Anna Falchi Movies

This Italian comedy takes an affectionate look at a motley group of free-lance photographers desperate to grab a good shot of a celebrity, with a host of Italian TV personalities appearing as themselves. "The Potato" (Roberto Brunetti) is a would-be paparazzo who lives with his uncle (Christian De Sica) and two other aspiring cameramen, "King" (Diego Abatantuono) and "Ciro 3000" (Nino D'Angelo). They join forces with the remarkably inept "Mr. Bean" (Massimo Boldi, and no relation to Rowan Atkinson's better-known character of the same name) in hopes of getting the kind of pictures that will make their reputation. The stalked celebrities in Paparazzi include Brigitte Nielsen, who with characteristic aggressiveness threatens one of the shutterbugs with a large pair of scissors. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Some things never change as this Italian comedy which spoofs government corruption, sports, night clubs, and the Mafia, amply proves. It is set in Rome, circa 71 B.C. and features comic actor Leslie Nielsen as a character similar to those in his Naked Gun series. Just as magistrate Antonio Servilio is arriving in Rome filled with ambition. Whilst travelling via the Appian Way, his chariot is run into by the chariot of Cesare Atticus, a dishonest senator with a love of women. So begins the grudge between the two who with every meeting find reasons to despise each other further. Judge Servilio places Atticus under observation after he receives evidence and information from Atticus's former mistress of his dishonest dealings. To discredit the magistrate, Atticus enlists the help of right-winger Cinico who sets the judge up with a buxom beauty who involves him in an orgy. The publicly humiliated Servilio is banished to Sicily where he encounters the early Mafia. Eventually Servilio and Atticus join forces to expose Cinico, the real villain. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Achingly romantic and creepy-funny, this funereal fantasy from the director of La Chiesa (1989) is unlike any Italian film in memory. Rupert Everett plays Francesco Dellamorte, a lonely cemetery caretaker who just wants to get out of his small town of Buffalora. His assistant and sole companion, Gnaghi (played by famed French musician Francois Hadji-Lazaro) is an overweight cretin who speaks only in grunts, and the dead people outside are rising from their graves as zombies and trying to have him for breakfast. This situation, coupled with all his other problems, gives Francesco a real complex. His troubles are compounded when he meets a series of mysterious women (all played by the beautiful Anna Falchi) whom he loves before they die tragically. Soavi's film is based on a graphic-novel, Dylan Dog by Tiziano Sclavi, but Soavi's more obvious influences range from Jean Rollin's La Rose de Fer (1973) to Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990). Barbara Cupisti (of Soavi's Deliria) has a small role, and the film also benefits from Manuel de Sica's memorable score and excellent pacing by editor Franco Fraticelli. This is a film to savor and it will go down as one of the most striking Italian genre efforts of the decade, despite some weak effects work by the normally reliable Sergio Stivaletti. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

In the 1950s, a big stir was made by a book (and its corresponding movie) called The Ugly American. Its subject was the grievous damage done to local cultures by well-meaning but essentially clueless (and frequently arrogant) representatives of the U.S. Since then, the phenomenon of cultural damage cause by arrogant tourists and visitors has been demonstrated to be something everyone is capable of. In this thoughtful, comic drama, the subject is Italians overseas. In this film, Malindi Kenya is the playground of rich Italians. In this story, Alessandro Benini (Corso Salani) has come to this resort in the African nation to claim an inheritance from his father, a man he barely knew. When he arrives on the scene, he is shocked to be put immediately under arrest; rather than leaving him property as he had supposed, his father left him a mountain of local debts. He is taken under the wing of Fulvio Colombo (Diego Abatantuono), a man with shady local connections and an even shadier past. Along the way, Alessandro learns a thing or two about violence, colonialism, and nature, before he safely returns home to Italy. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi