Crime Novel Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Open Roads Review: The Goodbye Kiss
Filed under: Action », Drama », Foreign Language », Romance », Thrillers », Theatrical Reviews », Festival Reports », Other Festivals », Cinematical Indie »
Open Roads is an all-too-brief survey of new Italian cinema presented annually by New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center. Now in it sixth year, the series offers a wide selection of films, most of which will never see distribution in the US; this year's festival runs from May 31 until June 9, and further details (including ticket information) can be found on the Open Roads website.
Anchored by a terrific supporting performance by Michele Placido, Michele Soavi's dark, twisted The Goodbye Kiss is a hell of a lot of fun to watch, and easily the most enjoyable film I've seen at Open Roads. Sold as a political thriller, the film in fact dabbles in multiple genres, mixing thriller with heist and horror, all presented with a knowing nastiness that, by the movie's end, has you smiling when you should be recoiling in disgust.
The movie stars Alessio Boni (The Best of Youth) as Giorgio, a one-time hardline leftist who flees Italy when a bomb he helps plant accidentally kills a bystander. After some time with communist guerillas in an unnamed Central American country, he executes his best friend in exchange for a French passport, and returns home, bored and unsettled enough to risk arrest. And, upon arrival in Italy, he is immediately set upon by Michele Placido's Anedda, a cop who has pictorial evidence of Giorgio planting that deadly bomb; rather than do serious prison time, he agrees to give Anedda the names of everyone in the organization of which he was once a member. Thus, after two years in prison, he's free and can begin working on official forgiveness, or "rehabilitation."
Tribeca Interview: Crime Novel Costar Pierfranceso Favino, Part 2
Filed under: Drama », Foreign Language », Thrillers », Tribeca », Interviews », Cinematical Indie »
Please see installment one for the first part of this interview. Part two starts where yesterday's segment left off, and features Crime Novel costar Pierfrancesco Favino speaking more generally about acting, Italian culture, and his career.
Again, please remember: Favino's English is fantastic for communicating, but transfered to the page, it can be bit a bit difficult to sort out if you've not heard him speaking. To that end, I've done more editing than usual -- all changes to his words (noted, of course, by ellipses or brackets) were done only for the sake of clarity; his meaning and intent are never adjusted.
In the US, when films come out that revolve around real-life historical figures -- like Oliver Stone's films -- there's always people saying "You shouldn't be portraying these people sympathetically," or calling the work dishonest because it doesn't fit into their perceptions of history. Did anyone respond that way to Crime Novel?
Well, let's look at how they end up -- I mean, they all die. And, at the end, those who survive are the ones that now lead the country; the policeman got a [promotion], and he becomes the chief of police ... [by] following the rules and being dishonest with himself. ...But what about Once Upon a Time in America? I mean, we know that they are gangsters, and [we still sympathize with them].
In general, I think you can watch a movie in two different ways. One is the ethical point of view, one is the point of view of the story. And to me as actor, what is important is to reveal -- excuse my pretensions -- reveal that a human being might be everything. I mean .... you're talking to me, and you don't know anything about me. I could go in the elevator and, I don't know ...
Shoot the elevator guy, or something --
Yeah, yeah!
Tribeca Interview: Crime Novel Costar Pierfrancesco Favino
Filed under: Drama », Foreign Language », Thrillers », Tribeca », Interviews », Cinematical Indie »
Crime Novel, an Italian film that had its North American premiere recently at the Tribeca Film Festival, is an epic, in-depth look at the rise and fall of a real-life Roman crime syndicate. Taking just a few central figures as its focus, the movie covers nearly 20 years of the group's history, and, along with Nanni Moretti's Cannes-bound The Caiman, was the big winner at this year's Italian Oscars (properly called the David di Donatello Awards). Though the film's eight awards were primarily for things like design and cinematography, Pierfrancesco Favino, who plays Lebanese -- the gang's driving force, and easily the best thing in the film -- was named the year's best supporting actor.
Favino sat down with Cinematical on the morning before Crime Novel's premiere, and proved to have a tremendous passion for film, acting, and European culture. In Part One of the interview, he addresses the film and its historical and culture contexts (beware of spoilers!), as well as the effect it's had on his life. In Part Two, coming soon, he'll talk in more general terms about acting, as well as his career and Italian cinema as a whole.
Finally, a note: Favino's English is fantastic for communicating, but transfered to the page, it can be bit a bit difficult to sort out if you've not heard him speaking. To that end, I've done more editing than usual -- all changes to his words (noted, of course, by ellipses or brackets) were done only for the sake of clarity; his meaning and intent are never adjusted.
Tribeca Review: Crime Novel
Filed under: Action », Drama », Foreign Language », Thrillers », Tribeca », Theatrical Reviews », Cinematical Indie »
Recently honored with 14 nominations and eight wins at the Italian film awards, Crime Novel is a gangster film with something of an epic feel, despite a seemingly narrow focus on a small group of friends. Beginning in the late 1960s, when all of its subjects are still bored, invincible teens, the film traces their rise from bumbling obscurity to one of the most feared criminal gangs in Italy, as well as their inevitable decline. Michele Placido’s film is based on a novel of the same name which, in turn, grew out of the story of a real-life Roman gang that was active from 1977-1992. Because of the film’s roots in reality, one assumes that it has a special power and immediacy to Italian audiences; this may well explain that country’s enthusiastic response a film that, while sporadically engaging, is also over-long (a punishing 150 minutes) and poorly-paced.
After completing their first stints in jail, a group of friends are brought together by the one known as Lebanese (as a teen, he named himself after the source of the hash he liked to smoke) to kidnap a wealthy man for ransom. Though the group is a fairly large one, a small core quickly emerges, and it is on those three men -- Lebanese (Pierfrancesco Favino), Ice (Kim Rossi Stuart), and Dandy (Claudio Santamaria) -- that Crime Novel keeps its focus. The kidnapping doesn’t go quite as planned, but the group nevertheless ends up with a substantial ransom, the majority of which Lebanese persuades them to invest in drugs. Instead of steering clear of the crime gangs that dominate Rome, under Lebanese's leadership, they make brutal, unexpected war on those in power, gleefully killing anyone who stands in their way.
Caiman, Crime Novel Win Big at Italian Film Awards
Filed under: Comedy », Drama », Foreign Language », Awards », Cannes », Tribeca », Newsstand », Cinematical Indie »
The Italian film awards were handed out over the
weekend, and the two big winners were Nanni Moretti's The Caiman (which will be shown in competition at Cannes next
month) and Crime Novel, director Michele Placido sprawling look at gangsterism in Italy. The former,
though it won six awards to Crime Novel's eight, took home most of the major prizes, including best picture,
best director for Moretti, and best actor for Silvio Orlando, who
plays the film's Silvo Berlusconi-esque main character. Crime Novel, meanwhile, apart from the best support
actor trophy, won mostly artistic awards, including those for set-design, editing, cinematography, and costumes.New Yorkers will have an opportunity to see Crime Novel next month: it will be screened on May 4 and 6 as part of the Spotlight series at the Tribeca Film Festival.
MovieMail: Tribeca - Part Three
Filed under: Documentary », Drama », Foreign Language », Independent », Sports », Tribeca », Fandom », MovieMail », Cinematical Indie »
Hey Karina and Chris--
While I agree with both of you that the desperate desire on the part of Tribeca's organizers to have A Really Big Festival! has resulted in the presence of some truly horrible movies, I have to say that doesn't (at least for me) make the good -- and even great -- films at the festival any less worthwhile. Granted, it's risky as hell to just blindly buy tickets to anything (particularly, as Karina pointed out, to features), but if attendees choose carefully, they can create a pretty strong week of film-going.
Like Karina, I've seen some crap, but have also seen some very good films. Even today, more than a week after I first saw it, I'm still over the moon about Once in a Lifetime, the New York Cosmos documentary that made me so damn happy it might have become one of my favorite films ever, not just of the festival. And, as a Soviet and Russian history nerd, I've really enjoyed Freedom's Fury and Hammer and Tickle, which offer very different looks at the Eastern Bloc. Freedom's Fury is built around the 1956 Olympic semi-final water polo game between Hungary and the USSR, but is most valuable as a lesson on the 1956 Hungarian revolution; Hammer and Tickle, meanwhile, explores the history of dissent under Soviet rule through jokes. The latter is not an entirely successful film but the history is fascinating, if you're into that sort of thing. In addition, 37 Uses for a Dead Sheep, which details the difficult past and present of the Pamir Kirghiz people, is a pretty wonderful film, sure enough of its approach and subject matter to have a charming, gangly confidence that is all too rare in film, documentary or otherwise.
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