Leo Gullotta Movies

Based on a true-life court case that rocked Italy during the 1980s, this film recounts the tribulations of Enzo Tortora, a popular television host who was wrongfully imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Three foolish Italian hunters head into the Yugoslavian wilderness for a vacation. Unfortunately, their timing is terrible and the trio end up trapped by the dawn of the war that would tear the country apart. This fact-based actioner tells their terrifying and horrific tale. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

A young boy and an old man team up to free a giant white dolphin from the swimming pool of a ruthless, one-legged millionaire Marcov in this upbeat Italian children's movie. Mischievous Snowball (the dolphin) gets into trouble when escapes into the beautiful Greek sea and playfully ends up swallowing the record of pension payments owed to Billy Bolla, an aged cruise ship entertainer. If the performer cannot quickly catch Snowball and induce him to produce the papers, he will have no retirement. He encounters ingenious Theo, the son of Marcov's maid. Theo adores Snowball and wants to free him. He befriends Billy and together they devise a clever plan involving a bus filled with water. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this goofy Italian farce a group of Italian tourists head off for a Christmas vacation tour in the Caribbean and end up stranded on a desert isle. Among the castaways are a womanizing plastic surgeon, a homely spinster, her eccentric Neapolitan professor of a brother, a married pair of Roman laborers, and two seductive American models. Bawdy slapstick humor abounds as they attempt to survive in their tropical island nest. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

This Italian film was released in 1995 and slowly made its way around the world; its English title is The Star Maker. Like the Oscar-winning Cinema Paradiso by the same writer-director, Guiseppe Tornatore, it's drenched in the filmmaker's love for cinema. In Sicily in the early 1950s, Joe Morelli (Sergio Castellitto) is a con man who travels by truck from village to village posing as a film company representative. For a fee, he offers the rubes screen tests, using passages from a script of Gone with the Wind and encouraging their hopes with lines such as "Success awaits you!" Morelli's camera brings out people's hidden sides, including a soldier's war trauma, a woman's protests at being accused of prostitution, and a policeman who recites poetry. Begging for a chance at the stardom Morelli purportedly offers, Beata (Tiziana Lodato) asks Morelli to take her with him. ~ Michael Betzold, Rovi

Thriller about a new prosecuting magistrate in Sicily, who replaces his assassinated predecessor only to find himself the new target of corrupt killers within the government. Score by Ennio Morricone. ~ Nicole Gagne, Rovi

In this leisurely melodrama, a middle-aged man has resented his schoolteacher mother for decades because he imagines she had an affair with a colleague. In fact, he hasn't spoken to her in almost as long. This resentment has scarred his emotional life irreparably. Only when he hastens to his mother's deathbed and arrives too late does he get a letter from her via her supposed lover, which corrects his misconceptions and explains the scene we see at the beginning. In it, she is reading a poem to her son when he is a boy, which reads: "Footsteps echo in memory along the corridor we didn't take to the door we never opened." ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Fortunato Assante (Leo Gullotta) is a merely adequate professional actor who is down on his luck, and has a hefty loan to repay. Why else would he agree to take a job coaching kids at a reformatory to put on a musical? However, once he gets into the job and discovers the keen intelligence and performing skill of the kids, he begins to take an interest in them. He soon learns about the precarious existence many of them have lived out on the streets, and the desperate acts they have committed simply to survive. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Cinema Paradiso offers a nostalgic look at films and the effect they have on a young boy who grows up in and around the title village movie theater in this Italian comedy drama that is based on the life and times of screenwriter/director Giuseppe Tornatore. The story begins in the present as a Sicilian mother pines for her estranged son, Salvatore, who left many years ago and has since become a prominent Roman film director who has taken the advice of his mentor too literally. He finally returns to his home village to attend the funeral of the town's former film projectionist, Alfredo, and, in so doing, embarks upon a journey into his boyhood just after WWII when he became the man's official son. In the dark confines of the Cinema Paradiso, the boy and the other townsfolk try to escape from the grim realities of post-war Italy. The town censor is also there to insure nothing untoward appears onscreen, invariably demanding that all kissing scenes be edited out. One day, Salvatore saves Alfredo's life after a fire, and then becomes the new projectionist. A few years later, Salvatore falls in love with a beautiful girl who breaks his heart after he is inducted into the military. Thirty years later, Salvatore has come to say goodbye to his life-long friend, who has left him a little gift in a film can. In 2002, over a decade after the film's original release, Tornatore brought the original 170-minute director's cut to American screens for the first time. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Gradually picking up dramatic steam as it moves through its 2 1/2 hour running time, this gangster film is loosely based on the career of one of Naples' most sadistic crime bosses, Raffaele Cutolo. Here, the mobster (played by Ben Gazzara) is simply called "The Professor" and is first introduced in prison where he landed after murdering a stranger who was flirting with his sister. From prison he begins to move up the Camorra ladder when he recruits inmates to join him in bringing down the leading crime boss and has his sister pay off their families in return. Without ever leaving prison "The Professor" succeeds in replacing the ruling "don" but far from resting on his laurels he starts to wipe out his enemies and anyone whose loyalty might be in question. Still hampered by his incarceration, he finally escapes and joins forces with the Cosa Nostra and even begins to put major politicians in his pocket. It seems like nothing can stop him until a lone and much-benighted police chief (Leo Gullotta) enters the picture. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

The Neapolitan Mafia is one of the players in this comedy thriller about how one man in particular manages to scrape up some cash in Naples at the expense of organized crime. Salvatore (Giancarlo Giannini) sets up shop in a local hospital each day to help patients and visitors find their way around. On one of his normal days, a woman named Lucella Picone (Lina Sastri) asks him to find out if her husband is in the hospital morgue -- he burnt himself to death in court to protest the abominable working conditions at his factory. Suspecting that there is something strange in this request, Salvatore cribs Picone's journal and soon deciphers the ciphers -- she is actually an "insurance" collector for the mob. Deciding to take a little advantage of his good fortune, Salvatore starts making the rounds for Picone, letting everyone know that "Picone sent me." Even he knows his good fortune cannot last forever and it does not take long for Picone to catch on to his scheme -- but how can she retrieve her journal and stop him? ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi