Amedeo Pagani Movies

Rolando Colla's Summer Games tells the tale of a half-dozen kids who end up spending their days together while their various families all stay at the same vacation spot on the Tuscan coast. Twelve-year old Nic (Armando Condolucci) sees his father abuse his mother on a regular basis, but he's drawn to Marie (Fiorella Campanella), the oldest girl in their group of friends. She's desperate to find out what happened to her father, and her mother refuses to give any indication of where he might be. As these two learn hard life lessons, their childlike games take on a more adult tone as the summer goes along, until their last day together leads to an unforgettable adventure. Summer Games was part of the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

A successful young doctor with a beautiful wife, a happy child, and a comfortable house finds his life suddenly changed in ways he never thought possible after being injured in a serious car accident. To the outside eye Lazar Perkov (Boris Nacev) has everything -- indeed his friends and colleagues have even gone so far as to christen him with the nickname "Lucky." But appearances can sometimes be deceptive, and despite having all the creature comforts, Lazar is constantly trying to live up to the demands of his overbearing mother and discontented spouse. Every day seems to be pretty much the same for the man they call Lucky, until one day when Lazar barely survives a devastating automobile accident. Upon recovering from his life-threatening injuries, Lazar is confronted by a series of people who appear to die time and again, and always deliver the cryptic message "Return what is not yours. Have respect." Experiencing such visions in dreamland is one thing, but when they begin to invade his waking life, Lazar quickly draws the conclusion that these apparitions are simply lost souls who have yet to find peace in the afterlife. When the specter of an old woman begins speaking in a dialect Lazar can't recognize, the frightened accident survivor seeks out the aid of a linguistics professor in deciphering her message. Despite the fact that the professor always seems to be away at a conference, his wife is more than willing to help. Soon, she and Lazar have entered into a bizarre relationship. Unfortunately for Lazar, the situation only grows more haunting, and as the people around him begin to appear and disappear at random, and his wife appears indifferent to her husband's fate as she departs for a seaside vacation with her lover and child. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

An expectant, ultra-modern mother living in 1913 Barcelona is thrust into a complex and labyrinthine mystery when her psychiatrist husband goes missing and she is forced to seek the help of her conservative brother-in-law in locating her missing spouse in director Joaquin Oristrell's Freudian period comedy. Alma is a modern woman of very modern means; her father Spain's foremost neurosurgeon and her husband, Leon, a devoted follower of controversial Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. After arriving home one summer afternoon to find her tearful husband mumbling incoherent words of woe, Alma's life is turned upside down when Leon suddenly disappears. With no one else to turn to than her lovelorn brother-in-law Salvador -- likewise a psychiatrist who secretly pines for Alma despite being married to her sister -- Alma's discovery of a strange manuscript on hysteria and female sexuality proves the launching point for a tireless quest to locate her missing husband and discover the true meaning behind his inexplicable disappearance. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

