Margaret Mazzantini Movies

The English title of this complex Italian film is apt. Featuring 65 main characters and 130 speaking parts (famous faces abound and many of the actors appeared gratis), and ranging in tone from tartly humorous to darkly tragic, it presents 30 interwoven slices from the lives of modern day Romans during a single day. The lone, silent figure of a lone jogger provides a sort of continuity between the vignettes. Beginning at sunset of the previous day, the jogger is seen warming up on his apartment terrace, looking for all the world as if he would like to jump. The rest of the stories seem to be randomly presented. Stories include the robbery of a Chinese restaurant that causes a birthday celebrant to die of fright, two different newlyweds who find themselves attracted to each other, an opportunistic mechanic's plan to capitalize on the death of a rival, a sneaky, sadistic meter maid and others. One uniting feature of the stories is their underlying bitter assessment of modern humanity. People are seen as selfish and basically cruel, still the stories move quickly and the balance between humor and drama, affection and cynicism, and shallowness and complexity is carefully maintained. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Popular comic actor Diego Abatantuono headlines this lively comedy that follows the adventures of a small-town barber from Italy who one day spontaneously heads for Rio de Janeiro to see his estranged sister. Life there is bewilderingly busy and colorful and the simple barber has many riotous adventures there. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

When a wealthy, elderly woman and an unknown stranger are murdered in the same small village on the same night, the judge who is charged with investigating the deaths begins to suspect that a new arrival in the village is connected to the crime. The only serious obstacle to chasing down that possibility is that this new arrival is a Catholic priest. This three-hour crime drama was intended as a television miniseries, and so when watched from beginning to end without interruption, tedium takes over. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This biographical essay tackles the early life of Mother Teresa in her Yugoslavian homeland (she was born at Skopje in 1910). Her mother sent her to care for an aunt who was suffering from tuberculosis, a disease that young Agnes Gongia (Mother Teresa) contracted as a result of her exposure. She angrily turned against her mother for sending her to care for the aunt, but her mother was also responsible for her cure. She put Gongia in a convent in the mountains where she was cloistered with the rest of the nuns, and although she was healed in the process, she came away hating a cloistered life. Until that time, her career prospects had tended toward professional singing -- she had a striking voice and actually sang for awhile with an orchestra conducted by her cousin, someone that aroused her romantic interest. Her true vocation did not come to the fore until she talked to a priest (Rossano Brazzi) who had just returned from India, and she realized that she wanted to help others as a nun, but in a very practical way -- perhaps by handling cases that no one else wanted (not unlike caring for her sick aunt). It would not be long then, before Calcutta was to benefit from young Gongia's calling. (Mother Teresa) died in India on Friday, Sept. 5, 1997. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide