Claudio Spadaro Movies
Based in part on his autobiography, director Franco Zeffirelli's Tea With Mussolini is a drama with comic accents about a group of British and American travelers on an indefinite visit to Italy in 1935, when, as one character puts it, "Mussolini was just a man who made the trains run on time." Luca (played by Charlie Lucas) is a boy living in Florence whose family situation is precarious at best; his mother has died and his father has little time for him. Fortunately, he's a welcome guest with Mary (Joan Plowright), a English woman visiting Italy to soak up European culture. Mary and her friends -- high-toned Lady Hester (Maggie Smith), pretentious Arabella (Judi Dench), American art collector Elsa (Cher) and cheerful lesbian Georgie (Lily Tomlin) -- enjoy the cultured, creative atmosphere of life in Italy, and their initial response to the rise of fascism is to arrange a polite meeting with Mussolini to make sure he and his soldiers mean well. After some time, Luca's father becomes concerned that the boy is soaking up too much British influence and enrolls him in a boarding school in Austria; by the time 1940 rolls around, situations have changed radically for everyone. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Cher, Judi Dench, (more)
- 1999
Delving into the uncharted territory of hardcore melodrama and three-hanky pornography, director Davide Ferrario recounts this tale of the life and death of an Italian X-rated icon. Nina (Elisabetta Cavallotti) is a middle-class woman who finds herself drawn to the adult film industry because she really, really likes sex and because she enjoys having men ogle her. Yet in spite of her daily rounds of athletic heterosexual coupling, she becomes romantically attached to Cristiana (Stefania Orsola Garello), an editor of a hardcore magazine. During a checkup, Nina learns that she has cancer and tries to continue to work in spite of ongoing chemotherapy treatment. Yet when word of her malady gets around, she soon learns that she is no longer in demand. The weight of Nina's illness proves to be too much, and she dumps Cristiana in favor of fellow cancer victim Flavio (Flavio Insinna). Ferrario punctuates this work with sketches of the porn biz including bored set technicians and sleazy producers who are into S&M. This film was screened at the 1999 Venice Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stefania Orsola Garello, Flavio Insinna, (more)
- 1994
Noted Austrian actor Klaus-Maria Brandauer stepped into the director's chair for this drama about the rise of fascism in Europe, based on a story by Thomas Mann. In the 1920s, Bernhard Fuhrmann (Julian Sands), a German author and outspoken leftist, takes his family to Torre di Venere, a resort community in Italy, where they are not welcomed warmly by all of the residents, especially after an incident in which Fuhrmann's daughter is caught swimming nude by the seashore. While several of the guests at the hotel where the Fuhrmanns are staying voice their opposition to the family's presence, the concierge defends their right to stay there -- until she is killed and replaced by a member of the local fascist brigade. As the village is enveloped in chaos, a magician named Cipola (Brandauer) appears, who has a profound effect on the lives of those around him. Mario und der Zauberer was shown in competition at the 1994 Moscow Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Julian Sands, Anna Galiena, (more)
- 1993
On his way home from work one evening, Bernardo (Fabrizio Bentivoglio), a lawyer, witnesses a young man falling to his death out of a window high above him. He is disturbed by this more than one might usually be, because the window was in his own apartment, and he soon finds out that his wife was there when the young man leapt to his death. It is only natural, then, that he is driven to investigate the circumstances that lead to this situation. In this detective thriller, he and the policeman Carlo Plane (Massimo Wertmuller) independently struggle to make sense out of this bizarre event, which appears to be connected in some fashion to one of Bernardo's current cases. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Valérie Kaprisky, (more)
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, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Claudio Amendola, Enrico Lo Verso, (more)
- 1992
Although they are not shipwrecked like the ancient Phoenicians and Greeks who have left their artifacts scattered across this Sicilian island and under the ocean offshore, all the characters in this tragic drama find themselves in strange and unwelcoming territory. In the story, Iano runs the little museum where tourists may view the various Classical and pre-Classical objects turned up by archaeologists on or near the island of Mozia, off the coast of Sicily. Iano also keeps careful watch over his much-too-sexy daughter Iole, with a view to keeping her from harm. However, he must work sometime, and that is precisely when the sneaky girl arranges her trysts with Ioio, a mainlander whose slightly criminal bent leads him to seek out undiscovered antiquities on the island and sell them to an even more unscrupulous aristocrat, who dotes on old stuff. When the aristocrat ropes Ioio into a scheme to steal the museum's star attraction and sell it in order to pay off the older man's gambling debts, tragedy results. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sabrina Ferilli, Tony Palazzo, (more)
- 1988
Dark humor and drama figure prominently in this comedy about two brothers and their attempts to keep their comatose mother (Emilia Della Rocca) alive. Cris (Luciano Manzalini) is a successful, portly businessman who likes chasing women while his rail-thin brother Ivano (Eraldo Turra) likes to drink and tries to stop trucks by raising an iron bar in road. With help from a device invented by Professor Perrier (Felice Farina), the brothers try to keep their mother alive in the basement. The Laurel and Hardy-like duo are known as the Rugerri Twins in their native Italy. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Luciano Manzalini, Eraldo Turra, (more)
American architect Stourley Kracklite (Brian Dennehy) comes with his young wife Louisa (Chloe Webb) to Rome to supervise an exhibition devoted to Etienne-Louis Boullée, a French architect of the 18th century. Suffering from severe abdominal pains, Stourley doesn't pay much attention to his pregnant wife, and she finds consolation in the arms of suave Caspasian Speckler (Lambert Wilson). Built from rigidly symmetrical images, the film has quite an unusual subject: the belly -- both the sick one of the architect and the pregnant one of his wife, the rounded forms alluding to the spherical constructions designed by Boullée, the architect whose visionary projects seldom materialized. Beautifully shot on location in Rome, this ironic fable wittily examines the issues of artistic creativity. ~ Yuri German, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Brian Dennehy, Chloe Webb, (more)
Bearing no particular relation to any literary or cinematic work of the same title, this erotic drama by Marco Bellocchio uses sexual expression to work out a character's hang-ups, problems, and personality. Andrea (Federico Ptizalis) is in his last year of high school when he meets Giulia (Maruschka Detmers). Her father was killed by terrorists, yet Giulia is engaged to marry a former terrorist who is released from prison after he names names. After Andrea and Giulia meet, they have some torrid sexual encounters, though Giulia continues her engagement to the ex-terrorist because her wealthy family opposes any liaison with the lower-class Andrea. Mixed in with Giulia's two love affairs are several odd characters, such as the former terrorist's mother. No one is particularly stable, least of all Giulia. This film was released in the United States in both R and X-rated versions, the latter featuring a brief but explicit oral sex scene. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Maruschka Detmers, Federico Pitzalis, (more)
- 1986
In this entertaining drama, "Carefree Giovanni" (Sergio Castellitto) is the beleaguered last heir to a dukedom closely associated with the great artist Leonardo da Vinci. As the curtain opens, one of Giovanni's ancestors drops dead when he hears that Leonardo has died. Cut to the present, and the last duke in this line, Giovanni, is miserable in a home shared by two older women who browbeat and badger him without mercy. Giovanni's one solace is to go up on the rooftop and gaze out at the world around him as he daydreams. He has a special passion for the lovely Claire (Eleonora Girogi) who lives next door. To show his sincerity, he zooms off paper airplanes in her direction. However, these missiles are made from actual letters written by the great Leonardo himself. Could this man be last link in the lineage that started 400 years earlier? ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sergio Castellitto, Eleonora Giorgi, (more)
- 1986
ln this comedy, Marina and Romano (Marina Confalone and Sergio Castellitto) are sister and brother, living together in their family's apartment in a Roman suburb. Marina types manuscripts to earn some money, but Romano does not have her industrious bent; he takes life easy and steals dogs on the side (as dog racing is a popular sport where they live). Their lives might have continued uneventfully except for a new neighbor Alfio (Mario Prosperi) who hides a kilo of cocaine under their refrigerator and becomes the object of Marina's romantic illusions. From that point onward, circumstances conspire to separate the siblings as each pursue their own agendas. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sergio Castellitto, Marina Confalone, (more)
Italian horror auteur Dario Argento produced and co-wrote (with director Lamberto Bava) this gory, nightmarish horror film set almost entirely within the "Metropol," a huge, cathedral-like Berlin cinema showing an invitation-only screening of a rather lame slasher film. The difference, of course, is that the cheap scares on the Metropol's screen are child's play compared to the horrors which soon emerge to lay hold of the unsuspecting filmgoers: when a young woman is scratched by part of a display in the theatre lobby, she begins to mutate into a fanged, slavering creature who then attacks other audience members, spreading the demonic infection until only a handful of survivors are forced to combat rampaging armies of inhuman beasts, making the latter portion of the film resemble Night of the Living Dead. A handful of sequels followed; there's a little "reward" for those who stick around for the end credits. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Natasha Hovey, Urbano Barberini, (more)
This Italian version of Henry IV is based on the Luigi Pirandello play rather than Shakespeare's historical work. Moreover, the Henry depicted herein is not the English king, but the 11th-century Holy Roman emperor. In addition, central character Marcello Mastroianni doesn't play emperor Henry, but instead a contemporary man of wealth who thinks he's Henry. Also, Mastroianni's delusion is not a delusion, but a subterfuge. Well, we told you it was based on a Pirandello play, so enter ye and leave all sanity behind. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, (more)
- 1981
In scenes that can be read as fantasy, reality, or dreams - or somewhere in-between all three - the director and writer Nanni Moretti takes the viewers into his world: as a director fighting a flawed establishment, as an artist seeking a true expression of his visions, and as a neurotic, disturbed invidividual trying to cope. In many of the scenes, it is difficult to differentiate between the three, and may not matter in the long run because all three aspects are one person - Michele in the film, Moretti in real life. Lacing his scenes with witty asides about the film industry and its inhabitants, Moretti has Michele embattled with a crass, Neapolitan director making a musical about the 1968 student demonstrations. Michele gets into physical fights with his mother - and at the same time, has a creative block to finishing his film titled "Freud's Mother." The crazy characterization of Freud as a "momma's boy" in the film would have made anyone's mother run for psychotherapy. In the end, the viewer will have to put all the composite parts together to come to a conclusion about the meaning of this multi-level story. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nanni Moretti, Piera Degli Esposti, (more)
