I'm Not Scared

What a great movie!

10-year-old Michele has a problem. There's a boy chained up in a hole in the ground out in the country, and his parents may be the kidnappers. I'M NOT SCARED has an excellent premise, but it really excels in what it does with that premise. Michele isn't an adult in a child's body, and he isn't superhuman. He's a normal kid with an extraordinary problem, and he handles it in plausible ways.

The movie draws its tension from the questions of who knows what, and when, and it gathers its power from our natural sympathy for the young and culturally reliable resonance of Christian themes in the rural farms of Italy.

The aptly named Giuseppe Cristiano delivers an eye-opening performance, and he's supported by naturalistic performances, photography, editing, and music. I'M NOT SCARED is nail-baiting, tear-jerking, and altogether successful.

I say again, what a great movie!

L'Eclisse

I hated L'ECLISSE.

The film begins in the drawing room of Monica Vitti and Francisco Rabal. They're exhausted, both emotionally and physically. She's leaving him, things could get ugly, but they never do. That would be too dramatic. Instead, they end up simply going their separate ways, and the film follows Vitti over the next several days.

Unfortunately, Vitti is neither particularly interesting nor particularly pleasant to look at. She feels disaffected, she walks here and there, she falls into an unengaging relationship with Alain Delon; none of which happen with much passion (I know a film romance is in trouble when a doorbell rings and I think, "Maybe somebody will come in and shoot them. That'd add some drama."). Finally, the film ends with something I interpreted as a big "f you" to the audience: minutes and minutes of dull, empty cityscape. No drama. No story. Just images. F you, Antonioni. If I want images, I'll go to an art museum. Tell me a story.

I do respect that Antonioni is trying to do something here. Mine is not ire at poor craftsmanship or lazy filmmaking. L'ECLISSE certainly does not aspire to the mediocrity of, say, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE remake, which I'm having trouble mustering the energy to write about. My problem is that Antonioni disregards the first law of narrative film: engage and entertain your audience. L'ECLISSE is two hours of people I don't care about doing things I don't care about for reasons I don't care about. I'm glad it's over.

Big Deal on Madonna Street

"Big Deal on Madonna Street" is a heist movie with a twist: our thieves are a gang of loveable but hopeless incompetents who couldn't steal a handbag from an old lady. It's supposed to be funny, and it does elicit a chuckle here and there, but it's never quite as funny as it wants to be. Ah, well.

The Keys to the House

THE KEYS TO THE HOUSE wants to be, tries to be, a moving little drama about a journey to manhood and father - son bonding. It begins well, with an intriguing premise (haunted runaway dad reclaims custody after 14 years) and likeable actors, but the journey to manhood isn’t particularly compelling and the father-son bonding is pretty much complete only 2/3 of the way through the movie.

This is a drab film, drearily shot, with nothing to engage the eye while the mind wanders. The actors do their jobs well enough, but they’re hampered by a directorial affection for long, motionless silences – there’s a reason why they’re called motion pictures, buddy. If you’re going to have people just stand or sit there, you’d better have good reason and you’d better not do it often.

In a recent CHUD interview, Paul Greengrass compared a major American studio picture to an orchestral symphony. THE KEYS TO THE HOUSE, a small Italian production, tries to be a charming little chamber piece, but it plays a dull tune on drab instruments. Ignore the palms on the DVD cover and give this one a pass.

The Son's Room

Sometimes, all a guy wants to do is watch an American picture where lots of stuff blows up real good.

That's the mood I was in when I reluctantly fired up THE SON'S ROOM (2001), Nanni Moretti's film about a family and the pain it endures when one of its members drowns in a scuba mishap. It wasn't long, however, before thoughts of explosions left my mind as I became deeply involved with this family, their grief, and their attempts to cope with it.

THE SON'S ROOM succeeds, in part, because it doesn't rush to tragedy. It gives us a good half hour to get to know these people; to develop an attachment to Andrea, the doomed teenager; and to develop a genuine affinity for Giovanni, the father and psychoanalyst who begins to suspect that his professional gods are as false as the Catholic one he left behind long ago. When Andrea dies offscreen, we empathize with his surviving family members, and we're ready to travel with them on the next phase of their journey.

What do I like most about this movie? It doesn't feature "Solsbury Hill," for one thing. For another, it offers no overblown dramatic scenes in which the characters shout their feelings at one another. For yet another, it offers no trite conclusion, or even an obvious message. A page is turned, and that's all, and that seems appropriate.

I was in the mood for an action picture, but I got something better: an involving picture. I care about these people, and I want to know what happens next in their lives. Perhaps they'll write.

Cinema Paradiso (1988)

I saw this movie years ago and so began my love for Italian film. The story centers on the life of a boy, Salvatore ("Toto"), in a small town without a father in post-WWII Sicily and his love for the movies. After Toto fails as an altar boy, the local projectionist takes him under his wing and becomes a surrogate father. Toto eventually takes over the job, falls in love for the first time, and leaves town - only to return for the projectionist's funeral. This movie is beautifully executed. I particularly loved how Tornatore pays tribute to the neo-realists by showing footage from those films. Phillippe Noiret, who is always outstanding, plays the projectionist. Ennio Morricone composed the music.

Don't Move (2004)

Directed by and starring Sergio Castelli, Don't Move is the story of an esteemed surgeon, Timoteo, recalling a tempestuous love affair he had with a troubled and lonely young woman (played by Penelope Cruz). As Timo's daughter suffers a serious moped accident, the potential loss of his daughter stirs the memory of the actual loss of his former mistress. The movie didn't quite work for me because I didn't like Timoteo. I needed to see more of his good side in order to sympathize with him. Being a surgeon just wasn't enough. He seemed to have a good life - money, a great career, a fetching and accomplished wife. I wondered why he had an affair in the first place and why the violence was necessary. Cruz's performance is excellent. I give this movie 2 1/2 stars.

Divorce, Italian Style

I'm tired of neorealism. Finally, an Italian movie that's just plain fun!

(Some mild spoilers follow, but nothing you wouldn't get by reading the back of the DVD box.)

Here's the setup for DIVORCE, ITALIAN STYLE: Marcello Mastroianni is married to a woman who loves him, well, too much. She dotes on him, she's attentive to his every need, and she can't get enough sex. To make matters worse, she's a good money manager and a faithful wife. Sure, she has a Frida Kahlo unibrow and a light moustache (both of which appear to have been applied with magic marker, which is kinda cute), but she has a figure to die for and a love for life. Clearly, it's time for her to go. What sparks this realization? Two things: first, ol' Marcello's gray is starting to come in and his belly's getting a little slack. Second, well, there's this girl. She's 16. She lives across the courtyard and she has this habit of sleeping on top of her covers with her doors open and curtains pulled. Now, here's the problem: Marcello's a Sicilian Catholic - he can't divorce. The solution? He's gotta kill his wife, and he's gotta get away with it. There's your movie.

There are about a million ways this movie can go wrong, but it manages to sidestep every one. We should loathe Mastroianni's character, but we love him instead. He's slick, he's charming, he's got it all under control, and he's a total idiot. We should pity Daniela Rocca's hapless wife, but she's so broadly drawn that we laugh rather than cry. The entire situation should make us shudder in horror, but instead we laugh, laugh, and laugh. What a pleasant change from the run of depressing neorealist pictures I've been watching lately.

Some incidental notes: this is a Criterion release, so the transfer looks great and the sound is crisp. Much of it was filmed in Sicily, and I enjoyed some "Hey, I've been there!" moments, so that may have skewed my response to the film overall.

Salvatore Giuliano

Francesco Rosi's SALVATORE GIULIANO is the kind of movie that sounds better in theory than it plays on your screen. The film, a historical drama about a postwar Sicilian bandit (well, sorta - one could argue that it's really about corruption, and compromises that kill), eschews the tropes of filmed biography in favor of an oblique approach that makes Giuliano the un- or barely- seen axis about which the story turns. The film incorporates some elements of neorealism, using local amateurs for all but a couple of roles, and it's comfortable with letting time speak for itself.

Sounds interesting, right? Well, that's just the problem: the movie is ... interesting. Not gripping, not fascinating, just interesting. While viewing it, I enjoyed engaging with the movie, allowing it to take me on an intellectual journey; but it never got me in the gut. SALVATORE GIULIANO gives us no characters in whom we can invest, and it offers no real insights beyond the observation that people screw other people for their own ends. Ultimately, this film works more as an historical document than a complete cinematic experience. It was worth seeing, but it was worth seeing in an eat-your-vegetables kind of way.