Culture Representation: Taking place in Italy, the horror film “The Devil Conspiracy” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: An art historian uncovers a sinister biogenetics plot conjured up by Satanists, while the evil angel Lucifer plots his revenge on good archangel Michael.
Culture Audience: “The Devil Conspiracy” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching idiotic horror movies that are a mishmash of other movies’ concepts that use characters from Christian teachings.
Joe Anderson (below) and Peter Mensah in “The Devil Conspiracy” (Photo courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films)
“The Devil Conspiracy” is a bombastic train wreck of a horror movie with an onslaught of bad acting and stupid scenarios. It’s a weak ripoff of ideas from Rosemary’s Baby and Legion, but with the setting in Italy, instead of New York City or Los Angeles. The movie tries to juggle two different stories that are supposed to be connected. The ends result is that “The Devil Conspiracy” doesn’t succeed at telling either story and is just a jumbled mess.
Directed by Nathan Frankowski and written by Ed Alan, “The Devil Conspiracy” shows the first story, which is a battle between the evil angel Lucifer (played by Joe Anderson) and the good archangel Michael (played by Peter Mensah), with Lucifer losing the battle. Lucifer falls from the sky. Michael then puts Lucifer in chains and says that Lucifer will be set free if Lucifer joins Michael as an ally. Lucifer refuses and says he will return as Michael’s master. legions of demons join Lucifer in hell as Lucifer plots his revenge.
“The Devil Conspiracy” then ignores this Lucifer/Michael feud for most of the movie until the last third of the film. The second story is about an art historian named Laura Milton (played by Alice Orr-Ewing), an American. She is spending a lot of time at a museum that has a very special exhibition: the shroud of Jesus Christ, also known as the Shroud of Turin. This shroud has a major role in a poorly conceived biogenetics plot development that is revealed later in the movie.
Before she goes to the museum to see this shroud, Laura meets Dr. Andre Russo (played by Andrea Scarduzio) from Turin University, and she has an awkward conversation with him. Laura pleads with Dr. Russo to reconsider her thesis. He replies, “The last thing Turin University wants to hear is a young American lecturing us on what our great Italian artists believed or didn’t believe.”
Laura then says she doesn’t believe in angels or a dark side of the afterlife. Dr. Russo says they can continue this discussion at his apartment. Laura knows exactly what he means by this invitation. And she wisely declines. It’s probably one of the few smart decisions that Laura makes, because this character is the unflattering stereotype of a horror heroine who makes some very bad decisions.
At the museum, which is crowded with people eager to see the Shroud of Turin, Laura doesn’t have a ticket, but she gets a laminated pass from a priest she knows as a professional acquaintance: Father Marconi (played by Joe Doyle), who won’t be himself for much longer. Through a series of circumstances, something happens that is already revealed in “The Devil Conspiracy” trailer: Father Marconi is murdered in the museum. Archangel Michael then immediately comes down to Earth and inhabits Father Marconi’s body, which is brought back to life with the spirit of Michael inside.
“The Devil Conspiracy” then wastes a lot of time with repetitive scenes of Laura lurking around the museum after it’s closed and seeing strange things that might look scary to her, but actually look like cheap-looking horror movie tactics. A witchy-looking woman named Liz (played by Eveline Hall) shows up occasionally, with and without some cronies, to cause some murders and other mayhem. Laura is then kidnapped and put in a glass cage in a room with three other young women who are also in glass cages: hysterical Sophia (played by Wendy Rosas), tough-looking Alina (played by Natalia Germani) and sensible Brenda (played by Victoria Chilap).
The rest of “The Devil Conspiracy” then becomes a tangled mishmash of science fiction and demonic possession that is so ridiculous and poorly explained, even the characters in the movie who are supposed to believe in what’s happening never look convinced. These characters include Dr. Laurent (played by Brian Caspe) and Cardinal Vincinia (played by James Faulkner), representing the inept way that “The Devil Conspiracy” tries to present conflicts between science and religion. The movie is also plagued with tacky-looking visual effects that are more laughable than terrifying. The film editing is atrocious and just makes the entire movie look even more scatterbrained than it already is.
And some of the soundtrack music is enough to make a viewer’s eyes roll with the corniness of it all. For example, there’s a scene where archangel Michael, while inhabiting the body of the dead Father Marconi, is listening to some songs while driving a car. The songs are INXS’s 1987 classic “Devil Inside” and Real Life’s 1983’s hit “Send Me an Angel.” Yes, really.
One of the worst things about “The Devil Conspiracy” is the very incoherent showdown scene that’s supposed to be the big climax to the movie. Apparently, “The Devil Conspiracy” filmmakers haven’t learned that throwing a bunch of low-quality visual effects into darkly lit scenes does not automatically make a movie thrilling to watch. By the end of “The Devil Conspiracy,” viewers will feel that the only convincing hell that this movie was able to conjure up was the hell of having wasted time watching this junk.
Samuel Goldwyn Films released “The Devil Conspiracy” in U.S. cinemas on January 13, 2023. The movie was released on digital and VOD on March 3, 2023.
Directed by Alessandro Antonaci, Daniel Lascar and Stefano Mandalà
Some language in Italian with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in Italy and briefly in New York City, the supernatural horror film “Sound of Silence” features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A New York City-based aspiring singer travels to her Italy with her boyfriend after her parents are injured in a mysterious incident, and she finds out that her parents’ home in Italy is haunted by a vengeful spirit.
Culture Audience: “Sound of Silence” will appeal primarily to people who want to experience some ghost images and loud noises in a monotonous and predictable horror movie.
Peter Stephen Wolmarans in “Sound of Silence” (Photo courtesy of XYZ Films)
The horror movie “Sound of Silence” over-relies on annoying sound effects as a distraction from the very limp and predictable story. Note to filmmakers: Repeating loud noises doesn’t automatically make a horror movie scary. Unfortunately, “Sound of Silence” is also hindered by substandard acting for underdeveloped characters that are just hollow vessels in a cliché-ridden and vapid story with an idiotic ending.
It’s usually not a good sign when a non-anthology film is written and directed by three or more people, because it usually results in the film having “too many cooks in the kitchen” syndrome. “Sound of Silence” was written and directed by Alessandro Antonaci, Daniel Lascar, Stefano Mandalà (collectively known as T3), which means it took three people to write and direct a lousy flim with a flimsy plot. It’s yet another “haunted house” film where a vengeful spirit is inflicting terror on people in the house. It’s okay to have this over-used concept in a horror movie if the movie has a great story with credible acting. It’s not okay if the movie is just a waste of time with bad acting and tedious storytelling that is more irritating than scary.
“Sound of Silence” (which is a very darkly lit film) begins in an unnamed city in Italy, where middle-aged Peter Wilson (played by Peter Stephen Wolmarans) is fiddling with an old radio in his attic. The radio is shaped like the upper half of an oval. Peter’s wife Margherita Wilson (played by Alessandra Pizzullo) briefly appears in the room to tell Peter to come downstairs in about 15 minutes for dinner. After she leaves, Peter notices that every time he turns on the radio, a ghostly figure of a woman appears and gets closer to him every time. After Peter turns the radio on and off several times, the next time he turns on the radio, the woman suddenly goes up to him and strangles him.
Meanwhile, Peter’s daughter Emma Wilson (played by Penelope Sangiorgi) is a New York City-based aspiriing singer whose career has been stalling because she has panic attacks every time she goes to an audition, often in front of the same judges. The movie shows one such audition, where Emma shows up but then doesn’t say a word when she gets in the audition room and then quickly leaves. Emma has a supportive live-in boyfriend named Seba (played by Rocco Marazzita), who encourages Emma to not give up on her dreams.
One day, Emma gets a call from Italy telling her that her father Peter is in a hospital because he has broken ribs and a concussion. Emma and Seba go to Italy, where the hospital doctor (played by Alessandro Marmorini) tells Emma that Margherita has defensive bruises on her face and arms. The doctor tactfully suggests to Emma that Margherita might be the victim of domestic abuse and is lying about it to protect Peter. Meanwhile, Margherita makes this comment to Emma about Peter: “He tried to kill me, but he wasn’t your father.” It’s at this point you know there is also going to be a ghostly possession angle to this movie.
