Domenico Procacci Movies

Rolf de Heer's psychological thriller Alexandra's Project captures a turning point in a very unhappy marriage. Steve (Gary Sweet) and Alexandra (Helen Buday) have two children and numerous grievances against each other. After a birthday in which Steve received a birthday cake and a raise at his job, Steve arrives home to find his family is gone and a videotape awaiting his viewing. On the tape, Alexandra lists all of her frustrations and begins to strip for the camera. She then reveals that she suffers from breast cancer. Before the now emotionally reeling Steve can recover, he learns that Alexandra has paid to have the neighbor he hates change the locks in the house. Steve is trapped inside with little to do but think about what he has done to his wife, and his only company is the video that continues to provide disturbing information. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Youthful idealism meets teenage lust in this teen comedy from Italy. A large group of teenage activists are occupying their high school as part of a protest against privatized education and efforts for greater standardization among students. But one of them, Silvio (Silvio Muccino), is more than a bit preoccupied by Valentina (Giulia Carmignani), a pretty girl in his class who unfortunately already has a boyfriend, Martino (Simone Pagani). One day, Silvio is hanging out with Valentina and Martino, and Martino steps away long enough for Silvio to kiss Valentina. Silvio then makes the mistake of telling his best friend Ponzi (Giuseppe Sanfelice di Monteforte) about it; soon the entire school knows, including a very angry Martino and an equally enraged Claudia (Giulia Steigerwalt), who has a crush on Silvio. As things get more complicated for him at school, Silvio is finding no respite at home; his parents (Anna Galiena and Luca De Flippo) want to know why they don't talk anymore, his brother (Enrico Silvestrin) needs romantic advice, and his sister (Giulia Ciccone) has a secret. To get a better feel for contemporary teenage life, writer/director Gabriele Muccino collaborated on the screenplay with two 16-year-olds, Silvio Muccino and Adele Tulli, both of whom have roles in the film. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Paralyzed after an auto accident, wheelchair-bound Pablo (Stefano Dionisi) teaches at a Rome residential community center for the disabled. Initially, he resents conscientious objector Daniele (Massimo Bellinzoni), but they soon become friends. However, a romantic triangle develops after blonde Chiara (Stefania Rocca) comes between the two. With a blowup to 35mm, this film played at several 1997-98 fests (Sundance, San Jose). ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

In 1996, Australian director Rolf de Heer made The Quiet Room about a mentally retarded boy locked in a room by his mother. He continues to explore challenges to the human spirit, teaming here with cerebral palsy victim Heather Rose whose small role in de Heer's Bad Boy Bubby (1993) led to her interest in filmmaking. The wheelchair-bound Rose, who cannot walk, feed or dress herself, communicates via her computerized electronic voice synthesizer. She overcame these obstacles to collaborate with writer Frederick Stahl on this drama, created the lead role of Julia for herself, and brought the project to de Heer. Julia's sympathetic lesbian sister Rix (Rena Owen) is not in a position to take care of her sibling's needs. Instead, Julia depends on an abusive, short-tempered caretaker Madelaine (Joey Kennedy), who calls Julia a "spastic," abandons her on the toilet, leaves the wheels locked on the wheelchair, and devises further torment by forcing Julia to watch her intimacies with a parade of boyfriends. This pattern heads in a different direction after Julia bumps her wheelchair into Eddie (John Brumpton), who becomes her companion. But Julia wants love and sex, not just companionship -- and Madelaine is jealous. The 30-day shoot sometimes worked around Rose's usual routines, as de Heer explained, "Lunch takes her two hours, and there's no way you can make it go faster...The nature of response is different, the nature of physical handling is different, the nature of set-up time is different...It's impossible to overstate the courage of the performance you see on the screen. Rose somehow found the means to respond on cue, to maintain the concentration, to move in the desired direction, all the myriad of acting fundamentals we take for granted as normal things in our normal lives." The result brought a standing ovation at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, where it was shown in competition. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

A handful of semi-professional musicians struggle to make a name for themselves in this nostalgic comedy-drama set in Italy in the mid-seventies. Faustino (Antimo Merolillo) is a would-be jazz guitarist who has just graduated from school and is looking for a gig, at least in part because he's trying to avoid the military draft. If he can get local promoter Raffaele (Ernesto Mahieux) to sign him to a contract, Faustino can tell the draft board that he's a professional supporting his widowed mother with his career in music, but getting Raffaele to make a deal is proving difficult. Faustino plays part time with a local band led by hard-drinking Mimmo Falasco (Toni Servillo), but when Augusto Riverberi (Fabrizio Bentivoglio), a once-famous bandleader looking to make a comeback, arrives in town, Raffaele pulls some strings and gets Faustino a job as Riverberi's assistant. In need of a singer, Faustino and Raffaele persuade Riverberi to hire a vocalist named Gerry Como (Peppe Servillo), and the first few dates of the tour go well as Riverberi entertains the crowds and juggles romances with Faustino's mother (Lina Sastri) and a lovely small-town hairdresser (Valeria Golino). But when Raffaele double-crosses Riverberi and runs off with the band's money, Faustino begins to wonder if he'll ever make good as a musician. Lascia Perdere, Johnny! (aka Don't Waste Your Time, Johnny!) was the first directorial credit for veteran actor Fabrizio Bentivoglio, who also co-stars as the bandleader Riverberi. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Love and war divide two brothers in a drama from award-winning director Milcho Manchevski, his first since his acclaimed 1994 debut Pred Dozhdot. After an elderly woman (Rosemary Murphy) gets the better of a burglar (Adrian Lester) who has broken into her apartment, she decides to tell him a story about her family to give him a perspective on an individual's legacy to their family. Luke (David Wenham) and Elijah (Joseph Fiennes) are brothers and cowboys in the American West near the turn of the century. Luke and Elijah are both in love with Lilith (Anne Brochet), a woman who works in an upscale brothel, and when Elijah marries her, it puts a permanent rift in his relationship with his brother. Luke leaves the country and travels to Macedonia, where he becomes involved with a group of resistance fighters who are trying to topple Turkish occupation of their land; a skilled gunman, Luke soon becomes a valuable member of the Macedonian nationalist forces, and falls in love with Neda (Nikolina Kujac), a woman fighting alongside the loyalists. However, Luke discovers he can't entirely leave his past behind when he discovers Elijah has become a hired gun who has joined the Turkish forces. Dust was the opening night attraction at the 2001 Venice Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Three of the world's most gifted filmmakers offer their own unique perspectives on love and lust in this omnibus film. The initial episode, "The Hand," was directed by Wong Kar-Wai, and tells the story of Zhang (Chang Chen), a young, virginal dressmaker's assistant who finds it difficult to control his desire when he is sent to the home of Hua (Gong Li), a beautiful and refined prostitute, for a fitting. Steven Soderbergh directed the film's second story, "Equilibrium," in which Nick Penrose (Robert Downey Jr.) spends a session with his analyst (Alan Arkin) discussing a recurring dream of a beautiful naked woman in his apartment, but he keeps wandering off on tangents about alarm clocks and hair loss. Finally, Italian virtuoso Michelangelo Antonioni brings his short story The Dangerous Thread of Things to the screen, a story of a jaded couple, Christopher (Christopher Buchholz) and Chloë (Regina Nemni), whose relationship comes to a crossroads when both husband and wife become infatuated with the same woman, Linda (Luisa Ranieri). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This evocative, at times chilling, Irish drama offers a bruising glimpse into the psychological effects of a bad marriage in a country where divorce is still illegal, forcing both partners to endure their torment in silence. The story begins in the present and then flashes back to different points to explain the events leading up to the central conflict. Corporal Liam is first seen drunk, quietly angry and emotionally unstable. He starts a fight with his wife Tina. Earlier in the day he had been watching the sexy, maliciously flirtatious Michelle. Later he goes with some friends, including her brother Frank, to the pub to hoist a few. Tina is seen shopping and being forced into an electronics store by a girl friend. She meets and speaks to the cheerful Ronnie, Michelle's husband. Though Michelle is unkind to him, he tries hard to ignore her constant put-downs. Though Tina quietly conveys her interest in the steady seeming Ronnie. Liam takes his lust for Michelle to an entirely different, much darker level. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

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

Elio Germano stars in this tense crime thriller as Giorgio, a law student with virtually impeccable behavior and a perfect record - until his path crosses with that of the shady Francesco (Michele Riondino). The latter is professional gambler who makes a practice of infiltrating casinos and cheating at poker. Francesco systematically lures Elio out of law school classrooms and into gambling halls, and soon Elio finds himself helplessly drawn into an unfamiliar and dangerous yet all too exciting realm. Director Daniele Vicari co-adapted the bestselling novel by Gianrico Carofiglio with the author and Francesco Carofiglio. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Maurizio Sciarra made his feature directorial debut with this Sicilian love story amid the tensions of Italy's fascist period. The romantic drama is adapted from Domnico Campanas' novel about an aristocratic anti-fascist, the Marquis of Acquafurata (Giancarlo Giannini). The nobleman secretly leaves Paris and returns to his ancestral home in southern Sicily. Posing as his own butler, he plans to sell his palazzo and its antiques, while also offering aid to local anti-fascists in a rescue of the artist Modigliani from his prison on the island of Lampedusa. When he gives his townhouse to a country family as a move to keep it from the fascists, he comes in contact with young peasant girl Rosalia (Tiziana Lodato), and a romance develops. Shown at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide