (premiered at LFF 2007) this is another arresting film; powerfully emotive, cinematic and satisfying. —BFI

Cannes Film Festival 2010: Best Actor (Elio Germano, ex-aequo)
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Each of the three women in this film shows a tendency to kill their human lovers, and two of them evince a sexual attachment to their pets. In the first story, the model for artist Raphael seduces and kills Raphael and another man. In the second, a girl with a suspiciously satisfying relationship with her pet rabbit murders her parents for killing her bunny. Finally, Marie has a dog whose unusual means of effecting her rescue not only saves her from a kidnapper, but gets her out of an unhappy marriage.
-All Movie GuideRead More »

Plot / Synopsis

In his 2006 obituary, The New York Times called Walerian Borowczyk “the internationally known filmmaker described variously as a genius, a pornographer, and a genius who also happened to be a pornographer.” And for the final film in his ‘Immoral Trilogy’, Borowczyk created one of the most lushly bizarre erotic tales of our time and perhaps the most ambitious work of his entire career. The setting is Rome, 8 A.D., where the poet Ovid watches over an epoch of forbidden seduction and unnatural acts among maidens, centurions, servant girls and the occasional farm animal. Marina Pierro , Laura Betti, Milena Vukotic and Massimo Girotti star in this sumptuous art/smut classic, now fully restored and presented uncensored.Read More »

Quote:
The film was based on a subject by Mario Gariazzo, a director who in the seventies, gravitated into the orbit of Daunia and to whom Fernando di Leo “lent a hand” by offering advice for his script – for his detective film, The Bloody Hands of the Law – and for the production of his western, Holy Water Joe and the tear-jerker, The Balloon Vendor, a story vaguely inspired by William Wyler’s famous film, The Desperate Hours. At the start it was Gariazzo who was to direct it but at the producers’ insistence he was finally replaced by di Leo.Read More »

Plot:
Tommaso (Riccardo Scamarcio, Eden Is West) has a comfortable life in Rome as an aspiring writer and a steady relationship with his boyfriend Marco—a life he has kept secret from his family. So when he’s called back to his hometown of Lecce in Italy’s deep south to help run the family pasta business, he decides to finally reveal his homosexuality to his conservative family and hopefully get out of his business obligations in the process. But when his plans are thwarted by his brother, Tommaso gets stuck on the path that he was desperately trying to avoid.Read More »

Synopsis

Quote:
Bernardo Bertolucci’s vast historical melodrama used the massive popular, critical, and financial success of its predecessor, the scandalous LAST TANGO IN PARIS, to mount a production of epic scale. Cut down to four hours for its American release, the film utilizes an all-star Hollywood…
Bernardo Bertolucci’s vast historical melodrama used the massive popular, critical, and financial success of its predecessor, the scandalous LAST TANGO IN PARIS, to mount a production of epic scale. Cut down to four hours for its American release, the film utilizes an all-star Hollywood cast to tell its heavily Marxist tale of Italian peasants during the twentieth century. Two boys born on the same day are destined for divergent paths; Olmo (played by Gerard Depardeiu as an adult) is born to peasant parents and will become a passionate socialist, while Alfredo’s (Robert De Niro as an adult) bourgeois, landowning origins will lead him to ultimately embrace fascism. Driven by a sincere hope for and belief in political change, Bertolucci’s film is nonetheless made up of very humane individual stories; it concentrates on highly personal experiences of a politically-charged time, which color the little dramas of love, sex, family, and community. It is at once an epic poem and a political manifesto, and it is the product of a director who was unabashedly communist in his youth, contrasting markedly with later works like 2003’s THE DREAMERS.Read More »

Storyline

A crown, supposedly made from a nail out of the Cross of Christ and the metal of Roman swords, becomes a legend and a symbol of justice.

Imdb user review:
Wonderul Vintage Epic from Italia!, 18 October 2003
8/10
Author: olddiscs from Fords, NJ

Bravo Blassetti ! Bravo Massimo Girotti ! What a surprise from Italy! An Epic saga..Mythological & religious…Sort of an Italian Star Wars meets Robin Hood meets Ben Hur ! Action ! Lust ! Mythological settings ! Forests, loincloths ,moats,chariots, swords, jousting & a story line which never loses your interest!!What a Spectacle !! predates most of our great spectacular films of the 1950s by many yrs (Ok, we had silent films King of Kings & 10 Commandments & some other De Mille Films, Sign of the Cross etc) but this mythological setting was unusual for the times… Cant wait to see again.. Massimo Girotti whose work I know from Senso & later Medea is excellent… rest of cast were not known to me & also not aware of director, Blassetti…. now I am !Will look forward to viewing The Iron Crown again,.and other films by Blassetti..Thanks again TCM !!Read More »

from IMDB:
The deranged Roman emperor Gainus ‘Caligula’ (Little Boots) Caesar (12-41 A.D.) rules Rome with an iron fist and has anyone tortured and exectued for even the slightest insubordination. Mostly set during his last year of his reign, as Caligula loses support due to his brutal and crazed excess, a young Moor woman, named Miriam, becomes his lover while ploting to kill him to avenge the murder of a friend which Caligula was responsible for. But Miriam is torn between her personal vandeda against Caligula and her own personal feelings towards him despite his madness and debauched lifestyle of orgies and bloody torture murders. Written by Matthew PatayRead More »