Elide Melli

Marco Leonardi stars as controversial soccer icon Diego Maradona in this sports biopic co-written by Manuel Rios San Martin and César Vidal, and directed by Marco Risi. As a young boy growing up on the bleak, industrialized outskirts of Buenos Aires, Maradona longed for the day that he would transcend his meager beginnings to become an internationally renowned soccer star. Later, he was propelled to fame by a winning combination of character, passion, and athleticism, ultimately achieving his dream of international superstardom. At once loved, hated, and worshipped by soccer fans around the globe, the rising star played in four World Cup games in addition to being voted the FIFA Player of the Century. But for every triumph, Maradona suffered his fair share of setbacks -including a fifteen month suspension after testing positive for cocaine in 1991, and yet another for testing positive for ephedrine during the 1994 World Cup. An outspoken athlete whose own inability to censor himself often resulted in the most controversy, Maradona nevertheless endured to become one of the most outstanding athletes in the history of the game. Named for the illegal goal-scoring move he used to defeat England during the 1986 World Cup quarter-final match, Maradona, Hand of God explores the life and career of this polarizing figure from a perspective that reserves judgment, and allows the actions of the athlete to speak for themselves. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Edith Stein was a German-Jewish intellectual who in the late-'30s created considerable controversy and broke her mother's heart when she converted to Catholicism and then joined one of the Church's most rigorous monastic orders, the Carmelite Nuns. This European biopic tells her story, a tale that ended tragically when Stein, who finally made it through the long, painful novitiate process and found true peace, was brutally yanked from the convent by Nazi soldiers and sent to Auschweitz where she died. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Henry Miller's novels were almost entirely autobiographical, and concerned not only his environment and friends, but also recorded his many sexual exploits - which he apparently viewed with something like spiritual awe. Despite his sexual obsessions, his novels are respected worldwide for their brilliant depictions of time and place, and have occasionally been made into movies. This 1990 film by Claude Chabrol makes a reportedly poor effort to bring the novel Quiet Days In Clichy to the screen, and transforms the seedy exploits of a penniless expatriate in Paris to the boyish pleasures of a couple of sweet-faced middle class lads who hang out in expensive whorehouses and go to cocktail parties with fashionable people. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide