Federico Pacifici Movies

A fresh-faced law student and a crafty card shark form a volatile friendship based on mutual treachery in Maximum Velocity director Daniele Vicari's adaptation of Gianrico Carofiglio's best-selling novel. At first, all fast friends Giorgio (Elio Germano) and Francesco (Michele Riondino) were interested in was playing a little poker and making some extra cash, but it didn't take long for greed to take hold and before long the pair had begun their fateful descent down the slippery slope of criminality. After realizing the profit they could make by rigging the game, the two con artists realized that in order to maintain their lavish lifestyle they would have to get creative. Before long, Giorgio and Francesco were dealing drugs and making a killing. But the further down the rabbit hole they ventured, the more detached Giorgio grew from his middle-class family and the more unpredictable his partner in crime became. By the time a sinister, more violent side of Francesco's personality began to emerge, it was far too late for turning back. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

The life of the reluctant Old Testament prophet is told in this made-for-television biblical drama. When the Pharaoh Ramses calls for the death of all Hebrew children, a mother puts her son Moses in a basket and sends him down the Nile to save his life. The baby is found by a princess and raised as the heir to the family throne. Called upon by God, the hesitant Moses (Ben Kingsley) accepts the challenge to lead his enslaved people out of Egypt for what becomes a 40-year journey into the promised land. This extravagant production was nominated for the "Outstanding Mini-Series" Emmy. ~ Bernadette McCallion, Rovi

Originally titled La Corsa Dell'Innocente, this Italian drama focuses on that country's ongoing wave of kidnappings. The early scenes focus on a large, outwardly normal Italian family who happen to make their living by abducting wealthy children and holding them for ransom. When the family is wiped out by a rival gang, only 10-year-old Vito (Manuel Coalo) survives. Any other child would go to the police at this point, but Vito has been raised never to trust the police -- or anyone else, for that matter. There is an abundance of dramatic irony in store for the audience when the fleeing Vito is sheltered by the affluent Rienzi family, whose own child has recently been kidnapped. It soon becomes clear that Vito is simply not cut from his family's criminal cloth, and the decisions he makes show a clear sense of ethics and a determination to set right the vicious actions of his family. This marvelously multitextured film represented the directorial debut of Carlo Carlei. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

One of the more difficult docudramas to come out of Italy in recent years, this is a fictionalized account of the murders that occurred in Florence once a year between 1970 and 1985. The difficulty lies in the fact that the movie was made without the criminal ever being caught. And so the director and writer do not have any idea who he is and have to postulate a young killer whose problems started in early childhood because of a traumatic sexual encounter he witnessed. This serial killer only murders lovers. Another difficulty lies in the fact that the victims' families understandably do not want their slain sons and daughters represented as gory corpses, or in the process of dying. Director Cesare Ferrario has therefore had to tone down his film, and trace the story by focusing mainly on the first and last murders. A fictional reporter named Andreas Ackermann (Leonard Mann) is followed as he tracks down leads in the developing story. The monster in fact turned out to be more than one man. In March, 1998, a 70-year-old ex-postal worker named Mario Vanni was sentenced to life imprisonment for five of the total of 8 double murders committed by the "monster of Florence." At the same time, 58-year-old Giancarlo Lotti was given 30 years for participating in the last four double murders. A third man was acquitted and a fourth convicted but then later released for lack of sufficient evidence. The last man, Pietro Pacciani, died in 1998 at the age of 73. All four men were friends. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Director Claude D'Anna has tried for epic proportions in this less-than-epic film about incest, murder, suicide, and insanity in an aristocratic Sicilian family living in the 1950s. Count Villafratti (Max Von Sydow) has sex one night with his nymphomaniac daughter because he thinks she is his wife, and his wife, who is an operatic diva, hears of this just before she goes on stage. Later on, she commits suicide over the heinous act. In the meantime, their plantation workers are on strike, the communists and Mafiosos are fighting -- and the family's whole inner story (seen through the eyes of a visiting Sicilian-American who has come to bury his father here) is reflected in this outer turmoil. Segments of Verdi and Puccini at the opera house cannot do much to keep the entire scenario from seeming like a parody of itself. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

An old townhouse has a room to let, and a young man moves into it. It was previously occupied by an actor, and it contains most of his belongings and memorabilia. Naturally, the new tenant is curious and explores all these things, including the man's movie stills. Among the possessions is a gun, and the boy finds that the actor killed himself with it. At some point in his review of the actor's life, he notices a beautiful woman in a building across the way from his room. Becoming obsessed with her, he stops going to work and seeing his girlfriend. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi