danielefanin-17409 Reviews

Dry (2022)

A Dry Human Spiderweb

[6/10 · 16 October 2022]

Italian director Paolo Virzí has frequently chosen choral structures for his movies, often with excellent results, amongst which excels The Human Capital (2014), and such model is selected again for his last film, Dry (Siccità), premiered at 79th Venice Film Festival, where it also bagged a minor prize.

A dystopic Rome, without water after three rainless years and with the river Tiber completely dry, is the desolate set where the sad comedies of pathetic characters of even drier lives are staged. They run after each other, brush against each other and are relate with each other in parched days and nights filled with different sorrows, separate yet linked and intertwined, made even more dire by the start of a pandemic caused by the proliferation of ever-present bugs. And everybody is waiting for the refreshing rain that could quench the soul and clean the bodies, allowing the rebirth of whatever humanity might have remained in the hearts of the characters, like the small plant that is cared for, thrown away and salvaged by one of the main characters in the movie.

Dry is a bold movie, for the evident references to the Covid-19 pandemic, which might have easily made it banal, and an interesting one, for the cinematography and the soundtrack; the director is well supported by a cast of some of the best Italian actors and actresses, that are able to catch and keep the viewers' attention even when, and it happens frequently, the script, the product of four writers (maybe too many!), tends to run dry as well, like it reflects the torrid climate that leaves the characters gasping.

Italian cinema, both with its comedies as well as with its neo-realistic roots, historically has not given much attention to dystopic tales, much closer to other regions' filmographies, and in this context Paolo Virzí's latest movie surely represents an interesting and innovative effort. The basic idea behind the movie is good and the movie itself is enjoyable to watch and offers quite enough food for thought. Yet, it struggles to coordinate all the stories it choses to tell, that sometimes remain hanged to strings too thin and dry to allow the film narrative lifeblood to run smoothly and sufficiently nourish all the movie's characters and subplots. Hence, the director is forced to choose forced twists that, as a consequence, become obvious and that in the end take away some merit from a movie that, for the way it has been crafted, directed and acted, could have been something better and could have left the spectator with something more than just a striking balance of humor and sadness, a remarkable cinematography, with the excellent special effects of the dry Tiber and the amazing lighting, and the great, even if not homogeneous, cast's performances.

Titane (2021)

Strange Days

[6/10 · 4 May 2022]

Strange are the days when a man marries a hologram, or when the first interaction many people have in the morning is with a virtual assistant with a name terribly similar to the protagonist of Titane, Julia Ducournau' second movie after the critically acclaimed Raw, to which it amply refers, from the opening scene to the Garance Marillier's character to the warped father-daughter relationship.

In these strange days, maybe it is not very less strange that a film like Titane unexpectedly and controversially wins the Palm d'Or at Cannes, the first movie since The Piano to bring the top prize to a female director.

With a titanium plate implanted in her skull after a car accident as a young girl, Alexia develops a very particular attraction to cars, that she fosters by becoming a dancer at supercharged muscle car motor shows and a magnet for their toxic machismo. After one last show, Alexia brutally kills one of her excessively intrusive admirers, before entering the car she was provocatively dancing on and having an intercourse with it. Soon after, she discovers her pregnancy and goes on a gruesome killing spree involving one of her colleagues and her party in addition to burning her parents' house after locking them in.

Now wanted by the police, Alexia changes her appearance and pose as Adrien, vanished ten years earlier as a boy. Vincent, the firefighters commander and father of the boy, distraught by his ageing, which he tries to combat with steroids, and unable to accept his son disappearance, takes Alexia in, forcing everybody to accept her as his lost son. Once again in the macho environment of extreme firefighting, Alexia struggles to keep her cover and develops a closer bond with Vincent, who badly needs it to hang on to his illusion. With her pregnancy and female nature more and more difficult to hide, Alexia leans more on Vincent, who lovingly supports her till the controversial delivery that ends the movie.

With poignant performances from Agathe Rousselle and Vincent Lindon, Titane is not an easy movie to watch, deliberately punching the viewer in the stomach in order to speak to the mind, but is it a film worth watching in days like these, at least by those who believe art is not only the perfect balance of Botticelli's Birth of Venus or the mesmerising stillness of Leonardo's Mona Lisa but also the shattered world of Picasso's Guernica or the unbearable pain of Munch's The Scream.

Titane is the second full-feature movie of Julia Ducournau, after Raw (2016) and Junior, her debut short film at Cannes in 2011. The daughter of a gynaecologist and dermatologist, she admits that her family played a major role in her fascination with flesh and bodies, which she uses, often brutally, to represent the turbulences of lost souls. Compared to directors like David Cronenberg or David Lynch, Julia Ducournau has shown a peculiar personal style in the stories she narrates and the way she films then and is definitely a director to follow with attention.

Boyhood (I) (2014)

As Time Goes By

[9/10 · 29 May 2021]

At a time when TV series are incredibly popular, stretching sometimes over years a plot that, if properly and honestly narrated, would hardly last the canonical 90 minutes of a feature film, it is only refreshing, and a source of hope in the power and future of filmmaking, that a visionary and independent project such as Boyhood found a producer and the appreciation it deserves, with various awards collected across the world, at the Academy Awards, BAFTA, Berlin, Golden Globes amongst others.

Orson Welles' The Other Side of the Wind, release 33 years after his death, officially holds the record for the longest movie production time in history at 48 years, but the last Welles' credited film, and few others that took years to finish, differ substantially from Boyhood which, since inception, was thought to be not only filmed but developed over a 12-year period. The only parallel that can be fairly made is with Michael Winterbottom's Everyday, shot over five years to allow for the natural ageing of the protagonists. With Boyhood, Richard Linklater realises what even one of the most innovative and visionary directors, Lars von Trier, only envisioned with his Dimension project, launched in 1991 as a film to be shot for 3' every year over a 33-year period, with a few days of shooting each year, only to be abandoned after only 6 years and released as a 27-minute short film in 2010.

Linklater instead was able to reach the end of his project, and thankfully so since the final output is one of the most significant movies of the last few years and leaves an indelible mark on filmmaking. Filmed only few days every year, Boyhood was a true work-in-progress, as the script was only loosely structured at the beginning and left open to be filled with elements of the actors' lives, such as the family background of Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette and the director himself, as well as adapted to the natural growth of the actors and the world around. Boyhood follows Mason, a boy from Texas beautifully and naturally played by Austin-born Eller Coltrane, from age six till he goes to college twelve years later.

With the phantom of The Truman Show hovering above Boyhood, the film is not only a come-of-age excellent movie, as it might be viewed with a superficial eye, but a very delicate and yet deep study of life as it unfolds for most people, and this reflects in the natural involvement that the audience experiences during the almost three hours of the film and the familiarity that oozes from the characters and their developments.

Richard Linklater is not new to film projects that have a vision that goes beyond a short-term horizon, as proven by the (so far) trilogy of Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013), featuring as well Ethan Hawke. However, as challenging as that project was, it was still a relatively traditional series, or sequels, while Boyhood is unprecedented and probably the closest thing to the adherence of life and art to have reached the silver screen.

Parched (2015)

Burned by Society, Thirsty for Life

[6/10 · 10 July 2020]

Premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2015, Parched, the third feature film of Indian director Leena Yadav, has been worldwide well received by critics but has struggled to perform at the box office in India, where it mostly gained attention for its explicit sexual scenes than for its content, though abroad it has encountered also a good response from the general public as a film dedicated to the struggle of women in an hostile and archaic society.

Even if at times the narrative tends to be too simple and indulging in some sort of characters' Manicheism, the film deserves to be seen for its honest storytelling of the unbearable hardship of four women and for some moment of beautiful filmography.

In a remote village in Rajasthan, the lives of Rani, a widow, Bijli, a dancer turned prostitute, Lajjo, a childless wife and Janaki, a child bride, are emotionally intertwined and clouded by the violence and savage beatings of the men that cross their existences, pushing them back every time they try to raise their heads. The characters are written to depict not only the general difficulties of women in male-dominated, archaic societies that are not unfortunately limited to rural and traditional India, as the daily news remind all of us far too often, but also to radicalise even more their hopeless, futureless marginality and lack of voice.

Subtly playing with the double meaning of the title, the four women' souls are, in different ways, dried out by the remoteness of their location and the unbearable pressure of an archaic society where a woman that reads makes a bad wife, where beating and raping is the norm, remissively and painfully accepted by the victims, but also thirsty for a life that they know they deserve and can exist. Relying on the deeply rooted friendship and intimacy, even physical, that bond their spirits and bodies together, whether matured through the years or, like for the child bride, for the memories of their past stories, they find the courage, in the end, to affirm their values as human beings, cutting ties with the men that oppress them, purifying their lives with the fire that burns the beating husband and the escape from prostitution, in an ending that, while reminiscent of Thelma and Louise, is illuminated by a ray of hope represented by their decision of which road to take at a fork and the reunion of an emancipated Janaki with her school sweetheart.

A courageous film that is well directed and able to nicely blend Hollywood and Bollywood aspects of filmmaking, Parched involves the viewers, of all genders, as the struggle for basic human recognition surpasses the man/woman juxtaposition, as hinted by the sternness and rejection of the village towards the foreign-looking wife of the local textile entrepreneur, and becomes a gender-blind human fight for humanity. A beautiful cinematography supplements the occasional script's psychological shortcuts and the frequent bipolar over-romanticising of some of the characters that are, however, well played by most of the cast, amongst which excel Tannishtha Chatterjee in the role of Rani and Radhika Apte as her friend Lajjo.

Notwithstanding some shortcomings, Parched has a value that deserves to be appreciated not only for its much needed feminist activism and sociological angle but also as a well-crafted film.

The Platform (2019)

Homo Homini Lupus

[7/10 · 27 June 2020]

In a dystopian structure, out of time and place as it is timeless and ubiquitous the humans' ferocity against each other, a tower with hundreds of levels houses a vertical prison, where people are sentenced to serve their time or end up for a free choice, as happened to the protagonist Goreng or to the former administrative clerk Imoguiri. This Vertical Self-Management Centre has a cell with two inmates on each level, the top floor being level 1, and a platform is lowered from top to bottom every day with food for all, a food of exquisite quality and appearance that would be enough for everybody, but only if everybody would take only what they really need for survival. The prisoners have only few minutes to eat all they want, or rather what has been left over by the higher levels. Each month, without any apparent logic, the inmates are moved to another floor, with all that it means for food availability.

Once the non-rules are accepted, there is no difference between the convict and those who have chosen to enter; all attempts to introduce some sort of humanity and a very basic social cooperation scheme, which would solve the food distribution problem to the benefit of all, fail and not even the ultimate effort to enforce it through force is able to effectively change the relationships and the fate of the inmates.

Emblematically, the movie ends on the floor level, level 333, that in numerology represents the spiritual guide that helps those in distress, even though the final message, embodied in a girl apparently born in captivity, does not look so hopeful.

The Platform premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and was bought by Netflix, where it has become soon one of the top-watched movies in 2020. And rightly so!

Based upon a theatre screenplay but heavily re-written, the movie is the first direction of Basque director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia and it is not easy to watch, but for those who will have the stomach to endure the savagely violent and disturbing footage there will be a terrible yet sophisticated and intellectually rewarding parable on the imperfection of the human beings and on their animal instincts, shot with a remarkable visual style and plenty of clever references, to movies, above all Peter Greenaway's for the food elaborate preparation, to literature, with Dante's Comedy and his trip to Hell, as well as socio-political doctrines, with open criticisms of both liberal and socialist systems.

Good and effective also the actors' performances, that the director has cannily chosen in some case from actors usually cast on comic, lighter roles.

Bearing in mind that some scenes might be disturbing for some viewers, the movie is highly recommended for its artistic value and style and represents a bold choice, therefore to be praised and recognised, for Netflix, which is usually very popular but not necessarily associated with art movies like this one.

The Last Seduction (1994)

Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Who's the Darkest of Them All?

[8/10 · 13 June 2020]

The Last Seduction represents the peak of the short but interesting directing career of John Dhal who, after his excellent second movie, Red Rock West, in 1994 released this new film noir that has made a lasting impact for its new, and more extreme, depiction of the archetype of the dark lady, a Linda Fiorentino that lends to the lead role not only a breath-taking body but also the joyous and boundless aggressiveness of a true predator, who enjoys the evil she spreads around her not only for the material benefits she gains but also for the pure and sheer pleasure of manipulating, dominating and destroying another human being, preferably a weak man; a female character most likely not seen earlier on screen!

Deprived of an almost certain Oscar as best lead actress due to the early cable release of the movie, Linda Fiorentino, like also John Dhal, would not reach anymore the heights and intensity of this film; after her good performance in Scorsese's After Hour, it could have consolidated her position as a rising cinema star but that it actually proved to be, at only 36 years of age, her swan song, as none of her subsequent roles was able to sustain a career that, after The Last Seduction, seemed very promising.

Well supported by both Bill Pullman as her husband, in more than one way the victim of a lethal wife, and Peter Berg, the clueless, sacrificial and sacrificed lamb, succumbing to the main character's blunt spider strategy, for whom the viewers cannot avoid feeling a resigned compassion, Linda Fiorentino as Bridget Gregory/Wendy Kroy has been able to surge to the position of the darkest lady of all, the most ruthless and happily scrupleless, not only of the classics of the '40s and '50s but also of the new noir revival of the '80s and '90s, pushing well beyond the boundaries already stretched by Kathleen Turner with Body Heat; and it is worth noticing the homages paid by The Last Seduction to both Double Indemnity, mentioned in the script, and Body Heat, with the ending almost identical to Lawrence Kasdan's movie.

The Last Seduction remains, even with the passing of time, an interesting and highly enjoyable movie, with a well structured plot and a script cynic enough that, while orienting the viewers' immediate and more external empathy towards the losers and abused like the husband and the lover, inevitably attracts above all for the deeply rooted and irredeemable protagonist's evil, a sensual devil in stockings that unavoidably mesmerises even when the victim is aware that the only outcome is an eternal perdition.

An unwatchable The Last Seduction II in 1999 luckily didn't have a further episode nor took away anything from John Dahl's best movie, a modern jewel of the noir genre, where, like in Body Heat and unlikely in the apparently more moral, and particularly subject to the Heys Code, classic noirs of the '40s and '50s, evil and crime do pay, and handsomely!

The Big Sleep (1946)

The Big Complication

[7/10 · 12 June 2020]

The Big Sleep, regarded as one of the greatest noirs of movie history, had a production almost as complicated as the its plot, adapted, and softened in order to meet the draconian censorship of the Hays Code, from the 1939 Raymond Chandler's novel with the same title, that gave birth to the Philip Marlowe character.

Finished in 1945, then subject to major reshooting to give more depth and breadth to Lauren Bacall's character and, particularly, to her romance with Humphrey Bogart, The Big Sleep was eventually released in 1946, conveniently few months after the wedding of its two leading actors.

As widely known, the plot is baroque to say the least and Hollywood legend has that the very Raymond Chandler, asked by director Howard Hawks about some of the story's nexuses, was not able to explain them! However, the crafted direction of Howard Hawks is able to keep the viewer's attention always alive, subtly moving the centre of gravity of the movie from the developments of the criminal story to the developments of the attraction between Vivian Rutledge, played by Lauren Bacall at her fourth movie after her debut, still a teen-ager and under the direction of her Pygmalion Howard Hawks, in To Have and To Have Not, where she met the man, twenty five years older, at his third marriage and already a bright star, with whom she will form one of the most legendary Hollywood couples, in life and on screen, and that here plays Philip Marlowe, another sophisticated performance of Humphrey Bogart, as usual unrivalled in blending an abrasive harshness with an irrepressible empathy.

The movie, although interesting for its multi-leads narrative built as a sort of matrioska of crime and rotten humanity, does not hide, even from its launching trailers, how much it is focused on the two leading actors and it banks on their close-ups and their intense, sexually charged, bickering, most often a truly witty and lively dialogue, without paying too much attention to clarify, not even at the end, what really happened: in the original version a scene where Inspector Bernie Ohls, a good Regis Toomey, and Philip Marlowe go together over the facts, explaining them for the benefit of the most likely still puzzled audience, has been sacrificed in the final cut to make more room for Lauren Bacall and her relationship with Bogart.

Notwithstanding these patent commercial tricks, the movie had undoubtedly represented a milestone In the history of the classic film noir: while the film is not particularly innovative, neither in the structure nor in the camerawork, the performance of Bogart, already a big star in Hollywood, creates another icon of the private detective character, cynic yet deeply human: even if others have played both Sam Spade and Philip Marlow, The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep have linked them unavoidably to Humphrey Bogart's facial expression.

A movie that every film buff should watch and that, even after many years, has aged very well and has been able to remain interesting and filmically attractive, well beyond the advertised romance of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

Body Heat (1981)

A Searing and Sweating Movie

[8/10 · 6 June 2020]

Body Heat was the launchpad for both director Lawrence Kasdan and the lead characters, Kathleen Turner, that with her debut film became overnight the prototype of the sensually perfect dark lady, and William Hurt, who after the good reviews for Ken Russell's Altered States the year before, rose to a sex-symbol and stardom status that propelled him to the well-deserved Oscar for Kiss of the Spider Woman four years later.

Graced with excellent supporting roles by Ted Danson and Mickey Rourke and a sensually evocative soundtrack by John Barry, Lawrence Kasdan's first direction, after a solid screenwriting apprenticeship, is an open and devout tribute to the noir movies of the '40s and '50s, most of all Double Indemnity, of which it follows the structure as well as the use of a legal twist, though it cannot be plainly considered a remake. Bearing in mind the almost forty years elapsed between the two movies, Body Heat contains some aspects that are even more interesting than its source, in particular for the different connotation of the two main characters: Kathleen Turner, both for her physicality and her sulky voice, later memorably lent to Jessica Rabbit, looks more convincing and irresistible than Barbara Stanwick and William Hurt is definitely less self-assured than Fred MacMurry but at the same time more defenseless and exposed, unable to come to terms with the end of his distorted dream even when faced by an unmistakable reality. Moreover, the immoral ending, where evil boldly triumphs, gives the film a deep bitterness that Double Indemnity in the '40s most likely could not have because of the times ,but that makes Lawrence Kasdan's movie even more real and resounding.

But what stands out in Body Heat is the physical presence of the weather in which the story unfolds; Body Heat is not only a movie to watch and listen, is also, in a very rare way, a film to "sweat", for the constant, intrusive and pervasive presence of the Florida's searing heat that becomes a further, and dominant, character in the movie's developments, unavoidably carrying the protagonists to their pre-written destiny. Maybe only Bogart's films like The African Queen or Key Largo were able to reach such interpenetrating mix, and this is to be seen as an additional merit of Lawrence Kasdan, who was one of the most interesting directors of the '80s (The Big Chill, Accidental Tourist) before getting somehow lost in the '90s, till almost disappearing after unassuming films like The Dreamcatcher and Darling Companion.

Okja (2017)

A Modern Day Fairytale

[6/10 · 30 May 2020]

Two years before taking Hollywood by storm with Parasite, the first non-English speaking movie to bag an Oscar for Best Film, South Korean director Bong Joon Ho presented in 2017 at Cannes Okja, his second American movie after the promising Snowpiercer in 2013 and a remarkable series of good film made at home.

Originally booed at Cannes because a Netflix production, hence without cinema release, the delicate yet aggressive modern fairytale of Okja was able to make an impact for its good storytelling, something nowadays not always found, and that was able to touch the heart of many viewers.

Mixing elegiac moments, particularly in the first part set in Korea and focused on the delicate relationship between the "beast" Okja, the genetically modified superpig produced by ruthless capitalists, and the "beauty", the young girl with a big lion-heart, with other sof pure action, like the beautifully filmed truck chase through the streets of Seoul, echoing 007 and M:I movies, Okja succeeds in keeping a good narrative balance, solving within the fairytale the problems represented by an excess of leads, interesting but not always properly developed, particularly for some of the Animal Liberation Front characters, and some up and down performance of both Tilda Swinton and, even more so, an usually much more composed Jake Gyllenhaal, that in some scenes look like a Wes Anderson's film waste.

Maybe Okja is not an exceptional movie but it is surely interesting and never banal, even when touching on potentially obvious topics like the juxtaposition between animal rights activists and the foodstuff industry. Indeed, it is a movie worth watching for its crafted narrative, the simple originality of the story and the ability of the director, patently confirmed by Parasite, to master at the same time different tones, like fairytale, comedy, drama, social criticism, making sure that oscillating from one to the other, even when not very linear, never looks forced or imposed. In addition to sprinkle the movie with some hidden quotes for the film buffs, Bong Joon Ho ends the movie with an interesting and open ending, where on purpose there is not a clear winner and the question of who really won the battle, and even more so who will win the war, remains sadly open.

Double Indemnity (1944)

Double Good!

[9/10 · 30 May 2020]

Should you need a movie to explain the concept of film noir, most likely Double Indemnity would be the preferred choice of many, also for defining the perfect dark lady, a Barbara Stanwyck in her more refined role, seductive without being attractive. But who said evil must be beautiful to be luring for the lost souls of the night?

Billy Wilder, already a solid and respected screenwriter in Europe before fleeing the Nazis and land in Hollywood to continue his trade, made the transition to directing only few years and two movies before co-writing, in a tempestuous cooperation with Raymond Chandler, and directing Double Indemnity, based upon a James Cain novel published in 1943 and inspired by a real crime occurred in New York City in 1927.

While formally abiding to the feared Hollywood's Hays Code, Double Indemnity oozes sensuality and perversion, not only for the excellent script, the clever flashback structure, the remarkable cinematography and the majestic use of light and shadows, but above all for the alchemy between the two leading characters. Like two chemicals that alone can be inert and banal, the combination of Walter Neff, the ultimate nice guy, superficially self-confident, to whom Fred MacMurry gives his handsome and reassuring face, and Phyllis Dietrichson, the apparently frustrated housewife, a Barbara Stanwyck that, although not beautiful notwithstanding a kinky ankle bracelet that soon became a fetish, is dangerously sleazy and manipulative, creates an explosive mix of weakness and power, an evil magnetism that none of the characters can escape.

An ineluctable and doomed journey, almost like in a Greek tragedy, where nobody can steer any more his own destiny once the wrong path has been taken, nobody can get off the tram directed to the cemetery, to use the words of Edward G. Robinson, who in this film is able to blend strict logic and sentiment, harshness and delicateness in a memorable performance.

A movie that takes the viewer through the labyrinth of the human souls, uncovering and rummaging into the rottenness that both Phyllis and Walter know they have inside. It is not a coincidence that the whole story never takes place during the day, everything happens at night, a long, dark night without a dawn, a night that no light can brighten.

The 39 Steps (1935)

A Big Step to Hollywood

[7/10 · 30 May 2020]

When, in 1935, Alfred Hitchcock directs The Thirty Nine Steps, he is already a household name of the European and British cinema, mainly due to a regular and solid string of good movies and, in particular, to the success of the previous' year release, The Man Who Knew Too Much. But it is the favourable results in the USA and worldwide of this movie, loosely based on the 1915 novel written but the Scottish writer and diplomat John Buchan, that opened for the Leytonstone director the doors of Hollywood which, in few years and many movies, will make him one of the most successful directors in movies' history.

The Thirty Nine Steps, retrospectively, codifies some of Hitchcock's canonical hallmarks that are to be found in many of his subsequent films, till the end of his career: the unavoidably blond, beautiful and strong-willed blonde female lead, the male protagonist unwillingly drawn into the plot, the witty dialogues and bickering amongst them till they get together, or are reunited, at the end of the movie, the elliptical chases, where the pursuer is at the same time pursued, the elegant balance between thriller and comedy, the almost absolute freedom to re-write the story, only echoing the chosen literary source.

With a solid narrative, the film adopts some interesting cinematic solutions, like the angles that open and end it, an almost expressionistic black & white lighting for the external takes in the moor, the use of both traditional settings (the theatre, the Scottish reception, the inn) and other much more modern and sophisticated (the moor chase, the farmer's house lighting). Moreover, the two leading characters develops a good chemistry: Robert Donat as Richard Hannay, a Canadian temporary in London who, unwittingly, gets embroiled in an international espionage case that he will be able to brilliantly solve, and Madeleine Carroll, the blonde Pamela chained, first against her will and then willingly, to Hanney. Some shortcuts and illogic passages, quite evident in the building up of the story, don't undermine the charm and balance of a movie that, compared to the British cinema of the time, has a much faster and brilliant pace, both of the story and the script, and that dares, as will Psycho do twenty five years later, push the boundaries of the censorship with the scene where Pamela takes her stocking off while chained to Richard, that many blushes caused in the cinemas in 1935.

Curiously, it is worth mentioning that in the original John Buchan novel the protagonist Richard Hannay was Scottish, like the author, while Hitchcock turns him into a Canadian: the movie will be released in the UK in June 1935, only three months after the nomination and five months before John Buchan took office as Governor General of Canada in Quebec City!

After The Thirty Nine Steps, Hitchcock will direct only few more movies in the UK before moving to Hollywood and release his first American movie, Rebecca, in 1940.

Marnie (1964)

The Beginning of the End

[3/10 · 26 May 2020]

There are, in many lives and art movements, defining moments that are ruptures, seminal changes, paradigm shifts after which nothing will be the same anymore: Marnie, the Hitchcock's movie released in 1964 after two masterpieces like Psycho and The Birds, marks the beginning of the end for the artistic developments of one of the most important and beloved directors of the XX Century.

The story of films is full of movies that, underrated by critics or ignored by the vast public, are nonetheless very beautiful and interesting, but unfortunately Marnie does not belong to this group; the negative reviews and the box-office flop appear, even after many years, the natural and inevitable outcome of a movie that not even the immense artistic credits of its director can save from a sad but heavy low mark. Surely, keeping the artistic heights of the previous two movies was most likely impossible, but such a major fall was hard to predict as well!

The basic idea could have been intriguing and experimental: a thriller without a whodunnit, where the progressive discovery of the causes at the roots of the protagonist's pathologies was the only uncertainty, not even too difficult to detect though, could have freed the narrative to roam freely towards an in-depth analysis of the fascination of the male protagonist for ethology, delving on his ambivalent role of a therapist, aiming to heal and free Marnie from her phobias, and of a mentally ill patient, obsessed with a serial thief and a compulsory liar, possibly a screen projection of the known obsession of Hitchcock for Tippi Hedren, Grace Kelly's inadequate replacement.

Alas, none of the above is found in Marnie: Tippi Hedren's acting, already mediocre in her debut role in The Birds, becomes here plain lack of nuances and expressiveness, a handsome but rigid Sean Connery a distant, pale reflection of Cary Grant, the basic scenes and the high-school psychology handbook level of the script prevent the viewer, even the more casual or the Hitch's die-hard fan, to get involved, captured by the plot and the characters.

Along the years, many have tried to reconsider Marnie, offering benevolent analyses that justified with artistic merits the evident artificiality of some film settings or amplifying the chromatic choices of some of its scenes; even if understandable in light of the values of Hitchcock's overall body of films, mostly they appear only a nice but timid and unconvincing try that cannot succeed in offsetting the bitter aftertaste that Hitchcock's genius has entered with Marnie its Sunset Boulevard, from which the next and final four movies will not deviate, without though undermining the fundamental role and place of the British director in the history of cinema.

Psycho (1960)

Nomen Omen

[9/10 · 24 May 2020]

If The Birds is Alfred Hitchcock's most philosophical and technically challenging movie, Psycho is the most evident, even brazen, proof of the Leytonstone's director genius, an impossible movie bet that he won hands down!

Against the decision of Paramount, which regarded the filming of the Robert Bloch's 1959 novel of the same name, loosely inspired by a real murderer and grave robber, "too repulsive", Hitchcock defied the major and went ahead to fulfil his contractual obligation for a last film with the studio by purchasing the rights of the novel, producing the film with his own money, shooting in black and white after four years he had abandoned this feature, using his TV crew and the Universal studios, which he would then join for The Birds, his next film three years later.

But Hitchcock slap in the face of the film establishment was even harsher, punching below the belt of the Motion Picture Production Code, which set the cinema morale of the time, from the very start, with the opening scene showing and openly acknowledging, if not celebrating, an extra-marital affair and half-naked affair, and culminating later on in the pivotal shower sequence, with its nudity and the trailblazing slasher, Grand Guignol effects, used again at the end of the film to reveal Norman's mother, or, more trivially, showing for the first time in American movies a toilet flushing. He didn't stop here, though, introducing a strict and unusual "no late admission" policy for the film screenings, inspired by Clouzot's Les Diaboliques, not to mention the game-changer of eliminating the female lead, a false protagonist, just before half of movie running time, leaving a very controversial Norman Bates as the only main character. Unlikely for Hitchcock, Norman Bates persona is rather closely modelled on the real source of Robert Bloch's novel, Wisconsin killer Ed Gein, who like Norman Bates was a solitary murderer living in an isolated rural location, had a deceased and domineering mother to whom he had built a sealed off shrine in his residence and dressed in her clothes.

Notwithstanding all these idiosyncratic deviations, Psycho was an immediate success at the box office and still today is Hitchcock's' movie with the highest cumulative worldwide gross, forcing also part of the critics, originally puzzled by the film, to appreciate its unconventional values and the Academy to nominate it for four Oscars, giving none though and ignoring Anthony Perkins amazing performance.

In fact, one of the marvels of Psycho is indeed Anthony Perkins rendering of Norman Bates, making the character the ultimate psycho-murdered, a perverse icon of film history. While homosexuality had already been implied in Rope, Norman Bates' gender dysphoria becomes in Psycho the key element of the story, sublimely as well as subliminally played, most likely helped by his own sexual preferences, by Anthony Perkins, who subtly but unnoticeably reveals it early on during his dinner conversation with Marion, and it is actually plainly explained and theorised, even if maybe too didactically, at the end of the movie, just before the final, haunting close-up on Anthony Perkins' deranged look and female-voiced thoughts, themselves worth an Oscar. Regrettably

A daring, innovative masterpiece that went a long way to seal the 50s cinematography, opening the door for the more controversial 60s.

The Birds (1963)

A Haunting Fairytale

[9/10 · 23 May 2020]

Fairytales, even those for kids, are seldom serene and innocent. Think of Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, full of mysterious and haunting characters imbued with evil.

The Birds, released three years after Psycho, a gap relatively long for Hitchcock but explained also by the technical challenges of the production, contains all the trademarks typical of both his cinema style and the fairytales. The blond and beautiful leading lady, much stronger and determined than the appearances suggest, the light initial tone, almost a comedy with the witty bickering of the main characters, the unmissable Hitch's cameo, the long and winding coastal road, the ingenious quotes of his previous movies, here The 39 steps and To Catch a Thief amongst others, are intertwined with the inexplicable evil and the helplessness of the darkest fairytales' personas.

But The Birds, loosely based on a short story published in 1952 by Daphne du Maurier, an author that the English master had already used as a source for Rebecca and Jamaica Inn, is also deeply experimental and has a philosophical sophistication unrivalled by any of Hitchcock's movies. Since the opening credits, evoking the optical expressionist illusions of Escher's birds, the film is imbued with a haunting introspection that is ultimately only enhanced by the lively beginning of the movie, when Mitch, an anonymous Rod Taylor, meets and squabbles with Melanie, Tippi Hedren on her cinema debut. The director's choice of giving up a musical soundtrack, with the only music briefly played by Melanie on the piano and the nursery rhyme sang by the school children, skipping the end credits and a real, defined ending, the sophisticated special effects engineered for the birds' attacks, that all in all have well survived time and digitalisation, the dilution of time and pace challenging and almost mocking the viewer, like in the emblematic scene of the crows perched on the jungle gym, the unpredictable and random behaviour of the birds, the roles' reverse, with the humans forced by attacks and fear to look for protection into the cages, either houses, cars, bars, phone boots, coinciding with the mental cages built by the terror generated by the distortion of the natural order that everybody is used to and expects, make The Birds an overwhelming complex movie to watch and understand, difficult to define, in between horrors and thrillers and that in fact was not very much appreciated by both the critics and the public when released. Only recently the first Hitchcock movie produced and distributed by Universal has been heralded as one of his bests and most likely his last masterpiece, as well as a trailblazer on the analyses of the sickness and inner demons of the human psyche.

The Birds is a movie that leaves a long-lasting impression in the discerning viewer, notwithstanding the mediocrity of the actors, with the exceptions on an intense Jessica Tandy as Mitch's mother and a convincing Suzanne Pleshette as Annie, the sacrificial lamb of both Mitch and the birds. Regrettably, the few films Alfred Hitchcock directed after The Birds, however well-crafted and a pleasure to watch, will not add anything to the film body of one of the most important filmmakers of the XX Century.

The Ice Storm (1997)

Glazed Souls

[5/10 · 15 May 2020]

How many people have actually seen a glaze ice? Or know exactly what it is. The expression, almost equivalent to ice storm, hence the film title, refers to a meteorological phenomenon occurring when the rain, falling at below-freezing temperature but still in liquid form, forms a smooth and transparent ice coating around surfaces and objects. Beautiful, fascinating and mesmerising to watch, it usually causes only minor damages but, if extensive and prolonged, it can be one of the most dangerous winter hazards and in October 1994, oddly only few months after the Rick Moody novel was published, an ice storm caused an American Eagle Flight to crash near Chicago, killing all 68 people aboard.

The metaphor well defines the essence of The Ice Storm, the fifth direction of Ang Lee, whom once again emerges as a profound analyst of the human heart's fluctuations, also when, like in this film, they are frozen under a coat of superficial respectability and lack of real communication. Released two years after the worldwide success of Sense and Sensibility, the first real Hollywood movie of the Taiwan-born, USA-filmically weaned director, The Ice Storm is based on the homonymous and widely acclaimed Rick Moody's novel, to which, unlike some of its characters, the film remains faithful even if necessarily simplifying some of the narrative.

The story takes place around Thanksgiving 1973, marred by the Watergate scandal, and crosses two typical, actually stereotypical, upper middle-class families, neighbours in a pretty suburban leafy Connecticut small town, whose intertwined relationships are everything but pretty, frozen as they are in a superficial coat of respectability that hides, not even too deep, intense psychological damages that only the final drama, caused as well by the ice storm, might, and only might, be able to heal, as the tears of the two male leading characters at the end seem to suggest.

Ang Lee's observations are at the same time piercing and detached, an entomologist's detachment imbued of delicate respect and even empathy, well supported and enhanced by the soundtrack and the pace chosen by the director. Ang Lee confirms to be one of the most versatile directors of contemporary American mainstream cinema, able to switch with enough depth and craft from niche, art movies like this one and the earlier The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman, to mainstream costumes film like Sense and Sensibility, from a superhero flick like Hulk to action movie masterpieces such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or borderline intimist portraits like Lust and Brokeback Mountain.

The Ice Storm has mostly received positive reviews but has fared very poorly at the box office, grossing not even 50% of its cost notwithstanding an excellent cast and the successful novel behind it. It is a pity though, as the movie, far from being an everlasting masterpiece, is nonetheless a choral movie very well written and directed that, if watched with an honest and open heart, could trigger some interesting, even if not necessarily unexpected, thoughts.

Rear Window (1954)

Rear Window, Forward Cinema

[9/10 · 9 May 2020]

Why on earth a man, heterosexual and still relatively young, would spend his time looking out of his window when in his rooms there is a woman like Grace Kelly could be the real mystery left after watching Rear Window, the 1954 masterpiece directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Besides this cheeky and impudent question, this is really a masterpiece, one of the films most loved by his director and one of his more sophisticated, both narratively as well as cinematographically. Loosely based on a relatively unknown 1942 short story written by Cornell Woolrich, It Had to Be Murder, Rear Window sees L.B. Jefferies, a successful photo reporter played with enough confidence and progressive involvement by James Stewart, confined in his New York small apartment with a broken and plastered leg. In the sweltering summer heat, he turns and focuses his attention and lenses to the neighbouring apartments facing his condo's backyard, observing them with a fast growing interest that rapidly becomes excited voyeurism when he starts suspecting that a uxoricide took place in an opposite flat. Albeit reluctantly, also his beautiful fiancée Lisa, a Grace Kelly whose first appearance in the film is one of the most esthetically captivating close ups in movies history and fully justifies the hot ice nickname given to her allegedly by Alfred Hitchcock, as well as both the solid, down to earth nurse Stella, caustically played by a vitriolic Thelma Ritter, and the reluctant detective Tom Doyle, a fairly stolid Wendell Corey full of banal common sense, are drawn into his obsession with what neighbour Lars Thorwald, an imposing Raymond Burr, might or might not have done to his nagging wife.

The opening credits reveal straight away one of the movie's multiple codes, when the curtains of James raise to reveal the fixed scene of the coming attraction, the very same back yard where all flats look into. From then on, a static journey begins that reverses many established principles of the 50s filmmaking: the main character does not move, all the other, secondary casts actually play in front of him. The viewer, barring a short yet important moment when James Stewart falls asleep, has the same point of view of the protagonist, sees and interprets the story through the eyes and expressions of him. The soundtrack comes from within the movie, mostly heard from one of the apartments where a musician is living.

All these filmic and narrative details, together with the crafted and perfect jigsaw of which each apartment and neighbours' live is a piece, are added to the self-conscious study of voyeurism and the essential role of cinema to make an essential film, where no shot, no dialogue is redundant, and an evergreen masterpiece, at the same time celebrating and subverting the Hollywood's codes. This is not the only Hitchcock's movie constructed in a theatrical form, but in no other the British master was able to extremize with such genius and depth of analysis the intertwined relationships between the eye and the mind, mixing like an esoteric alchemist obsessions and humor, suspense and sexuality, flashing light and silent darkness, individuality and collectivity, reality and perceptions. Peeping Toms of the world, unite!

To Catch a Thief (1955)

To Catch a Pleasure

[7/10 · 8 May 2020]

Exactly 364 days separate the release of Rear Window (1954) and To Catch a Thief (1955), two of the most famous and beloved Alfred Hitchcock's movies, who in those years was probably at the peak of his popularity and success, both with the audience and the critics. Nevertheless, although both sports some of the typical filmic elements of the Leytonstone's director, few similarities and an irresistibly charming Grace Kelly, the two movies couldn't be more different: where James Stewart was confined to his wheelchair observing other people's lives, Cary Grant is an acrobat, as he really was in his youth, constantly observed by the Police, his past accomplices, women, an insurance detective, really everybody, where Rear Window was static and indoor, To Catch a Thief is dynamic and outdoor.

John Robie (a debonair fifty-one years old Cary Grant who, although handsome and charming, could never be seriously taken for a man in his mid-thirties as pretended in the film, probably to prudently reduce the age gap with a twenty-five years old Grace Kelly), a former acrobat and jewels thief turned WWII Resistance hero, is peacefully and gracefully enjoying the results of his rewarding profession in a golden retreat in the south of France when a series of high profile jewels robberies copycatting his unique style put him under investigation as the perfect 'usual suspect'. Since, as everybody knows, you need a thief to catch a thief, John springs into action to bring to justice the real culprit, helped by the apparently quite but in reality strong-willed and wittily sensual American heiress Frances Stevens, to whom Grace Kelly lends a breath-taking absolute beauty in her last Hitchcock's movie before becoming soon a real princess.

One of first movies filmed in Vistavision, a format that allowed depth and focus effects revolutionary for the times, To Catch a Thief is belonging more to the comedy genre than to the thriller one; the film is gifted with graceful performances, not only of the protagonists but also by Jessie Royce Landis as Grace Kelly's mother and Brigitte Auber as a key, young and outspoken French character, as well as brilliant dialogues, generously sprinkled with sexual innuendos, rather daring for the mid-fifties. Rightly categorized as a romantic thriller, To Catch a Thief in the end has only one real suspense: will Cary Grant and Grace Kelly stay together at the end of the movie?

The film has remained, even after so many years, still very enjoyable to watch over and over again, oozing refreshing levity and glee in the cinematography, which gained Robert Burks an Oscar, and in the characters, as highlighted by the sexual cheeky impudence of both Grace Kelly and Brigitte Auber, who made John Robie an immediate hero and role model for almost every man on earth!

The Stranger (1946)

Time doesn't always passes

[7/10 · 1 May 2020]

The obsession of the protagonist (Charles Rankin/Franz Kindler) for the clocks is one of the two brilliant, even if evident, symbols openly spread by the director (Orson Welles) in a film that, although often undervalued by both the critics and the public, as well as by its own director, has undoubtedly hold on very well and is still perfectly enjoyable even after many years since its release in 1946, representing an excellent example of American film noir, a genre derived from the bitter awareness, arrived also in the Tinseltown with WWII, that evil is amongst us and to exorcise it are not enough the movies of Frank Capra, who anyhow directed It's a Wonderful Life in the same year.

The repair of the turret clock, the ultimately Sisyphean and symbolic attempt of Nazi fugitive Franz Kindler to avoid the crystallisation of time, and hence of his crimes, goes hand in hand with the second symbol scattered along the movie, the checkers game, which should have probably been more evocative as a chess game (which timing though would have though clashed with the required and appropriate pace of the film), suggesting the transversal cat (detective Wilson excellently played by Edward G. Robinson) and mouse (Orson Welles's Franz Kindler) game where eventually the mouse, after sacrificing, either physically (Red the dog and the repented and remorseful Nazi Konrad Meinike, nervously played by Konstantin Shayne) or morally (Mary the bride, an unassuming Loretta Young, the character probably more difficult to play), all his pawns and other pieces, is given check mate in the final duel between the two kings of this dark tale, Orson Welles and Edward G. Robinson.

Three years before the Mephistophelian Harry Lime of Carol Reed's The Third Man, Orson Welles crafts here a character that never hides from the audience his cruelty, wickedness and double-dealings, thus directly directing the attention from the binary film characters (only Mary's evolves during the movie) to the confrontation between Evil (Franz Kindler), trying to hide in the small-town America and criminally self-acquitting through the marriage with a Supreme Court judge's daughter, and Good (Mr. Wilson, cleverly deprived of a first name in the movie), relentlessly chasing it.

Directed after the commercial and reputational disaster of masterpiece Citizen Kane (1941) and the tensions and difficulties that plagued in 1942 The Magnificent Ambersons, The Stranger was regarded by Orson Welles as one of his less personal movies. However, the script shortcuts are almost always made up for by the very good pace and filmic structure as well as by the sophisticated cinematography that meaningfully utilises the juxtaposition of lights and shadows, a tribute to the German expressionist cinema's use of shadows and their projections.

The final result is a movie at the forefront of films noir, still one of the genres for which the American movie industry deserves to be thanked.

The Gentlemen (2019)

Midway upon the journey of a criminal life

[7/10 · 25 April 2020]

Not always is going forward a necessary improvement. This is proved by Guy Ritchie's latest movie, The Gentlemen, a brilliant coming back of the British director, after the detours from his original imprint and trade mark represented by Aladdin (2019), King Arthur (2017) and in a way also The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015), as well as the diptych of Sherlock Holmes, to his origins, those that brought him success and a distinctive narrative and filmic style centered around the London criminal underworld. Nobody really believes that the British criminal gangs medley so gracefully cruelty and greed with the irresistibly cool, debonair attitude that denote Guy Ritchie's characters, but it is honestly pleasant to find them again on the screen, it is a like meeting after a long time a distant relative, a bit dissolute but in the end loved and, to a certain extent, even secretly envied without admitting it.

The American Mickey Pearson, well played by Matthew McConaughey, crossed the Atlantic to study at Oxford but soon became a drug kingpin, aptly able to benefit from his contacts with the needy British aristocracy to build a commercial empire for the illegal production and distribution of marijuana on a national scale. Midway upon the journey of his criminal life and happily married to true cockney Rosalinde, he decides to transit to legality and offers to sell all his activities to Jewish entrepreneur Matthew, constantly body-guarded by former Mossad agents. This decision sparks a far-reaching series of effects and subplots that bring onboard various secondary characters, amongst whom Colin Farrell steals the show, that are craftily kept together for the viewers by Fletcher, an investigative journalist working for a tabloid which chief editor holds a grudge against Pearson. Fletcher intends to monetise through blackmail the information he has collected, and those he has only guessed to fill the gaps of what he still doesn't know, and contacts Pearson's top man, Raymond, excellently played by a Charlie Hunnam much more at ease here than as King Arthur. Hugh Grant as Fletcher is in sterling form here, lending an unusual and idiosyncratic charm to a role that deviates, and we should say thankfully and eventually, from the expected characters he has built his successful career on.

Mixing his trademark brisk and sparkling dialogues, Tarantino-like yet unmistakably made in Ritchie, with a crafted and expected British-ness of costumes and settings and a pleasant, defining yet not intrusive soundtrack, The Gentlemen is, to put it simply, a very good movie that gives the viewers what is expected of Guy Ritchie, sprinkling cinephile quotes (Coppola's The Conversation, old film reels) and well-integrated self-quotes (Snatch's pigs and poster of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. amongst others) on an excellent camerawork servicing a tight narrative pace whose thread, mainly for Fletcher's catchy story-telling, is never lost during the film and until its, partially unexpected, ending.

A step back, but towards the quality if his directorial origins, for Guy Ritchie, The Gentlemen will not be remembered for its innovations but it is a solid, well-written, directed and acted, genre movie. Nowadays, not too bad!

Pain and Glory (2019)

Present Pain and Former Glory

[4/10 · 25 April 2020]

After a filmic silence of about three years, on the verge of his seventieth birthday, Pedro Almodovar has released Pain and Glory, the twenty-first motion picture of the award-winning Spanish director. Nobody, not even Almodovar's sternest critics, could deny the enormous success of his movies, both commercially as well as with the critics: Palmes, Goyas, Oscars, BAFTAs, Davids, Lions, Cesars, no award is missing in the trophy cupboard of the director born in the small village of Calzada de Calatrava, the ispiration for the hamlet of Paterna in this film, which is not exception and has been awarded three major Goyas for best movie, direction and original screenplay.

The domestic success of this movie has not been replicated abroad though, and for good reasons. Pain and Glory, although has some interesting aspects, like the excellent use of flash-backs, the measured and delicate performance of Antonio Banderas and the constructive, even if not entirely unexpected ending, doesn't raise above a fair and stylish exercise of nostalgic introspection that frankly is disappointing for a director that was used to gift audience and critics with an approach to the cinema story-telling surely innovative and sometimes even iconoclastic, although alternating movies of a very high standard such as Matador, Law of Desire, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Talk to Her with others of a more modest, normal levels

And Pain and Glory unfortunately belongs to the latter group of films. Almodovar honesty in identifying himself with the reclusive and almost anagrammatic director Salvador Mello is evident but remains distant, doesn't emotionally engulf the audience, it remains far on the silver screen. It allows to be seen and noted, supported by a sophisticated soundtrack and by the expected 100% Almodovar settings but appears entropic, too much self-centered and solely relying on stereotypes falsely disruptive and revolutionary (the heroin, the self-reclusive artist, the psychotropic drugs, the writers' block) to make its way into the viewers' hearts and minds; the film is, all in all, unfortunately not much more than yet another, almost due, tribute to a great director looking into himself! Regrettably, more for himself than for the public. Almodovar is good, no question, and Salvador Mello's childhood memories are skillfully mixed with his present made of detached and hypochondriac emotional and artistic drifting, but the path to the end of the tunnel, or back to the found-again set lighting is not fully convincing. Like a new Ulysses sailing the tempestuous seas and treacherous seafloors of the mind, Salvador Mallo needs thirty-two years to return to the island of creativity, while the Homeric Ulysses took only ten years to cover the about 650 miles between Troy and Ithaca.

The movie title is catchy, suggesting a painful road to artistic glory, but what is left to the viewer after the credits is only the little pain of witnessing a very much appreciated director drifting away from the cinema creativity and towards a bland product of small and stale madelaines that have the aftertaste more of a time lost than regained.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)

Mission Impossible V :Rogue Nation – The Last and the Best (so far)

[7/10 · 7 September 2015]

Has anybody ventured, in some cinema school or university, to write a comparative paper on Hunt and Bond? Waiting for an improbable, or rather "impossible", clash between the two super special agents, spiced with a guest appearance of Jason Bourne, we can be happy with the fifth installment of the Mission Impossible saga, Rogue Nation, that so far seems also the best. It might be, as some smart critics pointed out, that choosing every time a different director, besides lengthening the films' incubation (on average 46 months versus the 30 months needed to see again 007), injects new life into the character into whom Cruise has invested a large stake of his recent actor's and producer's efforts. Surely, the first blockbuster, following the Jack Reacher's 2012 debut with Tom Cruise as well, of director Christopher McQuarrie, unforgettable best screenplay Oscar for the clever The Usual Suspects, has contributed to the crafting of some characters as well as to the "mirror" structure of the story, laid out from the very beginning in the London record shop scene, which breaks, with good innovation, the linear expectations of the audience and sets the pace for the various double games recurrent in the movie and instrumental in keeping the audience glued to Ethan and his team on their actions to stop the criminal actions of a mysterious Syndicate, a Machiavellian and sophisticated organization that the US and UK agencies let slip out of their hands. The genre's peculiarities remain, well necessary for the public feel at home and balance the novelties of the special effects, and for sure Rogue Nation is even too close to some of its predecessors as well as 007's, but, enhancing the bonds between the main hero and his team, it is able to define its own trademark by leaving enough breathing space to the other IMF members. Each time Benji (Simon Plegg, simply great) or Luther (Rhames steals every scene he is in) are on screen the movie takes off and also Renner (star also of two Bourne films), in the role surely most difficult to define, improves his impact on the story's dynamics. And then there is Ilsa, well played by Rebecca Ferguson, whose role becomes more and more central in the film's development, maybe booking, as already done by Renner in Ghost Protocol, a return ticket for the next episode. Some banalities, like few of Baldwin's lines, and narrative shortcuts, like the Syndicate plans and IMF activities, are unavoidable in this kind of movies but the excellent pace, already there in the previous films, is here coupled with a better development of the peculiarities of both Ethan Hunt and the other members of IMF and, particularly, with a sound enhancement of their mutual actions and reactions as a team, the real difference between Mission Impossible's hero, deeply rooted within IMF and very sensitive to the value of friendship, and his colleague sipping Vodka Martini, definitely much more a loner. Waiting, in a few years, for the sixth episode, Rogue Nation deserves the best marks of the series so far and offers a predicable but enjoyable entertainment that can satisfy both the action movies' lovers as well as those who enter the theaters with many more prejudices for this kind of movies.

Youth (I) (2015)

Youth - The Greatest Beauty

[7/10 · 15 June 2015]

Paolo Sorrentino's latest movie, the director's return to Cannes after the worldwide success gained with the Best Foreign Movie Oscar (yet the Croisette didn't particularly liked the film which later on won at the Academy Award), could and should be appreciated by the Neapolitan director-screenwriter's admirers, for his usual subtlety of camera work and the and memorable lines, as well as by his detractors, for the unexpectedly solid and consistent story development, something that in the past The Great Beauty's director has seldom achieved. And indeed there is much more beauty in Youth than in Sorrentino's former hit, exactly for the savvy mix of images and narration, for the excellent compactness of the cinematic language and writing, regrettably missing in the calligraphic series of beautiful images that made up The Great Beauty. In an exclusive and secluded thermal hotel on the Swiss Alps gather, like elephants at a savanna watering hole at dusk, guests of every age and origin, each looking for something different but all joined by the lack of this "something". With the calm and lightness of a glider, the movie flies over Fred, a retired great musician and conductor searching his human dimension in addition to his musical one, and Mick, a famous director searching a last movie which could amazingly seal a career that, however glittering, started to show the unmistakable signs of a slow decline. The movie takes the viewer, with crafty and touching empathy, to the final results of these searches, harmonic for Fred, dystonic for Mick. Captivating in the title choice, identifying youth with the inner search and growth rather than the body biological age, Youth is structured in dwindling layers, strongly integrated and unified: a protagonist (a self-controlled and convincing Michael Caine as Fred), a co-protagonist (the dependable Hervey Keitel as Mick), two secondary characters (an emotionally involved Rachel Wiesz as Fred's daughter and a cautious and endearing Paul Dano as the Californian star), circled by a chorus of characters painted with few yet definite strokes, reminding of the Commedia dell'Arte: the football legend beyond Sunset Boulevard, the masseuse of few words, the Alpine guide, Miss Universe, the Queen representative, the 100% made in Hollywood movie star (an ironic and charismatic yet ineffective Jane Fonda), the mixed group of your screenwriters, the silent couple….. The risky strategy of mixing faked reality (the Queen, the real pop start, the football star) to real narration proved to pay off: most probably Youth shall not gather the prizes and success of The Great Beauty but surely represents a clear leap forward towards Paolo Sorrentino's full maturity as a director and a screenwriter.