Franz Rogowski plays a Nazi ringmaster in a deluded blend of magical realism, gratuitous violence and sentimentality
What better way to start the new year with what will surely be remembered as one of its worst films. This mashup of magical realism, gratuitous violence and sentimentality is an atrocity in filmic form. It’s only a bit offensive for its appropriation of the Holocaust as a dramatic engine. What really stirs revulsion is the film’s smug delusions of quality, a self-belief so strong that it has the gall to take two hours and 21 minutes to unfurl itself to the end. Everyone who whined about Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon being too long should be strapped to a chair, like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange, and forced to watch this in order to understand the difference between a film that’s long because it has a...
What better way to start the new year with what will surely be remembered as one of its worst films. This mashup of magical realism, gratuitous violence and sentimentality is an atrocity in filmic form. It’s only a bit offensive for its appropriation of the Holocaust as a dramatic engine. What really stirs revulsion is the film’s smug delusions of quality, a self-belief so strong that it has the gall to take two hours and 21 minutes to unfurl itself to the end. Everyone who whined about Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon being too long should be strapped to a chair, like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange, and forced to watch this in order to understand the difference between a film that’s long because it has a...
- 1/8/2024
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Guardian - Film News
Gabriele Mainetti on the streets of Rome with Anne-Katrin Titze: “In Once Upon A Time In America you don’t even have the American Dream like Scarface does.”
In the second instalment with Gabriele Mainetti we touch upon Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in Brian De Palma’s Scarface, Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In America, John Ford and John Wayne, Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City, Michael Haneke’s comment on Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Tod Browning, and the painful process of accepting yourself in Freaks Out, co-written with Nicola Guaglianone.
Gabriele Mainetti on Franz (Franz Rogowski): “Franz says no and Matilda can’t say no and says yes with all the pain.”
There’s Franz, the German pianist blessed with 12 fingers and the ability to see the future. He wants the “freaks” on his side. But what exactly is his side?...
In the second instalment with Gabriele Mainetti we touch upon Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in Brian De Palma’s Scarface, Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In America, John Ford and John Wayne, Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City, Michael Haneke’s comment on Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Tod Browning, and the painful process of accepting yourself in Freaks Out, co-written with Nicola Guaglianone.
Gabriele Mainetti on Franz (Franz Rogowski): “Franz says no and Matilda can’t say no and says yes with all the pain.”
There’s Franz, the German pianist blessed with 12 fingers and the ability to see the future. He wants the “freaks” on his side. But what exactly is his side?...
- 4/15/2023
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Exclusive: Vmi Releasing has picked up North American rights to the fantastical WWII drama Freaks vs. the Reich (formerly Freaks Out), which won eight awards at the Venice Film Festival in 2021, including the Grafetta d’Oro for Best Film, and went on to land six David di Donatello Awards from the Academy of Italian Cinema the following year. The second feature from director Gabriele Mainetti (They Call Me Jeeg) will bow in theaters and on digital on April 28th.
Related Story Roadside Attractions Acquires Emerson Brothers Drama ‘Dreamin’ Wild’ With Casey Affleck, Noah Jupe & Zooey Deschanel Related Story Vmi Releasing Taps 'Skinamarink' Exec Producer Jonathan Barkan As Head Of U.S. Distribution Related Story Michael Madsen Horror Gets North America Deal; Toronto Music Biz Pic Adds Cast; Carmen Aguirre Memoir Optioned — North America Briefs
The film set in 1943 Rome opens on an artisanal circus owned by elderly magician,...
Related Story Roadside Attractions Acquires Emerson Brothers Drama ‘Dreamin’ Wild’ With Casey Affleck, Noah Jupe & Zooey Deschanel Related Story Vmi Releasing Taps 'Skinamarink' Exec Producer Jonathan Barkan As Head Of U.S. Distribution Related Story Michael Madsen Horror Gets North America Deal; Toronto Music Biz Pic Adds Cast; Carmen Aguirre Memoir Optioned — North America Briefs
The film set in 1943 Rome opens on an artisanal circus owned by elderly magician,...
- 4/3/2023
- by Matt Grobar
- Deadline Film + TV
Gabriele Mainetti’s Freaks Out, co-written with Nicola Guaglianone, starring Franz Rogowski, Aurora Giovinazzo, Pietro Castellitto, Giancarlo Martini, Claudio Santamaria, and Giorgio Tirabassi opens Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà’s 21st edition of Open Roads: New Italian Cinema
Giuseppe Bonito’s A Girl Returned; Paolo Taviani’s Leonora Addio (The Demise Of Luigi Pirandello); Laura Bispuri’s The Peacock’s Paradise (Il Paradiso Del Pavone) starring Dominique Sanda, Alba Rohrwacher, Carlo Cerciello, and Maya Sansa; Chiara Bellosi’s Swing Ride (Calcinculo) with Gaia Di Pietro and Andrea Carpenzano; Nanni Moretti’s Three Floors with Margherita Buy, Adriano Giannini, Elena Lietti, Riccardo Scamarcio, Paolo Graziosi, and Rohrwacher, and Gabriele Mainetti’s Freaks Out, co-written with Nicola Guaglianone, starring Franz Rogowski, Aurora Giovinazzo, Pietro Castellitto, Giancarlo Martini, Claudio Santamaria, and Giorgio Tirabassi are six highlights of Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà’s 21st edition of Open Roads: New Italian Cinema.
Giuseppe Bonito’s A Girl Returned; Paolo Taviani’s Leonora Addio (The Demise Of Luigi Pirandello); Laura Bispuri’s The Peacock’s Paradise (Il Paradiso Del Pavone) starring Dominique Sanda, Alba Rohrwacher, Carlo Cerciello, and Maya Sansa; Chiara Bellosi’s Swing Ride (Calcinculo) with Gaia Di Pietro and Andrea Carpenzano; Nanni Moretti’s Three Floors with Margherita Buy, Adriano Giannini, Elena Lietti, Riccardo Scamarcio, Paolo Graziosi, and Rohrwacher, and Gabriele Mainetti’s Freaks Out, co-written with Nicola Guaglianone, starring Franz Rogowski, Aurora Giovinazzo, Pietro Castellitto, Giancarlo Martini, Claudio Santamaria, and Giorgio Tirabassi are six highlights of Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà’s 21st edition of Open Roads: New Italian Cinema.
- 6/9/2022
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
In the pantheon of notoriously unavailable films, Jerry Lewis’ “The Day the Clown Cried” occupies a special plinth: Its outline — a circus clown is imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp where he cheers up Jewish children before being forced to lead them to their doom — makes it one of the few movies to have been suppressed purely on the grounds of “yikes.” It is perhaps unfair to compare it with “Freaks Out,” the second film from Italian director Gabriele Mainetti (“They Call Me Jeeg”), though given that Mainetti’s film also involves circus performers, Nazis and a train full of Jewish people being transported to the camps, quite which film the comparison is unfair to is up for debate. After all, Lewis’ boondoggle didn’t have in it a psychotic, ether-addicted, six-fingered, “Sieg Heil!”-ing pianist who can see into the future, and a whole host of references to, of all things,...
- 9/9/2021
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
“My Brilliant Friend” star Margherita Mazzucco is set to play Saint Clare of Assisi in Susanna Nicchiarelli’s new feature film “Chiara” which will conclude the director’s trilogy of female biopics also comprising “Nico, 1988” and “Miss Marx.”
Nicchiarelli’s portrait of the 13th century saint born into a wealthy family who at age 18 became a nun after hearing St. Francis preach is being produced by the director’s regular producers, Marta Donzelli and Gregorio Paonessa’s Vivo Film, with Rai Cinema and Belgium’s Tarantula.
Italian actor Andrea Carpenzano (“The Champion”) is also set to star.
“The strength of Chiara’s story lies in her modernity: after all, we are talking about an eighteen year old who, although in a very different context from ours, fights for her dreams,” Nicchiarelli said in a statement. “I am convinced that his story can also speak to the girls and boys of today,...
Nicchiarelli’s portrait of the 13th century saint born into a wealthy family who at age 18 became a nun after hearing St. Francis preach is being produced by the director’s regular producers, Marta Donzelli and Gregorio Paonessa’s Vivo Film, with Rai Cinema and Belgium’s Tarantula.
Italian actor Andrea Carpenzano (“The Champion”) is also set to star.
“The strength of Chiara’s story lies in her modernity: after all, we are talking about an eighteen year old who, although in a very different context from ours, fights for her dreams,” Nicchiarelli said in a statement. “I am convinced that his story can also speak to the girls and boys of today,...
- 7/11/2021
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
La pecora nera or if you prefer, The Black Sheep is the feature debut from Ascanio Celestini, which is In Competition for the Golden Lion at the 67th Venice International Film Festival.
Yes, we said it’s a comedy, but they also describe it as an “inventive, funny and tragic” movie. Check out the La pecora nera synopsis and see why…
“The psychiatric hospital is an apartment block of saints. The poor crazy inmates tucked into their Chinese sheets – industrially manufactured shrouds – are saints, the nun lit up like an ex-voto by her bedside lamp is a saint.
And the doctor is the saintliest of all, he is the head of the saints, he is Jesus Christ.”
This is how Nicola describes his 35 years in the “electric asylum” and in his messed-up head reality and fantasy merge, producing unexpected illuminations.
Nicola was born in the 1960s, “the fabulous sixties”, and...
Yes, we said it’s a comedy, but they also describe it as an “inventive, funny and tragic” movie. Check out the La pecora nera synopsis and see why…
“The psychiatric hospital is an apartment block of saints. The poor crazy inmates tucked into their Chinese sheets – industrially manufactured shrouds – are saints, the nun lit up like an ex-voto by her bedside lamp is a saint.
And the doctor is the saintliest of all, he is the head of the saints, he is Jesus Christ.”
This is how Nicola describes his 35 years in the “electric asylum” and in his messed-up head reality and fantasy merge, producing unexpected illuminations.
Nicola was born in the 1960s, “the fabulous sixties”, and...
- 9/11/2010
- by Fiona
- Filmofilia
Are you guys ready for the oldest film festival in the world? Yeah, sure you are! Who’s crazy enough to miss all that glamour, great movies, and well-known faces? Guess nobody!
This year’s Venice Film Festival runs from September 1- 11th and some great titles will compete for Leone d’Oro, or if you prefer Golden Lion, indeed!
Just in case you don’t trust us, check out a list of all the films playing in competition:
In Competition
Black Swan, Opening Night Film (dir. Darren Aronofsky – U.S.) Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder
La Pecora Nera, (dir. Ascanio Celestini – Italy) Ascanio Celestini, Giorgio Tirabassi, Maya Sansa
Somewhere, (dir. Sofia Coppola – U.S.) Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning, Benicio Del Toro, Michelle Monaghan, Laura Chiatti, Simona Ventura
Happy Few, (dir. Antony Cordier – France) Marina Fois, Elodie Bouchez, Roschdy Zem, Nicolas Duvauchelle
The Solitude of Prime Numbers,...
This year’s Venice Film Festival runs from September 1- 11th and some great titles will compete for Leone d’Oro, or if you prefer Golden Lion, indeed!
Just in case you don’t trust us, check out a list of all the films playing in competition:
In Competition
Black Swan, Opening Night Film (dir. Darren Aronofsky – U.S.) Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder
La Pecora Nera, (dir. Ascanio Celestini – Italy) Ascanio Celestini, Giorgio Tirabassi, Maya Sansa
Somewhere, (dir. Sofia Coppola – U.S.) Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning, Benicio Del Toro, Michelle Monaghan, Laura Chiatti, Simona Ventura
Happy Few, (dir. Antony Cordier – France) Marina Fois, Elodie Bouchez, Roschdy Zem, Nicolas Duvauchelle
The Solitude of Prime Numbers,...
- 7/30/2010
- by Fiona
- Filmofilia
The line-up for the 67th Venice Film Festival has finally been announced and we've handily posted the runners and riders below...
The Italian cinematic shindig, which runs from September 1-11 and features the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Guillermo Arriaga, Arnaud Desplechin, Danny Elfman, Luca Guadagnino and Gabriele Salvatores on the competition jury, has pulled out all the stops this year with some very exciting flicks.
Top on our list of must-see movies includes Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, Vincent Gallo's Promises Written In Water and Anh Hung Tran's Murasaki adaptation Norwegian Wood.
The films to be shown at the 67th Venice Film Festival are...
Black Swan, directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis and Vincent Cassel.
La Pecora Nera, directed by Ascanio Celestini and starring Ascanio Celestini, Giorgio Tirabassi and Maya Sansa
Somewhere, directed by Sofia Coppola and starring Stephen Dorff,...
The Italian cinematic shindig, which runs from September 1-11 and features the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Guillermo Arriaga, Arnaud Desplechin, Danny Elfman, Luca Guadagnino and Gabriele Salvatores on the competition jury, has pulled out all the stops this year with some very exciting flicks.
Top on our list of must-see movies includes Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, Vincent Gallo's Promises Written In Water and Anh Hung Tran's Murasaki adaptation Norwegian Wood.
The films to be shown at the 67th Venice Film Festival are...
Black Swan, directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis and Vincent Cassel.
La Pecora Nera, directed by Ascanio Celestini and starring Ascanio Celestini, Giorgio Tirabassi and Maya Sansa
Somewhere, directed by Sofia Coppola and starring Stephen Dorff,...
- 7/29/2010
- Screenrush
Knowing Quentin Tarantino's appreciation for films that are "out there": if I had to do some really early predictions here, I'd say that the Gold and Silver Lion front-runners are in Alex De La Iglesia's bizarro fantasy film A Sad Trumpet Ballad, Pablo Larrain's Post Mortem or Athina Rachel Tsangari's Attenberg (a filmmaker we recently profiled in our American New Wave 25 series - she spent more than a decade in Austin's film scene). I'd also add put Abdellatif Kechiche's Black Venus high up on any awards list, especially the Lido - it's a film I've been pegging for Venice since the film went into production. Added to Aronofsky's Black Swan, the U.S is repped by Monte Hellman and his comeback film, Road to Nowhere, Julian Schnabel's Miral, indie female helmers Kelly Reichardt (Meek's Cutoff) and Sofia Coppola (Meek’s Cutoff), and the Coppola-...
- 7/29/2010
- IONCINEMA.com
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