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matteovalsecchi
Reviews
F.F.S.S., cioè: '...che mi hai portato a fare sopra a Posillipo se non mi vuoi più bene?' (1983)
80s Italy extravaganza
Just saw this on italian TV. After watching "così parlò Bellavista", which Is also featuring Luciano De Crescenzo, a few days ago, i was expecting a nicely made comedy about Neapolitan culture. I got much more.
This movie Is a fast paced absurdist mix of the best and the worst that Italian popular culture had to offer in the early 80s, all under the cover of a purported fellinesque script, including the "usual final circle dance".
The movie has uncountable cameos by people that were either very famous or would become famous later on. Most noticeably Roberto Benigni playing a singer known as "the beige sheik", the creator of "Arabian sound". Another one that comes to mind is Gigi Proietti that talks for a few minutes completely meaningless yet very credibile fake Neapolitan dialect.
I enjoyed this, It brought me back to a Long gone Italy, and After all Pietra Montecorvino's beautiful voice and angry hair would be sufficient to justify watching.
Wir können auch anders... (1993)
Germany's wild east
The movie depicts a Road trip of a couple of Brothers travelling in East germany immediately After the unification in order to inherit a house from their grandma.
This Is supposed to be a comedy and there are Indeed some funny moments. At the same time the plot does not make a lot of sense and there are a few episodes (e.g. People gettting murdered) that would not normally appear in a comedy. The acting Is also at times not so good.
However, i found the movie extremely interesting as It shows the state of eastern germany after the DDR had ceased to exist but the soviet troops were still present, neonazism was rampant, property rights were undefined and spontaneous capitalism was blooming. A real far west in the east. Don't get me wrong, there's other movies that are set in the same Moment, like goodbye Lenin, but this Is the First i see that Is not a reconstruction, It was shot basically during that time period.
Sistemo l'America e torno (1974)
A bit of a mess
Recently discovered this movie with Paolo Villaggio. I wondered why it wasn't well known like the others and now i understood.
This Is supposed to be a sort of comedy, and It does have some of the traits of the later comedies with villaggio, like the relationship between the boss and the submissive clerk, but the fun moments are too few and far apart. Most of the space Is taken by the political drama depicting the racial, generational and class struggle in the early 70s US.
Now, per se It Is not impossibile to integrate a political message in a genre movie, think about "duck you sucker", but here the comedy elements are not integrated and they Just seem inserted randomly.
Another Minus Is that the attitude of the italian intermediary towards the US champion changes in a fuzzy way.
The only plus for me Is the depiction of the US society in the 70s seen from Italy, which i found historically interesting.
Dampyr (2022)
If you liked the comics, you'll love this
Seen yesterday night at the cinema.
I was seriously impressed by how well the movie was made, well acted, nice special effects, nice scenary. Way more than I expected from an Italian production.
As an avid reader of the comic stories, It was amazing for me to see the paper characters I love turned into movie characters, and to see how well the movie crew managed to reproduce the gloomy atmosphere of the setting.
For me it was a lot of fun.
SPOILERS FOLLOW
As far as I am concerned, the best thing about the movie is the way the story slips from a regular war movie set in the balkan wars to a horror movie about vampires, that was done very smoothly.
There are a couple of things that probably could have been done better. As I was listening to the comments of other people in the audience during the break, I noticed some (who did not know the comics) were having a hard time following some elements of the plot (for instance the identity of the three women that were taking care of the child dampyr), probably the result of having to condense a very complicated story into a movie and get into action without too much artificial "explanation".
The other thing (and that was really unnecessary) is how they gifted the dampyr with the super-human power of flying around in the final scene. Part of the nice thing about the dampyr character(s) is that they are (almost) normal humans fighting enemies that are much stronger than they are, and that final scene spoiled it a bit.