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Gabriella Martinelli Movies

2012  
 
The uncut version of Clive Barker's Nightbreed was considered a holy grail to horror fanatics for years, yet no one knew where the lost footage was. Fast forward to 2009, when it became apparent that production company Morgan Creek knew where the lost footage was, but weren't about to spend the money to release it. Around this time, two separate VHS work prints were unearthed and subsequently shown to festival audiences. In 2012, the Cabal Cut was edited together from both work prints as well as the existing DVD and used as a rolling road show to drum up finances in order for an official release to be put into production. Nightbreed tells the strange and sometimes tale of a young man who inadvertently tangles with an ancient graveyard called Midian, which is said to have the power to forgive transgressors of their sins - with a price. Among the additions to the Cabal Cut were far more screen time with lead actress Anne Bobby, as well as many extended moments that flesh the plot out and in hindsight, make the theatrical cut seem rather disjointed. Additional ADR was added with original cast members, including Pinhead himself, Doug Bradley. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, Rovi

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2009  
R  
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A bottom-shelf bar band gets a second shot at the big time when they're transformed into vampires and start to develop a loyal following. Joey (Rob Stefaniuk) fronts The Winners, a go-nowhere rock group accustomed to playing empty bowling alleys and deserted bars. They've never had a hit, and their manager Jeff (Dave Foley) voids them like the plague. Dumped by his girlfriend and advised by a sinister bartender (Alice Cooper) to simply snuff it, Joey keeps plugging away at his dreams until the one fateful night when everything changes. Hours after disappearing to an after party with a creepy goth guy (Dimitri Coats), sexy bass player Jennifer (Jessica Paré) shows up lacking more pigment than usual. Before long the Winners are dining on groupies, and dominating the charts. But their success has come at a particularly high price, and when Joey has the opportunity to set things right, he prepares to make the biggest decision of his life. Also featuring Henry Rollins, Iggy Pop, Moby, and Malcolm McDowell. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

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Starring:
Rob StefaniukDave Foley, (more)
 
2005  
R  
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Following the death of her drug-addicted mother, a whimsical young girl follows her chemically dependent father to a remote prairie house to discover a wondrous world of magical fireflies and nocturnal bog men in this hallucinatory childhood fantasy from visionary filmmaker Terry Gilliam. Noah (Jeff Bridges) is a burnt-out rock star whose post-superstar voyage to obscurity is hastened by a serious drug addiction that is also shared with his wild-eyed wife (Jennifer Tilly). When the Noah's increasingly erratic wife suffers a fatal overdose, the faded rock star opts to escape the painful reality by retreating to a ramshackle remote home with his young daughter, Jeliza-Rose (Jodelle Ferland). Left to her own devices as her father stumbles about the grasslands in a drug-induced haze, Jeliza-Rose soon ventures into her own fantasy land before making the acquaintance of mentally challenged youth Dickens (Brendan Fletcher). As the two become fast friends and Jeliza-Rose joins the swimsuit-clad Dickens in defeating the menacing shark that traverses the nearby railways, the pair are watched over by Dickens' black-clad sister, Dell (Janet McTeer), who acts as Dickens' guardian and whose overly enthusiastic interest in the art of taxidermy borders on obsessive. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

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Starring:
Jodelle FerlandJanet McTeer, (more)
 
2004  
PG13  
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A young boy's innocence is shattered when his mother enters into an elicit affair with a mysterious blue-eyed stranger in a two-part, four hour miniseries directed by Jerry Ciccoritti and starring Academy Award-winner Sophia Loren. Vittorio Innocente is a typical young boy from the tiny Italian village of Valle del Sole. When Vittorio's youthful innocence is shattered by his mother's enigmatic boyfriend, the youngster is compelled to shed light on the mystery of his mother's past by piecing together her remarkable story one chapter at a time. As he does so, Vittorio gradually learns of the centuries-old superstitions that continue to influence the actions of the naïve villagers, and gains greater insight than ever into the true nature of humanity. Though the hypocrisy, fears, and maliciousness he discovers in the centuries-old village soon leads Vittorio to discover the truth about his mother, those very same discoveries also threaten to unravel the very foundation of his safely sheltered world. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

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Starring:
Sophia LorenSabrina Ferilli, (more)
 
