Alessandra Vanzi Movies
- 2007
An allegorical story of love and power is played against the backdrop of one of Italy's most powerful car manufacturers. Emma (Valeria Solarino) was born and raised in a working-class family, but she's long had bourgeois ambitions and has risen through the ranks to become a white-collar employee with the Fiat automobile company. Emma is also romantically involved with Silvio (Fabrizio Gifuni), one of Fiat's top executives, but while she loves Silvio, she finds herself drawn to assembly line worker Sergio (Filippo Timi) after a chance meeting. Sergio and his fellow shop workers are unhappy with their pay and working conditions, and are giving serious thought to a strike that would shut down production at Fiat, though Emma was raised to think of Fiat as family as much as employers. Torn between the love of two men, Emma also has to decide if her allegiances are with labor or management. Signorina Effe (aka Miss F) was directed by Wilma Labate, who also contributed to the screenplay. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Filippo Timi, Valeria Solarino, (more)
A child that will steer humankind down the road to hellfire has been born, and as his evil flourishes in a world full of hate, the ominous Biblical prophecies slowly begin falling into place in director John Moore's remake of Richard Donner's 1976 horror classic. Robert (Liev Schreiber) and Katherine Thorn (Julia Stiles) were as loving parents as any young boy could ask for, but as fate would have it, their new son Damien is far from the typical child. Now, as the mysterious boy's growth begins to share frightening parallels with the Biblical passages detailing the rise of the Antichrist, and the lives of all who seek to reveal his true nature are cut gruesomely short, Robert and Katherine are forced to face the horrifying prospect that their child has been sent from Satan to hasten the fall of modern civilization, and that there is little they can do to curb his prophesied path of ultimate destruction. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Julia Stiles, Liev Schreiber, (more)
- 1996
A run of bad luck coupled with devastating pride marks the beginning of a once-successful businessman's inexorable downward slide that lands him in the subterranean bowels of the "Hotel Paura." This downbeat drama chronicles his descent. Carlo Ruggeri had a happy marriage and a good career as an executive until the day his company merged with another and he lost his job. His wife Liliana is at first supportive, but then the lease on their apartment expires and because Carlo is unemployed, the landlord refuses to renew it. With nowhere left to go, Carlo, Liliana and their son Paolo end up in welfare housing. Carlo is deeply embarrassed and refuses to ask his friends and family for help. Any that is offered, he promptly refuses, along with a couple of jobs that he deems unsuitable. Eventually Liliana looses her patience, takes Paolo and moves in with her family. No longer eligible for the government-sponsored housing, Carlo is forced into the street where he becomes a beggar. Some small salvation comes when he hooks up with the kindly Lucia, a street dweller who takes him to an abandoned subway station they call the Hotel Paura. Surrounded by the most intense poverty he has ever known, Carlo makes some profound self-discoveries. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
This beautiful if ponderous soufflé of a film from director Bernardo Bertolucci serves more as an Italian travelogue than a drama. Liv Tyler stars as Lucy Harmon, an American teenager arriving in the lush Tuscan countryside to visit family friends residing there. Lucy visited four years earlier and exchanged a kiss with a handsome boy with whom she hopes to become reacquainted. Lucy's mother has committed suicide since then, and the teenager also hopes to discover the identity of her father, whom her mother hinted was a resident of the villa. Once she arrives, Lucy meets a variety of eccentric visitors, including a dying gay playwright (Jeremy Irons), a sculptor (Donal McCann), an entertainment lawyer (D.W. Moffet), and several others. Lucy has decided to lose her virginity and becomes an object of intense interest to the men of the household, but the suitor she finally selects is not the initial object of her affection. Stealing Beauty boasted an intriguing parallel between actress Tyler's role and her real life. The daughter of a famed rock and roll star, she was brought up believing that her father was someone else, a fact that Bertolucci may have had in mind when writing the story. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Liv Tyler, Sinéad Cusack, (more)
- 1990
In this evidently experimental, episodic film, moments in the lives of a disparate group of people who love or make love to one another are screened. Some of these scenes are filled with whimsey, others are tragic. In one of them, a girl develops an obsession with the transplant recipient of her dead lover's heart. In another, a woman struggles to break off an unhappy romance. In yet another, a mischievous wealthy woman helps a shoplifter escape from a store she has stolen from. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- 1985
In a one-man tour-de-force, George Panoussopoulos wrote, directed, and did just about everything except star in this curious, inventive story about primal nature and a modern woman. Zoe (Alessandra Vanzi) is tapped to go to the U.S. for some specialized computer training because she is a whiz in her job as a program analyst. The married mother of two is happy about her distinction, but when she decides to stroll through the National Gardens of Athens with her daughter one day, something unexpected and unexplained starts to happen. Circumstances lead Zoe to an awareness that she has powerful, primitive, ancient forces still strong within her, and she has the ability to open them up if she chooses. But when she does so, her own identity starts to recede, and the children and animals in the park are frightened -- and start an outright panic. The police are called in, and Zoe's own existence is threatened. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alessandra Vanzi, Aris Retsos, (more)
