olon-55702

Fine film, produced and directed by Paul Newman and based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Paul Zindel. Impeccable screenplay (by Alvin Sargent), wonderful music with melancholy and reflective tones by Maurice Jarre, intense acting by Joanne Woodward.

Beatrice is a widow with two teenage daughters. The house where she lives is kept in total disarray, the patio is full of trash, her car could use a good wash. Beatrice is a failure and knows it, hates the world and seeks opportunities for redemption that no one offers her. Cynical and scornfully ironic, she commiserates with herself and despises others. Her daughters, Matilda and Ruth, could not be more different. Matilda, 13, has a passion for science, goes to school with the pleasure of learning things that make the world a fascinating adventure for her, and is sweet-natured and reserved, endowed with an inherent humanity that makes her view with favor even the elderly tenants her mother takes in as tenants, almost always people who are sick and near death, left there by relatives who want to get rid of them. Ruth, 17, experiences all the problems of being a teen-ager, but she also suffers from seizures, perhaps also due to the strong psychological pressure of living with a neurotic, narcissistic and selfish mother, forced by lack of money to care for all these elderly people who go to die in her house. Beatrice's only chance to rise morally from her hellish life is to constantly think back to the past, idealize her cheerleading adolescence, and plan important projects to accomplish which she has neither the determination nor the money to do. In this utterly negative context Matilda nevertheless manages to keep her optimism, her love of life, and her irrepressible interest in knowledge intact. She is entrusted with the film's final word: "Every atom in me, in all of us, comes from the sun, from places that are beyond our dreams: the atoms of our hands, those of our hearts. Atom, atom, what a wonderful word...No mom, I don't hate the world." Paul Newman gave his daughter, who plays the character of Matilda, a beautiful and intense character that generates love.

There can be no religious experience without a deep empathy with creation. That's what one thinks of upon leaving this extraordinary film directed by Pema Tseden, a Tibetan filmmaker and writer who died of heart problems in May 2023. This is his penultimate film, and it tells the story of a shepherd who has locked a snow leopard in his sheep pen and, overnight, slashed the throat of nine of them. Now the shepherd threatens to kill the leopard if he is not compensated. Opposed to his decision, however, are the old father (representative of the traditional values of Tibetan culture) and his younger brother, a young monk, who offer what they hold most dear (the father all the money set aside for a pilgrimage to Lhasa with his monk son, the latter his precious camera, with which he loves to photograph animals, and in a dream scene his own life) for the animal's safety. Finally, even the authorities arrive to reiterate that the animal must be freed because it is protected by law. The film, for its emotional intensity and deep spirituality, stands out as the best feature film seen at this 80th Venice Film Festival. Also beautiful are the two dream scenes of the young monk, shot in splendid black and white, where the relationship between man and animal becomes so profound that we can glimpse the Creator behind his creatures, when (as in this case) the lives of man and animal manage to interpenetrate with such sublime harmony. Unmissable.

A banal and clueless fim, it tells a story already seen in an old silent film that is a masterpiece compared to this one: "Male and female", 1919 by Cecil B. De Mille. The director tries to dazzle with vulgarities that he thinks are an exercise in high satire (for example, during the yacht wreck the characters vomit and defecate!). Instead, the film is dull, has no ideas, and the ending is predictable. Director and screenwriter Ruben Östlund would like to say something intelligent about the relationship between men and women in relation to class difference. His ambition is also to write dialogues that show the moral poverty of his characters, but what he manages to say is absolutely obvious and banal and has already been said by many other films with greater intelligence (think, for example, of the cinema of Spanish director Luis Buñuel, who with brilliance and great insights was able to make people think about these issues, or even of Lina Wertmuller's famous film "Swept away by an unusual fate in the blue August sea" from 1974).

Amazing that this film won an award at Cannes and also Oscar nominations!

Crime story that takes place in a deserted, sunny village in Kazakhstan inhabited only by men (hardly any women are seen), where a story of power and revenge unfolds. Slow film, dull characters, poorly and confusingly told story, tries to be a Western but fails and tries to ennoble itself with quotes from the famous 16th-century Italian treatise "The Prince" by Niccolò Machiavelli, to show that while the powerful can be tyrants, the subjects can also use cunning to oust and kill them. It totally lacks the pace that the western genre requires, and the slowness of the narrative, which to the can also be a virtue, here is definitely a flaw. The result in the end is a sluggish western that tries to be a discourse on power and revenge but only partially achieves its goals. Film strongly discouraged.

Curious Canadian film, shot in 16 mm and with great economy of means and set in suburban Calgary, Canada, the place where director and screenwriter Graham Foy spent his teenage years. Kyle and Colton are two friends, wandering around the neighborhoods on skateboards, going under the railroad bridge to draw graffiti with spray cans, bathing in the river, wandering around the nearby woods, joking, playfully fighting and talking about more and less, venturing into an abandoned house-yard, where there are only the supporting structures of the house, and in a basement they find a dead black cat: pitying it, they carefully prepare it and give it a secular funeral, abandoning it, in a makeshift wooden boat adorned with flowers, to the placid waters of the river. Then night falls and Kyle disappears, wandering along the railroad tracks, and Colton never sees him again. What happened to him? It is not known. The film, after this evocative beginning, goes on a bit wearily illustrating facts of daily life of teenagers and students at the school, unconnected, somewhat random episodes. The film is slow, not seeming to know where to go with it. But then someone sticks up posters: a school girl, Whitney, has disappeared: a shy girl, uncomfortable with older boys, disliking parties, awkward when with others, often alone, intent on writing in her diary, drawing. What happened to her? Colton, who continues to ride alone on his skateboard, who continues to go into the woods, watching the trains speed by, finds the little girl's diary abandoned among the grass. That she is dead? It is not known. Suddenly we enter a flashback, Whitney has wandered into the woods after arguing with her only friend, the night advances and in the woods she meets Kyle. They silently accompany each other as the moon watches them, talking about friendship, listening to music on headphones, stopping by the river, then also at the house-yard where an old cassette player still working has been abandoned. They listen to a love song. What will have happened? The viewer imagines, an approach, a violence, but the film does not answer, does not dissolve any doubts, the two boys have disappeared, no one knows where, it seems almost a supernatural mystery. And in the final scene Colton returns to the house-yard, goes to the basement, and finds there a black cat, like the one in the beginning, but alive, purring and snuggling in his arms.

While there are obvious flaws in the structure and moments when the film seems to get lost, one cannot help but admit that this little work has its own light and serene atmosphere, even if it seems to overshadow a tragedy. But if in the finale the black cat is alive and affectionate, perhaps all is not bad, all is not lost, and nature and man are ultimately benevolent in us, too, in our lives.

Are those who live on islands human beings like everyone else? This film clearly tells us no: the island, an enclosed place where everything is concentrated and which the surrounding sea keeps compressed, deeply affects its inhabitants and permeates them with itself, sickens them with its own disease. The latest film by Englishman Martin McDonagh (in his 4th feature film, with 3 films behind him, all of which are top-notch) is absolutely superb: for storytelling ability, for location (evocative, rocky Irish island), for the brilliance of the screenplay (let's face it: McDonagh writes really well!), for acting (impressive Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, also excellent Barry Keoghan and Kerry Condon). The story is told of Padraic (Farrell), good and kind, who, overnight, loses the consideration of his greatest friend, Colm (Gleeson). Why? Because I don't like you anymore, because you're boring, Colm replies to him, and I don't want to waste my time with you anymore. And Padraic, who is not as sharp and intelligent as he would like to be but is esteemed for his courtesy and good spirits, does not understand this. Colm, who plays the violin and composes music, is obsessed with the passing of time, with the need to indulge his art in order not to be forgotten. His art demands total exclusivity from him, leaving no room for the banality of feelings. But is this the real reason, or is Colm going mad? At this point, what follows is a jeu de massacre between the two ex-friends, surrounded by various minor characters that McDonagh knows how to connote with felicitous psychological notations and a keen sense of humor. And then there are the animals, almost sacred emanations of the island, loved and respected, more than human in their affective reactions. And there is the war, distant but present, of which ominous explosions are heard in the distance. And finally there is the old witch, a representation of Death that rivals even the Bengt Ekerot of "The Seventh Seal." In short, a beautiful and poignant film like few we see. Not to be missed!

From a mountain village surrounded by greenery and shrouded in fog (we are in Kerala, India) emerge two men and a van: they are waiting for a young and fearful girl whom the young man, her fiancé, has invited for a trip to the distant city. Here, shops, department stores and the beach are the two young people's experience of joy and serenity. But it soon gets dark and it is too late to return to the village. The third man, the owner of the van, called the Chief, is a rough, big bearded man. He takes them to a squalid and filthy motel on the outskirts of town, sends the boy to look for food and rapes the girl. Early in the morning they leave for the village. And amidst the mountains, woods and raging torrents, a finale of barbaric and crude violence unfolds. The whole story is framed by a fairy tale narrated with a voice-over, in which a virgin desired by a prince asks the Earth: but whose am I? The condition of women in some countries is still very backward. This is the denunciation of the film, which unfolds in a lyrical-intimist first part and in a second part of epic violence, where the three characters in the story are surrounded by a violent and hostile Nature (fog, rain, a rushing waterfall). Despite a few too many slow moments, the film is well narrated, powerful and not easily forgotten.

A strange film by Anthony Perkins' son, but very well shot and well acted. It won't appeal to horror film fans, but I think it will appeal to those who like to read gothic fiction. Basically it is a ghost story, narrated in the first person by nurse Lily (an excellent Ruth Wilson), and it takes place solely inside a house (the set design is also excellent) full of dark corners, shady views and soft lighting (praise also to the photography). This is a film so literary that it may annoy those who want lively, adrenaline-fuelled cinema, but it will also enchant those who like to read a good book at dusk in a comfortable, cosy armchair, perhaps when it is raining outside. Readers should not miss it!

Figuratively beautiful, this film seems to hint at a kind of doomsday for a humanity that is all about violence, hatred and oppression. In a beautiful mountain landscape perpetually bathed in fog, the inhabitants of a village work for drug traffickers cultivating their plantations. They are forced to work for little and are ordered around by terror. Some of them are killed and the government military blames the villagers for the massacre. In this situation of hopeless grief, the young son of one of the murdered women sets off at night into the forest in search of his mother. Two small black dogs accompany him. Disturbing noises are heard coming from a cave or from the mountain, like the dark sound of a bell. And while the child, who is crying with fear, is enveloped by small lights, like guiding spirits, some very strange beings are gathered in the cave for a conversation: they are fiery human outlines that, like angels of death, come out into the woods and move towards the armed soldiers. In the meantime, a storm breaks out in the sky, fierce lightning strikes the vault of heaven and crazed clouds overlap and chase each other.

A powerful and evocative film that seems to suggest that God, Nature or, in any case, a Higher Power, fed up with the abuses of this humanity, intends to destroy it. Congratulations to the makers for a film that remains impressed in the mind and soul.

In a striking, highly expressive black and white, the film tells a tragic love story with the rhythms and themes of a fairy tale. The world is that of folklore, the characters are fantastic and metaphysical: there is the Devil, there is the Plague, there is the Witch, there are the peasants who sell their souls to the Devil to get surreal metal workers in exchange (peasant work tools tied together with, instead of a head, a bovine skull: they are the "kratt" of Estonian folklore). Everywhere there is theft, deception and death, and on the eve of all saints' days the dead come to visit the living, to eat with them at table and to claim their jewellery. And yet, in spite of all this, we are not in the realm of horror at all, but of the romantic fairy tale: Liina's love for her young peer Hans, who in turn loves the local baron's daughter with an impossible love, is the soul of the whole film. And the final underwater kiss of the two boys restores to the viewer the poetry of the fairy tales of our childhood.

A beautiful work embellished by a beautiful photography.

The cinema of Lithuanian director Sharunas Bartas is a very slow, unspoken, introspective cinema. A cinema that does not narrate, but contemplates. It can therefore easily bore you if you are not prepared to stand in front of the images with patience and a sense of waiting. Here the story, which ends in tragedy, is almost impalpable, almost transparent. A man and his companion, a young violinist, retire to his country house. Their relationship is uncertain, in crisis. With them is the man's young daughter: a light-eyed blonde who questions the meaning of existence by talking to her father and laying bare her insecurities. But her father's answers do not offer any certainty, if anything, even more doubt: we seek the truth, we try to reach it, but we never grasp it (says the father), it is good to have doubts (he reiterates). The little girl follows him attentively, uncertain. She has just met a boy of her age with a dog, they talked, they walked together, but the doubts remain. The violinist too wanders through the countryside, talking to the elderly wife of a fisherman who does not understand her. Uncertain dialogues between the characters follow one another, like the murmur of the wind, like the rustling of the leaves: words, like the sounds of nature, are there but we do not know what they are for, how long they will last. Death arrives unexpectedly in this placid, serene countryside. Nature becomes agitated, a storm is coming, the wind rises, the waves become threatening. And the film ends. And the viewer's thoughts continue to revolve around this story, moved by the wind, stirred by the storm.

A young girl, the daughter of a scientist, in an Earth now almost completely poisoned by unbreathable air, fights with all her might to recreate life on our planet. She is practically the only one who still believes in it. Almost all human beings have moved to Io, the satellite of Jupiter, with a view to colonising one of the nearest habitable planets. Will she give in and board the last ship leaving for the Jovian satellite, or will she continue to have faith in the possibility of saving Earth?

Described in this way, the film looks very interesting and promising, but ultimately disappoints. How so? Not because of the figurative part, which succeeds in evocatively recreating the contrast between the cities, submerged in clouds of poisonous gases, and the plateaus, rising above the poisoned air and where life somehow manages to continue. Not because of the music, a lyrical symphonism that fits well with the narrative atmosphere. And not because of the slowness and lack of significant episodes that bored many viewers of this film (but which, in certain contexts, can be tolerated). No, the weakest part of the film certainly concerns the overly stereotyped characters and a certain excessive trivialisation of environmentalist morals, as well as a certain pretentiousness in the cultural references (Plato and love, Cézanne and beauty: concepts addressed in a somewhat superficial way). It's a pity, because the authors could have made a much better film out of it, playing their cards better, above all by writing better that character who dreams of being able to give back to the Earth, which we have ruined, its original wonderful aspect.

A young, cheerful and carefree couple in search of a new home visit a property complex just outside the city. They are not put off by the strange politeness of the estate agent accompanying them, nor by the fact that the complex looks more like a Magritte painting than a real house, complete with fake clouds and sky. Obviously, they will never come out again! An original and distressing sci-fi tale, which also manages to be a metaphor targeting the life of 21st century man, a life that copies other lives, that surrounds itself with behaviour-copies and object-copies of something real that we have completely lost sight of. An apologue that fits almost prophetically into the virtual life of a humanity that is increasingly locked up in its own homes. Whether we are locked up by an alien or a virus, the result is the same.

A sorrowful elegy that illustrates with emotional participation the granite struggle of a meek man to preserve his beliefs and his autonomy as a Man. In a world dominated by a pervasive Evil that that has almost defeated God, in a beautiful world made of bright green and mountains shrouded in clouds, but whose sky is almost always full of black, threatening clouds, Franz and Fani are a Edenic couple who live a life of joy and hard work on the land. Hard work, but still a paradise, a place filled with love and brotherhood. Until the arrival of war, which destroys the Eden and introduces Evil and Hatred. How can one defend oneself? With the stupid, tenacious strength typical of mild-mannered, pure-hearted people: by going to die for an ideal, so as not to lose that humanity in which one continues to believe, despite the realisation that man is a ruthless animal who enjoys making people suffer, who enjoys killing.

With his now typical lyrical style, the voice-over, the extensive use of wide-angle lenses, the splendid photography, Malick constructs a theodicy that recounts in verse the life of a man persecuted because of justice (in this sense, therefore, a blessed man, according to the Christological dictate of the Sermon on the Mount), a film that is far removed from the biographical or hagiographical genre, a film that is instead a very sad poem on the Evil that crushes Man and on Man who defends himself from Evil with the only weapon he has left: Sacrifice.

Perhaps Sorrentino thinks he is the Thomas Mann of cinema, since he brings together a couple of protagonists to talk about art, death and life in the same place as that novel (the Berghotel Sanatorium Schatzalp). But once again he proves instead to be a filmmaker (technically good, no question) selling "art". He knows that there are those who buy it and he sells it, like a good businessman. He knows how to take care of the photography and the soundtrack like few others, and he puts in international actors who are part of the history of cinema (Caine, Keitel, Fonda). And up to this point, the whole thing could also fit. But then Sorrentino throws in some pure and genuine "Sorrentino touch", and here the rub falls. Here the inconsistency (in my opinion) of this cinema is revealed. Let's just mention three scenes that the director thought were impressive and that seemed pretentious and sometimes even embarrassing: Michael Caine directing the cows scattered on the lawn, Harvey Keitel philosophizing on the two visions (near and far) of the panoramic telescope, the sea of grass full of all the actresses directed by Keitel repeating their best lines like a mantra. It's the usual Sorrentino, a pale and absorbed Fellini (but let's leave poor Fellini alone for once: his style is only good in his films, outside of which it becomes manner), who creates grotesque and useless little characters (two out of all: the fat parody of Maradona with the tattoo of Karl Marx and the levitating bonze), which fills the film with profound aphorisms (actually of a disconcerting banality: here is one of the director played by Keitel: "You know, I think I really understood something, Fred: people are either beautiful or ugly, in between there are only the pretty ones").

And then there are those elements shoved in without any real reason, justified by the story, but just so, because it is so "great beauty": here too, two among many, Miss Universe who goes into the pool naked in front of the two old protagonists admired, and the poor Venice with its bridges, canals, bell towers and the tomb of Stravinsky.

In short, it looks like good cinema, but it is not.

In the evocative location of the Isle of Man there is Emelia Doyle, a teenager who lives with her grandparents (her mother committed suicide, her father disappeared). She tries to become a writer because she is convinced that she is a descendant of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but in the meantime she only scrapes together menial jobs; then there's a failed writer, Jonathan Fischer, author of a single successful novel on which he lives off a pension, without being able to write anything decent anymore; finally there's the writer's daughter, Bethany, a young girl with no experience due to parents unable to let her go, who aspires to continue her studies at the coveted Oxford University.

A charming comedy with three characters who don't have the courage to take a step forward in their lives: they help each other, almost without wanting to, to give themselves a push, to "rewrite", to become aware of themselves. The film is convincing thanks to a certain irony that amiably mocks the characters, to the delightful naive grace of Felicity Jones (Bethany), to the irreverent, cheeky, sensual but also tenderly defenceless humanity of Jessica Brown Findlay (Emelia), who in the end manages to get rid of her alibi for doing nothing with her life (the albatross around her neck of choleridgian memory) and starts writing seriously. A little-known, rather neglected comedy, but definitely worth a look.

A great film, very well directed and acted, with a good script and a very good music (where stands out Thom Yorke's song "Daily battles", to underline with due melancholy the soul of the two protagonists, Lionel and Laura). A neo-noir well narrated with a hard-boiled touch that involves the story but keeps the main detective, Lionel Essrog (Norton himself), a sensitive and lonely character, at the same time endowed with an extraordinary memory, a good intuition but also with a pathology (Tourette's syndrome) that forces him to nervous tics and to sudden emissions of noises, words and nonsense sentences (but sometimes they are also surreal, comic sentences or that reveal his most intimate feelings). A comic and dramatic character at the same time, who accompanies you even after the film is over. All set in late 1950s New York, as a fitting tribute to hard-boiled literature and cinema. A must-see film that doesn't suffer at all from its length (over 2 hours).

Young wife lives in a beautiful house but with a rich husband who is always away on business, and when he comes back he treats her more like a pretty ornament or a cute hamster than a real person. She then starts swallowing objects, even sharp ones....

She, Hunter, is Haley Bennett (very pretty and good), the story entertains us with a distressing, painful and oppressive story (in the finale the reason for this self-destructive obsessive-compulsive pathology becomes clear), the photographic rendering is excellent and illustrated with some beautiful shots of geometric plasticity. Not a masterpiece (there are flaws, for example her husband and in-laws are more narrative functions than characters, too schematic, and the Syrian nurse seems quite out of place), but nonetheless a film that engages and disturbs, especially for the character of the protagonist, Hunter, for her calmly desperate face, for her immense solitude.

A chilling film about the absence (not the silence) of God, about the triumph of chaos (the Leviathan of the title) that crushes the righteous and gives reason and success to the arrogant, the hypocrites, the prevaricators. And what story could be more topical than this?

In a small town in northern Russia, on the shores of the Barents Sea, a corrupt and dishonest mayor expropriates the land of the widower Kolja for his building speculations. Kolja enlists the help of his friend Dimitri, a lawyer from Moscow, who finds evidence of the mayor's corruption. It could end well for Kolja, but the betrayal of his girlfriend (who betrays him with Dimitri) and the sordid plots of the mayor in cahoots with the pope of the Orthodox Church plunge Kolja into a tragedy with no way out.

Like Job, Kolja is not put to the test by Satan with God's consent (as in the biblical story), but by the chaos that reigns supreme on our Earth, a beautiful place (as the film's splendid images show) but deserted, cold and empty. Where only the carcass of God remains.

An excellent film, but bleak.

One of Nicolas Roeg's best films, with a wonderful Theresa Russell. The impossibility of being a couple between psychiatrist Alex Linden (Art Garfunkel) and the explosive Milena Flaherty (Russell) explodes in two intense hours of interlocking montage between what has just happened (Milena's suicide attempt) and flashbacks to their stormy relationship. Two fascinating and irritating characters at the same time, both attracted by the control on the others but exercised in different ways: Alex is so cold and controlled, Milena is so hot and moody. The dialogue-duel between Linden (who has something to hide) and Inspector Netusil (who has to solve an enigma: an excellent Harvey Keitel) is an anthology: the inspector senses what is hidden inside Linden, the attraction-hatred towards those who live in a moral and physical chaos, a chaos that proves dangerous for those whose profession is to dominate the reality that disturbs them (the psychiatrist, but also the inspector). Great cinema, deep, intense.

A powerful and gripping drama in which a young Palestinian girl, Amira, has her world turned upside down when she learns that her father Nawar, detained in Israeli jails as a terrorist, cannot have children because he is sterile. The DNA test is not wrong, so Amira is not his daughter. And this can only mean one thing: that the wife of Nawar, hero of the anti-Israeli resistance, has betrayed him. Amira stays with her father, her hero, she begins to hate her mother and she absolutely wants to know her origins. But, like the Oedipus of the Greek myth, Amira does not understand that this investigation will lead her to discover a truth worse than an unfaithful mother and wife: a truth that will lead her down a tunnel of pain and despair.

The film is beautifully narrated, with a consequentiality and rhythm that captures the viewer and leads them to follow Amira towards the fate that awaits her. There was much applause at the end of the screening at the 78th Venice Film Festival. Venice Film Festival, also thanks to the convincing performance of the young Tara Abboud.

A beautiful Iranian film capable of showing what is not there and creating tension with a simple glass jar. Difficult, once seen, to forget it. In a village in Kurdistan, just before the revolution, a young sceptical sergeant fights against the irrational beliefs of the local population. They believe that demons (the jinn of the Islamic religion) exist and take possession of men and women. In this case they have to be shot in the legs to draw out the blood and with it the demon. The sergeant tries to convince them that this does not exist, but the arrival of an exorcist (who in the eyes of the sergeant seems nothing more than a vulgar charlatan) sets the stage for an impending tragedy. Wonderful atmosphere, excellent pace, solid tension and a sharp reflection on the unhealthy power of faith and autosuggestion and how little reason can do in the face of these destructive forces. Not to be missed.

A little film for kids, but not bad. The criticisms of the film's mistakes regarding horses are unfair. This is not a documentary about horses, it is an adventure film for children, and it is moral that this story educates young people to love animals. 14-year-old Sanna needs to love, but her classmates make fun of her. Then she finds her mission when she meets Sherdil, the beautiful Arabian horse destined for slaughter, and she will do anything to save him.