2002  
R  
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Three women living in Toronto find themselves confronting emotional crises regarding the men in their lives in this drama. Olivia (Sophia Loren) is a woman who spends her days looking after her husband, John (Pete Postlethwaite), who is confined to a wheelchair. Olivia has long aspired to a career as an artist, but John, not emotionally generous, refuses to hear of her wasting her time on such things. However, Olivia does find encouragement from an unlikely source -- Max (Gérard Depardieu), an eccentric French gardener. Natalia (Mira Sorvino) is a news photographer who, while on assignment in Angola, took a memorable portrait of a crying child orphaned by war. Her father, Alexander (Klaus-Maria Brandauer), also a well-known photojournalist, is understandably proud of Natalia when her photo is used on the cover of a major news magazine, but she is haunted by the knowledge that while she made the child famous, she couldn't save its life. And Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger) is a woman whose father, Alan (Malcolm McDowell), beat her mother to death when she was young. Catherine has never been able to resolve her hatred of her father, and when Alan is released from prison, she's willing to abandon her husband, her children, and her career as a musician to track him down and kill him, unable to accept the notion that he's a changed man. Between Strangers was directed by Edoardo Ponti, whose mother happens to be Sophia Loren; it marks the first time the two have worked together. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

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Starring:
Sophia LorenMira Sorvino, (more)
 
1996  
PG13  
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The classic Shakespearean romantic tragedy is updated by director Baz Luhrmann to a post-modern Verona Beach where swords are merely a brand of gun and bored youths are easily spurred toward violence. Longtime rivals in religion and business, the Montagues and the Capulets share a page from the Jets and Sharks of West Side Story when they form rival gangs. Romeo (Leonardo DiCaprio) is aloof toward the goings-on of his Montague cousins, but after he realizes that Juliet (Claire Danes) is a Capulet at the end of one very wild party, the enmity between the two clans becomes the root of his angst. He relies heavily -- and with serious consequences -- on his rebel gender-bender of a friend, Mercutio (Harold Perrineau Jr.), and Father (not Friar) Lawrence (Pete Postlethwaite) for protection and support. Romeo is, of course, exiled, and it looks like Juliet will be forced into an arranged marriage with the bland Paris (Paul Rudd). It ends, as Romeo and Juliet must, when Romeo hears a tragic piece of misinformation and brings his suicide wish to what was meant to be Juliet 's temporary tomb. This time, though, the turf and the weapon of choice have taken a turn toward the surreal. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi

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Starring:
Leonardo DiCaprioClaire Danes, (more)
 
1995  
PG  
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This family adventure concerns Ryan (Ryan Slater), a ten-year-old boy who has traveled to China with his father, a scientist working with a wildlife preserve dedicated to the rescue and protection of giant pandas, who are quickly becoming an endangered species in their native land. However, the preserve is faced with a severe budget cut that would close them down unless they can produce a living panda cub. Ryan, his father Michael (Stephen Lang), and a local girl acting as translator (Huang Fei) set out in search of a baby panda. However, when they find one, the bear is being pursued by poachers. Ryan becomes separated from the rest of the group, and he alone must guide the young panda to the safety of the preserve, with the hunters hot on his trail and without the help of his father or their translator. The Amazing Panda Adventure was shot on location in Mainland China's Sichuan province. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

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Starring:
Stephen LangRyan Slater, (more)
 
1993  
R  
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David Cronenberg's cinematic intensity eviscerates this adaptation of David Henry Hwang's passionate stage production. Based on a true incident involving a French diplomat who carried on an affair for 18 years with a man the diplomat thought was a woman, M. Butterfly begins in 1964 Beijing when French foreign service employee Rene Gallimard (Jeremy Irons) becomes smitten with Chinese opera performer Song Liling (John Lone). Before long, Gallimard is enamored with Song, and they begin an inflamed affair -- bracketed by the stipulation that Gallimard will never be allowed to look upon her in a state of complete undress. Gallimard agrees to the rules, but, as he climbs up the diplomatic ladder, the communist government gets involved, corralling Song to become an informer for the government. When, at last, Gallimard's passion demands nudity, Song flees the relationship. Gallimard, pining for his lost love, then becomes a physical and mental wreck. He leaves China and accepts a two-bit diplomatic position, but then Song appears once again to Gallimard. At that point, Gallimard is arrested and, during the subsequent sensational trial for treason, his affair is exposed for the sham that it is. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

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Starring:
Jeremy IronsJohn Lone, (more)
 
1991  
R  
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This cinematic/literary hybrid fuses motifs from Beat writer William S. Burroughs's novel of the same name with elements of the author's biography and plenty of the cerebral alienation and biomorphic special effects fans of creepy cult director David Cronenberg have come to expect. Bill Lee (Peter Weller) wants to write, but he exterminates bugs to pay the bills. His wife, Joan (Judy Davis), becomes addicted to Bill's bug powder dust, and soon he joins her in a world of unorthodox hallucinogens; he visits the kindly yet sinister Dr. Benway (Roy Scheider) and walks away with his first dose of the black meat -- a narcotic made from the flesh of the giant aquatic Brazilian centipede. Soon, monstrous beetles are whispering conspiracy theories in Bill's ears and his nebbish writer friends Hank (Nicholas Campbell) and Martin (Michael Zelniker) are sleeping with Joan under his nose. When a party trick involving a liquor glass and a gun goes awry, killing Joan, Bill flees to Interzone, a Mediterranean city full of talking insectoid typewriters, double agents, offbeat aesthetes, and plots within plots. As he navigates this paranoid landscape, Bill begins ingesting another drug called mugwump jism and writes fragments that Hank and Martin soon assemble into a novel under the title Naked Lunch. As beat literature aficionados know, Interzone is based on Tangiers -- the city where Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch. The incident in the film in which Hank and Martin appropriate Bill's writing and have it published closely approximates the real-life circumstances of the novel's publication, although it was Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac who helped out the real-life Burroughs. The William Tell incident that kills Bill's wife is also drawn from the author's real life. "William Lee" is both Burroughs' literary stand-in and the name under which he published his first autobiographical novel Junky. Ian Holm, who plays Joan Frost's husband, Tom, would appear in Cronenberg's similarly experimental eXistenZ several years later. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

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Starring:
Peter WellerJudy Davis, (more)
 
1990  
R  
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Multimedia horror maven Clive Barker followed the success of his feature directorial debut, Hellraiser, with this equally surreal effort, based on his novella Cabal. The story involves the plight of Aaron Boone (Craig Sheffer), a young man tormented by visions of monstrous, graveyard-dwelling creatures. Seeking the aid of his clinically cold therapist Dr. Decker (played by Canadian horror auteur David Cronenberg) in deciphering his nightmares, Boone becomes convinced that his frequent blackouts are linked to a recent spate of mutilation murders in the area. His frantic search for the truth leads him to the subterranean city of Midian, the dwelling place of a mythical race of undead nocturnal monsters known as the "Nightbreed." But it is only after he is cornered and shot dead by police that Boone's real journey begins -- he finds himself resurrected as one of the Breed. Though Barker's unique and graphic vision is somewhat blunted by choppy editing (thanks to relentless tampering from the studio), this is nevertheless a fine sophomore project from a talented storyteller; the central conceit of presenting the monsters as the "good guys" -- at least compared to the gun-and-bible-toting lunatics who hunt them -- is handled with verve and originality. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

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Starring:
Craig ShefferAnne Bobby, (more)
 
1989  
R  
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Director Jack Sholder followed his surprise sleeper hit The Hidden (1987) with this action drama that re-teamed Young Guns (1988) co-stars Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Phillips. Sutherland stars as Buster McHenry, a Philadelphia cop working undercover as a thief in the gang of wealthy, sadistic Marino (Rob Knepper). When the gang's heist of some diamonds goes awry, a few innocents are shot, and a valuable Native American spear is stolen landing Buster in bureaucratic hot water. Along comes Hank Storm (Phillips), intent upon retrieving the relic of his Sioux tribesmen and avenge the death of his brother. Hank and Buster team up to take Marino down and expose police corruption in the process. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

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Starring:
Kiefer SutherlandLou Diamond Phillips, (more)
 
1985  
PG  
Set in the late '50s, the life of a young Canadian girl (Margaret Langrick) is plagued by boredom until her older California cousin Butch (John Wildman) visits her house. With a healthy dose of James Dean rebelliousness, Butch introduces her to rock & roll and chewing gum, among other things. The film won big at Canada's 1985 Genie Awards, carting off the Best Picture trophy, as well as Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay. ~ John Bush, Rovi

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Starring:
Margaret LangrickRichard Donat, (more)