They say clothes make the man, but three young men discover that isn't as true as they might hope in this bittersweet comedy drama. Peaky (Alexander Yatsenko), Dumbo (Ivan Kokorin), and Geka (Artur Povolotsky) are three teenagers who've come of age in a small town on the shores of the Black Sea dominated by merchant shipping. In a village with little in the way of glamour and excitement, a symbol of both hangs in the window of a local clothing shop -- a brand new Gucci suit, which all three boys wish was theirs. Even though Peaky, Dumbo, and Geka are all short on money, they're long on resourcefulness, and after a few less-than-legal money-making schemes, the guys are able to pool enough money to collectively buy the suit. All three are given a boost of confidence by their new threads, but they also find that confidence doesn't help make things go your way, as Peaky and Geka both try to persuade their long-estranged parents to reunite, and Dumbo attempts to persuade his girlfriend that he'll do nearly anything to hold on to her. Shik was screened as part of the "Panorama" series at the 2003 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A crew of fisherman struggle to survive under difficult circumstances in this Italian drama which harkens back to the neorealist movement. Having fallen on hard times, a group of Neapolitan fisherman risk their careers by searching for catch in the waters of North Africa, not far from Sicily. While the crew brings in a respectable amount of fish, it isn't long before other fisherman learn of their actions, and their license to work the local waters is revoked. With nowhere else to turn, the fishermen head back to North African waters, but one member of the crew, who recently lost his wife, displays a sad resignation that could endanger the others on board. With dialogue partially improvised by the cast (and delivered in the local Neapolitan dialect), Tornando a Casa received the Jury Prize for Best Critic's Week Entry at the 2001 Venice Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Chili-born Italian director Marco Bechis's second feature is a political drama based on his experiences with the military regime of Argentina (1976-1980) when he lived there. Maria (Antonella Costa) is a militant activist in an organization that is fighting the oppressive dictatorship. She teaches reading and writing in the suburbs of Buenos Aires in an area of shantytowns. She lives in a decrepit rooming house with her mother Diane (Dominique Sanda), who rents out some rooms. One of the lodgers, a shy young man named Felix (Carlos Echeverria), is in love with Maria. He seems to have come from nowhere and is supposed to be working in a garage. One morning, Maria is kidnapped by a military squad in civilian clothes in front of her mother and is taken to the garage 'Olimpo,' one of the many well-known torture places in the city, which operate to the general indifference of the inhabitants. Tigre, the head of the center (Enrique Pineyro) appoints their best man -- Felix -- to the job of making Maria talk. Felix is overcome by his feelings for Maria, but Maria is determined to exploit the situation for her survival. Tender love scenes between Maria and Felix enhance the story, but the intensity never reaches the heights of some of the classics of the world cinema with a similar theme, such as The Night Porter. Bechis exerts too much control over his characters and narrative to allow an emotional rupture. 52nd Cannes Film Festival, 1999. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, Rovi

A Michel Tournier short story is the source for this expressionistic Belgian-French-Italian comedy-drama, filmed in black-and-white with French dialogue. Lucien L'Hotte (Jean-Yves Thual), a dwarf who works for a law firm, is befriended by circus trapeze artist Isis (Dyna Gauzy), who views him as her guardian angel. Minus love, Lucien writes and mails letters to upset the marriages of others. His company's number one client, divorced vocalist Paola Bendoni (Anita Ekberg) vamps him at her villa, and their affair begins. But her later rejection doesn't sit well, so he creeps into her house, strangles her, and frames her dullard husband (Arno Chevrier) for the deed. Shown in the Directors Fortnight section at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

Based on the novel by John Fante, this film follows the trials of the Bandini family as they try to struggle through hard times in 1920s Colorado. Out of work and in need of money, Svevo Bandini (Joe Mantegna) tries to scrounge up the money his family needs to make it through the winter, while putting up with his nasty mother-in-law (Renata Vanni), his anxious wife (Ornella Muti), and his two young boys. ~ Iotis Erlewine, Rovi

Luca (Carl Diemunch) was born into a Venice household of pro-fascists yet carries out clandestine night excursions to support the Italian partisans in the midst of WW II's heavy fighting. His mother and father are too busy with their own slightly decadent lives to pay much attention to Luca's whereabouts. Meanwhile, a beguiling English governess (Theresa Ann Savoy) has come to live in the house, and enters into an affair with the father. Once the war is over, she is joined in the house by a nurse (Stefania Sandrelli) who comes to take care of Luca during a period of illness. Both the governess and the nurse vie for Luca's amorous favors, although he shows no particular enthusiasm at first. When the governess dies and the nurse is sent packing, Luca wakes up from his indifference and decides to take some action after all. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

This strident Yugoslavian/Italian film is a very uneven adaptation of a small portion of the famous and much-loved whimsical novel The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulghakov. It attempts to deal only with the Moscow portion of the novel. Even so, it was a brave attempt to film the unfilmable, and uses animation and other techniques to portray the more fantastic aspects of the story. In the film, which lovingly recreates the Moscow of the 1920s, the Master (Ugo Tognazzi) is a playwright. He is attending the dress rehearsal for his play, which is being performed over the objections of everyone involved, except for his girlfriend Margarita (Mimsy Farmer) and Professor Woland (Alain Cluny). He grows frantic when he discovers that the Professor is actually the Devil (the actual supernatural being, not just a very bad man). The Master tries to warn people but is committed to an insane asylum for his pains. At the play's premiere, the Professor uses his magical powers to add terrifying special effects which send the audiences screaming out of the theater. The film makes many guarded references to the persecution (past and present) of artists under communism. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi