Italy Archives - Page 5 of 9 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

TIFF ’08: Lorna’s Silence

September 3, 20082000s, 2008, Authors: Bill Chambers, Belgium, Directors: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Italy, TIFF

Le silence de Lorna ***½/**** starring Arta Dobroshi, Jérémie Renier, Fabrizio Rongione, Alban Ukaj written and directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne by Bill Chambers That figures: I'm finally ready to get on board the Dardenne Brothers bandwagon and everyone's bailing. What I like--maybe love--about their latest, Lorna's Silence (Le Silence de Lorna), is that it zigs when you expect it to zag, which may peg me as superficial (some reviews have admonished the film for having a plot) but which nevertheless strikes me as a refreshing change of pace from the neorealist wallowing of their earlier work. (To…

Youth Without Youth (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

June 9, 20082000s, 2007, 2008, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Francis Ford Coppola, Drama, Esoterica, France, Germany, Italy, Mystery, Romance, Romania, Sci-Fi

***½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A
starring Tim Roth, Alexandra Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz, André M. Hennicke
screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the novella by Mircea Eliade
directed by Francis Ford Coppola

by Walter Chaw Set in just-antebellum Europe, Francis Ford Coppola’s Golden Age superhero fantasy Youth Without Youth finds mild-mannered ancients professor Dominic (Tim Roth) transmogrified by a bolt of lightning into a being who appears to not only have regained his youthful appearance, but also developed the ability to alter physical objects with his mind. Dominic is in 1938 Romania when 1.21 gigawatts of electricity send him back to the future, able to absorb entire volumes with a single touch, learn dead languages in his sleep, and have contentious conversations with himself reflected in mirrors literal and figurative. It’s a superhero movie in the same sense as Kasi Lemmons’s sorely underestimated The Caveman’s Valentine: based on a literary source, it’s itself intensely literate, sprinkling Mandarin and Sanskrit in with, late in the game, a language of our hero’s own devising to which he devotes reels of obsessive notes. All that’s missing is a purpose for our hero–something remedied as the picture moves forward past WWII and Dominic encounters Veronica (Alexandra Maria Lara) en route to her own collision with cosmic destiny.

Sundance ’08: Good Morning Heartache

January 29, 20082000s, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Film Festivals, Italy, Sundance

Riprendimi **/**** starring Alba Rohrwacher, Marco Foschi, Valentina Lodovini, Stefano Fresi screenplay by Anna Negri and Giovanna Mori directed by Anna Negri by Alex Jackson Broadly speaking, bad movies come in two distinct flavours: boring and obnoxious. I'm always conflicted as to which is worse, but as of this moment, I feel like it would be faint praise to say that Riprendimi (the preferred English title is Good Morning Heartache) is just plain boring. Small-time actor Giovanni (Marco Foschi) and television editor Lucia (Alba Caterina Rohrwacher) are a young Roman couple who have agreed to appear in a documentary about…

Private Fears in Public Places (2006) – DVD

September 25, 20072000s, 2006, 2007, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, France, Italy

Couers
***/**** Image A Sound A
starring Sabine Azéma, Isabelle Carré, Laura Morante, Claude Rich
screenplay by Jean-Michel Ribes, based on the play by Alan Ayckbourn
directed by Alain Resnais

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Some time ago, there was a contretemps in the pages of another writing venue of mine, REVERSE SHOT. The estimable Nick Pinkerton had written a rather tepid assessment of Alain Resnais’s Private Fears in Public Places (Coeurs): he claimed that its inclusion in the New York Film Festival was an “obligatory slot-filling by one of the ‘Old Masters of the Sixties’ art-house.” NYFF programmer Kent Jones shot back with a dryly hilarious note confirming such selection criteria, which enthused that the film “had exactly the lack of urgency, the unexceptionable hominess, and the scanty charm we were looking for.” The whole thing was pretty funny, but it illustrated the pitfalls of playing certain critical lines. While Pinkerton is mostly correct that Private Fears in Public Places is a disappointingly inconsequential film by someone who had previously defined styles and moved mountains, this is punishing Resnais unduly: just because you’re not making a masterpiece doesn’t mean you lack any point at all.

TIFF ’07: Mother of Tears: The Third Mother

September 9, 20072000s, 2007, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: Dario Argento, Film Festivals, Horror, Italy, TIFF

La terza madre
***/****
directed by Dario Argento

by Bill Chambers Sanity and fatigue are ineluctable corrupting influences on an aging filmmaker, but it brings me great pleasure and no small relief to be able to report that while Mother of Tears: The Third Mother–Dario Argento’s long-gestating conclusion to his “Three Sisters” trilogy–is neither as artful as Suspiria nor as dreamlike as Inferno, it nevertheless surpasses expectations fostered by Argento’s recent work to emerge as his best movie in decades. Fitting that Argento should choose to tell the Rome-set story of Mater Lacrimarum last, marking this as a homecoming in more ways than one.

The Bridesmaid (2004) – DVD

May 22, 20072000s, 2007, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Italy, Romance, Thriller

La Demoiselle d’honneur
***/**** Image C+ Sound B- Extras A-
starring Benoît Magimel, Laura Smet, Aurore Clément, Bernard Le Coq
screenplay by Pierre Leccia and Claude Chabrol, based on the novel by Ruth Rendell
directed by Claude Chabrol

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Comparisons of The Bridesmaid (La Demoiselle d’honneur) to Hitchcock are almost inevitable, not only because such assessments are the lazy default position of critics when referencing suspense yarns, but also because The Bridesmaid‘s director, Claude Chabrol, has carved out a career as the French heir apparent to the master’s title. That said, the distinctions between the two filmmakers are probably more interesting than the similarities: Chabrol’s overall style is considerably more relaxed than Hitchcock’s, and his approach to character is finally less judgmental. Here, for instance, in lieu of assigning blame to the damaged femme fatale of the title, he notes the thrilling nature of her transgression and the unappetizing prospect of returning to normalcy after succumbing to her lethal charms. Chabrol has always put women in the driver’s seat of perversity and sexual wilfulness–something Hitch never quite had either the guts or the sympathy to pull off.

Frankenstein Unbound (1990) – DVD

May 3, 20071990s, 2007, Authors: Alex Jackson, DVD, Horror, Italy, Sci-Fi

Roger Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound
**/**** Image A- Sound A
starring John Hurt, Raul Julia, Bridget Fonda, Catherine Rabett
screenplay by Roger Corman and F.X. Feeney, based on the novel by Brian Aldiss
directed by Roger Corman

by Alex Jackson Dr. John Buchanan (John Hurt) is a brilliant scientist in New Los Angeles, circa 2031. One of his experiments fractures the space-time continuum, sucking him into nineteenth-century Geneva, where he meets Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Raul Julia), who’s busy conducting a few experiments of his own. In the meantime, the Frankenstein maid is on trial for the murder of Victor’s brother. Nobody knows how she did it, though they figure it’s witchcraft. Because he read the book (Frankenstein, of course), Buchanan knows that Frankenstein’s monster (Nick Brimble) is the true culprit. Frankenstein is refusing to admit to his failed experiment, however, and would rather allow this girl to die than confront his crimes against God. Exasperated, Buchanan goes to Mary Shelley (Bridget Fonda) for help. As for the monster, he’s terrorizing Frankenstein and insisting that the scientist create him a female companion.

Muriel (1963) – DVD

April 16, 20071960s, 2007, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, France, Italy

Muriel, or the Time of Return
Muriel ou le temps d’un retour
***½/**** Image B Sound B Extras A
starring Delphine Seyrig, Jean-Pierre Kérien, Nita Klein, Jean-Baptiste Thierrée
screenplay by Jean Cayrol
directed by Alain Resnais

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Alain Resnais films are more interesting to me for their differences than for their similarities. Though you can find an oft-cited obsession with memory running through his oeuvre, the high-profile literary screenwriters with whom he chooses to collaborate tend to impose their own sensibilities. Thus, Hiroshima, mon amour features Marguerite Duras’s passive-aggressive desperation, and Last Year at Marienbad is marked by Alain Robbe-Grillet’s mathematical abstractions. Neither of those two canonical works–which are at least united by a conceptual monumentalism–looks very much like Muriel, or The Time of Return (Muriel ou le temps d’un retour) (hereafter Muriel, also its promotional title), which enlists Jean Cayrol to sketch a story of domestic dishonesty and historical trauma that’s at once spatially smaller and more emotionally expansive. Here, if one isn’t confronted with the ostentatious “artistry” of Resnais’ more famous work (not that great artistry isn’t evident), one is aware of a tangle of guilt and regret behind the brave faces. And whoever can be said to be in the driver’s seat, it’s an amazing film.

Philadelphia Film Festival ’07: The Boss of It All

April 10, 20072000s, 2007, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Denmark, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Sweden

Direktøren for det hele ***/**** starring Jens Albinus, Peter Gantzler, Iben Hjejle, Fridrik Thor Fridrikson written and directed by Lars von Trier by Ian Pugh Presenting himself to us as an image reflected in a window, Lars von Trier literally begins The Boss of It All with an assurance that the following hundred minutes will be nothing more than a light comedy not worth "a moment's reflection." He then introduces us to pretentious, untalented actor Kristoffer (Jens Albinus), who has been hired by office worker Ravn (Peter Gantzler) to pose as the company's absentee president in delicate negotiations to merge…

Ginger & Fred (1986) – DVD

February 12, 20071980s, 2007, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, France, Italy, West Germany

Ginger and Fred
Ginger e Fred
***/**** Image A Sound A
starring Marcello Mastroianni, Giulietta Masina, Franco Fabrizi, Friedrich von Ledebur
screenplay by Federico Fellini, Tonino Guerra and Tullio Pinelli
directed by Federico Fellini

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The idea of Fellini criticizing television for its vulgarity–as he does in Ginger and Fred–is indeed a bit rich: Federico Fellini complaining of vulgarity is rather like Roberto Rossellini complaining of neo-realism. But beneath the surface of this admittedly shallow lament lies the movie’s real theme, which is the displacement of artists once their chosen form is rendered obsolete. It’s not too hard to see Fellini himself, high-modernist art director that he was, in his music-hall dancer protagonists, who by 1985 have been completely snowed under by seismic shifts in technology and, by extension, entertainment. Slight as the film may be, you can’t help feeling a twinge of regret for not only its leads, but also the increasingly-forgotten filmmaker who pulls their strings.

1900 (1976) [Two-Disc Collector’s Edition] + La Commune (Paris, 1871) (2000) – DVDs

December 18, 2006****/****, 1970s, 2000s, 2006, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, France, Italy, Pseudo-Documentary, Robert De Niro, War, West Germany

1900
**½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Robert De Niro, Gerard Depardieu, Dominique Sanda, Francesca Bertini
screenplay by Franco Arcalli, Giuseppe Bertolucci, Bernardo Bertolucci
directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

LA COMMUNE (PARIS, 1871)
****/**** Image B- Sound C+ Extras C+
directed by Peter Watkins

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover In this corner, Bernardo Bertolucci, weighing in with a massive budget courtesy of Alberto Grimaldi and a cast that includes De Niro, Depardieu, Sutherland, Lancaster, Hayden, and Sanda. Over here we have Peter Watkins, working for peanuts on a single soundstage with a cast of nobodies recruited from Paris and its environs. The fight, as it turns out, is more than one over who can make the longest movie (5hrs15mins for Bertolucci, 5hrs45mins for Watkins) or grab the most attention. The issue is: what are the conditions necessary for a revolutionary epic–moreover, what conditions get in the way? This is the real purpose of comparing 1900 and La Commune (Paris, 1871) (hereafter La Commune), for while each film throws down for the Communist cause, only one is conscious of the nuances. Where Watkins and his troupe constantly reframe the idea of what it means to foment revolution, Bertolucci thinks he’s got the idea–and proves, through mindless repetition, that he really doesn’t.

The Science of Sleep (2006) + Jet Li’s Fearless (2006)

September 27, 20062000s, 2006, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, China, Comedy, Drama, Esoterica, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Martial Arts, Romance, Theatrical

THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP
*½/****
starring Gael García Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alain Chabat, Miou-Miou
written and directed by Michel Gondry

Fearless
**/****
starring Jet Li, Nakamura Shidou, Sun Li, Dong Yong
screenplay by Chris Chow, Christine To
directed by Ronny Yu

by Walter Chaw A cacophony of cascading whimsy, Michel Gondry’s exercise in Freudian bric-a-brac The Science of Sleep plays like a movie based on a thrift store specializing in Harlequin novels–French Harlequin novels. It adheres to the music-video director’s maxim of maximum images per second, and it casts Gael García Bernal as Stéphane, a useless lug endlessly working on a calendar of calamitous events and pining after his across-hall neighbour Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), with whom he is too smitten to confess that his mother is her landlord. His dreams take the form of a one-man variety show, while Gondry revels in scenes where he inflates his hero’s hands and has him ride an animated patchwork horse. But The Science of Sleep is more exhausting than illuminating–more a loud masturbation than any kind of intercourse with the audience. The difference between the Gondry of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the Gondry of The Science of Sleep, it seems obvious to say, is the difference between a film scripted by Charlie Kaufman and one not, though it’s more complicated than that in that the Kaufman of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is an artist who finally struck a balance between affectation and a much finer connective tissue. Gondry is still just engaged in the twist.

Hollywoodland (2006); The Black Dahlia (2006); Factotum (2006)

September 15, 20062000s, 2006, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Comedy, Crime, Directors: Brian De Palma, Drama, France, Germany, Italy, Mystery, Norway, Romance, Scarlett Johansson, Theatrical, Thriller

HOLLYWOODLAND
*/****
starring Adrien Brody, Diane Lane, Ben Affleck, Bob Hoskins
screenplay by Paul Bernbaum
directed by Allen Coulter

THE BLACK DAHLIA
**½/****
starring Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank
screenplay by Josh Friedman, based on the novel by James Ellroy
directed by Brian De Palma

FACTOTUM
**½/****
starring Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor, Marisa Tomei, Didier Flamand
screenplay by Bent Hamer and Jim Stark, based on the novel by Charles Bukowski
directed by Bent Hamer

by Walter Chaw Deadening, dull, sepia-drenched faux-noir period hokum of a suddenly popular stripe, Allen Coulter’s Hollywoodland casts lantern-jawed, wooden-countenanced Ben Affleck as his way-back literal and metaphorical doppelgänger George Reeves. An apparent suicide that has fostered a small measure of conspiracy theories, Reeves, television’s original Superman, is shot in the head, naked in bed, on a summer night in 1959, briefly throwing a generation of kids into minor existential turmoil. But casting Reeves’s death into suspicion is a far stickier wicket: Even with the introduction of a woefully-underwritten fictional gumshoe (Adrien Brody) with his own crew-cut, wayward boy, and ice queen ex (Molly Parker) to match, the suggestion that someone in the portly statue’s coterie (including his wife-of-a-studio-bigwig-mistress, played by the ageless Diane Lane) might have had a motive for slaying him is given a quick spin and then stabled without a whimper. What’s left is the typical and unsurprising Hollywood fable of the high price of fame and the dreadful cost of its pursuit. The central irony that drives Hollywoodland is that, in its desperate attempt to make a mystery of Reeves’s death, the only thing it succeeds in doing is cataloguing the myriad reasons Reeves had to justifiably cap himself.

Mondovino (2004) – DVD

August 1, 20062000s, 2006, Argentina, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Documentary, DVD, France, Italy

***½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras A-
directed by Jonathan Nossiter

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

"I like order, but I also like disorder."
-Hubert de Montille, Mondovino

Like a lot of people unconnected to the better households, I always viewed the obsessive discernment of wine lovers with a dash of incredulity. Cultivating taste in the arts, now that seemed to make sense: it was where the beliefs of a culture were stored, where competing values duked it out for the right to call themselves a representation of reality. But wine? The other grape juice? Something didn't jibe–which made me nervous about approaching Jonathan Nossiter's Mondovino. Yet the film's subject isn't really wine at all: this is a tract on how globalization is sucking local identity and individual quirk out of everything it touches. The subject could be art or food or, dare I say it, film. It's a preview of what we're going to be stuck with, and a message to those atomized in their fields that things are tough all over.

Street Law (1974) + The Big Racket (1976) + The Heroin Busters (1977) – DVDs

July 26, 20061970s, 2006, Action, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blue Underground, Crime, Drama, DVD, Italy, Thriller

STREET LAW
Il cittadino si ribella
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Franco Nero, Giancarlo Prete, Barbara Bach, Renzo Palmer
screenplay by Massimo de Rita and Dino Maiuri
directed by Enzo G. Castellari

THE BIG RACKET
Il grande racket
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Fabio Testi, Vincent Gardenia, Renzo Palmer
screenplay by Arduino Maiuri, Massimo de Rita, Enzo G. Castellari
directed by Enzo G. Castellari

THE HEROIN BUSTERS
La via della droga
*½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B-
starring Fabio Testi, David Hemmings, Sherry Buchanan
screenplay by Massimo de Rita and Enzo G. Castellari
directed by Enzo G. Castellari

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There comes a point in every man's life when he finds himself pushed too far. By "too far," I naturally mean the moment where a) criminal thugs are roaming the streets, and b) innocent bystanders are completely expendable in their apprehension and/or bloody death. And if Blue Underground is to be believed, Enzo G. Castellari long ago reached that point. The champagne of exploitation labels has lavished infinite care on three of the master's most lurid exploits: the Death Wish precursor Street Law; the police-vigilante epic The Big Racket; and the relatively routine drug drama The Heroin Busters. Each of these films does away with such nuisances as due process and respect for public safety. Castellari's oeuvre reveals the dark underbelly of '70s permissiveness, which on one hand extended the hippie mandate to less shaggy extremes but on the other encouraged right-wingers to embrace police-brutality extravaganzas.

Gabrielle (2005) – DVD

July 20, 20062000s, 2006, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Italy, Romance

***½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras N/A
starring Isabelle Huppert, Pascal Greggory, Claudia Coli, Thierry Hancisse
screenplay by Patrice Chéreau & Anne-Louise Trividic, based on the novel The Return by Joseph Conrad
directed by Patrice Chéreau

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It's official: the heritage movie is dead. Long the bane of young rowdies and middlebrow-haters the world over, the form breathed its last breaths earlier this century following a couple of decades of uncritical support. Witness Patrice Chéreau's outstanding literary adaptation Gabrielle, which manages to avoid the pitfalls of the genre while simultaneously critiquing its lesser examples. There is no comfort to be had in well-appointed houses or the tasteful appreciation of "the arts"–only, after Joseph Conrad's The Return, a vain and selfish man who uses such accoutrements for his self-aggrandizement. The film snatches away the cheap pleasures of heritage, blowing up its shallow comforts and rocking you in ways a mere "period piece" never could.

Caché (2005) – DVD

June 26, 2006****/****, 2000s, 2006, Austria, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, France, Germany, Italy, Mystery, Thriller

Hidden
****/**** Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, Maurice Bénichou, Annie Girardot
written and directed by Michael Haneke

by Walter Chaw Gone uncommented-upon in greater detail, a glimmer of hope does exist in Michael Haneke’s difficult Funny Games, the scabrous Austrian auteur’s last picture that dealt with a brutal home invasion. Therein, the victims overcome their tormentors and are well on their way to freedom when Haneke inserts himself as the capricious godhead of his own piece (indeed, a director is never anything else) and rewinds the film like videotape, providing a different eventuality for his players. It’s a move as audacious and wry as anything in Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (and as existentially devastating as anything in Pirandello), something that’s earned Haneke his reputation for uncompromising–some would say sadistic (or intellectually austere)–morality plays about apocalypses proximate and ultimate.

The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion (1970) – DVD

May 11, 20061970s, 2006, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blue Underground, DVD, Italy, Mystery, Spain, Thriller

Le foto proibite di una signora per bene
**/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B+
starring Dagmar Lassander, Pier Paolo Capponi, Simon Andreu, Susan Scott
screenplay by Ernesto Gastaldi
directed by Luciano Ercoli

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Minou (Dagmar Lassander) is speaking of her beloved spouse Peter (Pier Paolo Capponi): "He's been everything to me," she says, "husband, father…" Yes, it's 1970, and women were still expected in some quarters to be adoring children gazing upward at their supermen companions. To be sure, The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion tries to disabuse its luscious red-haired protag of her habit, but not before preying on her trusting nature in the name of lurid shenanigans and psychological abuse. More than feel the S&M knot tightening, you get the sneaking suspicion that this would be the result if Hugh Hefner had decided to direct Diabolique. Throw in a manipulative sex offender (Simon Andreu) and a racy best friend named Dominique (Susan Scott) with a penchant for porn and you've got a delightfully retrograde giallo that's as childish as it is lurid.

Mission: Impossible III (2006)

May 5, 20062000s, 2006, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, China, Espionage, Germany, Italy, Theatrical, Thriller, Tom Cruise

*/****
starring Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Billy Crudup
screenplay by Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci & J.J. Abrams
directed by J.J. Abrams

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. That classic combination of a film that doesn't make any sense with one that doesn't inspire anyone to invest an iota of emotion in giving a crap, J.J. Abrams's Mission: Impossible III (hereafter M:i:III) isn't convoluted like the first two instalments so much as it's just incoherent and loud. It's the camera-in-a blender-school of action filmmaking: There's so little understanding of spatial relationships that the whole thing plays like that Naked Gun gag where the gunfight is taking place between two people within arm's reach of one another. An extended heist sequence set in Vatican City, for instance, features the four members of IMF ("Impossible Mission Force") hotshot Ethan Hunt's (Tom Cruise) team (Ving Rhames, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and the requisite hot Asian chick (Maggie Q)) running around in completely anonymous locations, sticking doodads to walls, and confirming to one another that they're "ready" and "in place." But without knowledge of their plan, their location (respective to one another and their goal, whatever that might be), their peril, or the stakes, you're left with four people doing something for some reason, necessitating our willingness to play along with the charade that we know who these people are, what their goal is, and why we should care. Consider a helicopter chase through a wind farm, too, and the many lovely visuals that such an enticing premise suggests–then look to the end-product, which is a lot of tight shots of helicopters in the middle of the night, parts of giant windmills, a bad soundtrack, and multiple decibel screaming about "incoming" and "they've got a lock on us." Who does? And where are they going on that wind farm? And why does the promise of an instrument-factory explosion induce yawns?

How to Kill a Judge (1971) – DVD

April 3, 20061970s, 2006, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blue Underground, Crime, Drama, DVD, Italy

Perché si uccide un magistrato?
***/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B+
starring Franco Nero, Françoise Fabian, Marco Guglielmi, Mico Cundari
screenplay by Damiano Damiani, Fulvio Gicca-Palli, Enrico Ribulsi
directed by Damiano Damiani

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. There's no way to discuss the thematic failure of How to Kill a Judge without discussing the tacky success that makes it possible. As either a political thriller or a social document, the movie doesn't fare terribly well, priming you for a massive exposé that never arrives and delivering a trickle of an ending that doesn't even begin to compensate. Yet I found myself enjoying the sight of Franco Nero in various clunky '70s outfits, sporting a massive orange caterpillar on his upper lip in a role that allows him to be dashing. The film basically facilitates opportunities for our hero to arrive at the scene of various terrible events looking horrified and then question people while looking swank–and the spectacle turns out to be big, cheesy fun in spite of itself.