The rest of “Sound of Silence” is a repetitive slog of Emma revisiting the attic and a home recording studio that her parents built for her when she lived in the house. Emma discovers the radio in the attic, as well as the radio’s connection to the ghost lurking around this dark and dreary house. Then there’s some nonsense about the people in the house being paranoid about the ghosts hearing their conversations. And so, the people in the house have to communicate in silence—or if they talk out loud, Emma wants to something in the room at a noisy volume to drown out the conversation.
Expect to hear the blaring sounds of radio/TV static and screaming turned up to obnoxious levels throughout “Sound of Silence.” Other characters in this muddled movie include a woman named Angelica (played by Lucia Caporaso), a girl named Alice (played by Chiara Casolari) and a man named Claudio (played by Claudio Dughera). It all just leads to a very underwhelming revelation and a very silly last scene hinting at a “Sound of Silence” sequel that probably will never get made.
XYZ Films released “Sound of Silence” on March 9, 2023.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Japan and in Italy, the dramatic film “Whisper of the Heart” features a predominantly Japanese cast of characters (with some white people and a few black people) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: When they are 14 years old, Japanese students Shizuku Tsukishima (who dreams of becoming a writer) and Seiji Amasawa (who dreams of becoming a professional cellist) meet and fall in love, but their romance is tested over a 10-year period, during which he moves to Italy and starts a new life as a successful cellist in a neo-classical musical group.
Culture Audience: “Whisper of the Heart” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the manga series and the 1995 animated movie and on which is movie remake is based, will appeal to viewers who don’t mind watching romantic dramas that sometimes get sappy about long-distance love affairs.
Tsubasa Nakagawa and Runa Yasuhara in “Whisper of the Heart” (Photo courtesy of Capelight Pictures)
“Whisper of the Heart” is a sometimes whimsical, sometimes sentimental drama about the longtime, bittersweet romance between the two main characters. The movie sometimes gets repetitive and tedious, but the overall story is told in an appealing way. “Whisper of the Heart” explores some aspects of the story’s long-distance romance with great emotional tenderness, while other aspects seem very rushed or vague in the movie.
Written and directed by Yūichirō Hirakawa, “Whisper of the Heart” is both a remake and a sequel for the 1995 animated film of the same name. Both movies are based on the 1989 manga series “Whisper of the Heart.” It’s not necessary to read the manga or see the 1995 animated film before seeing the live-action film, but it helps to have this background information if viewers want a point of comparison to see how all three formats tell the story of the main characters.
The animated film “Whisper of the Heart” focuses on the two main characters when they were 14 years old. In the live-action “Whisper of the Heart,” the story goes back and forth between showing the Japanese main characters when they were 14 and when they are 24. The adult version of these characters have the storyline that is much more dramatic but also more frustrating because there was potential for the story to be better developed.
The couple at the center of the story are Shizuku Tsukishima and Seiji Amasawa, who are both artistic in different ways. Shizuku (who is quiet and bashful) wants to be a novelist. Seiji (who is outspoken and confident) wants to be a cellist. (In the animated film, wants to be a violin maker.) In the live-action “Whisper of the Heart,” Nana Seino has the role of 24-year-old Shizuku, and Runa Yasuhara has the role of 14-year-old Shizuku. Tôri Matsuzaka has the role of 24-year-old Seiji, and Tsubasa Nakagawa has the role of 14-year-old Seiji.
At 14 years old, Shizuku and Seiji, who attend the same school in Tokyo, met by chance because she found out that he checked out the same books at a local library. At first, Shizuku had a bad impression of Seiji because he would tease her at school over petty things. Shizuku is a shy student who loves books, and she’s hurt by this type of negative attention by Seiji.
One day, Shizuku sees an orange and white cat on the street and follows it into a trinket shop called Earth Store. Inside the shop, Shizuku is immediately drawn to a cat figurine doll that shows the cat standing up like a human and dressed in a tuxedo. The figure is about 10 to 12 inches tall. The shop owner is a friendly elderly man named Shirō Nishi (played by Masaomi Kondô) introduces himself to Shizuku and tells her that the cat’s name is Baron.
Later (this is not spoiler information), Shizuku finds out that Shirō is Seiji’s grandfather. By chance, Shizuku and Seiji happen to be in the shop on the same day. They start talking and eventually come to like each other when they find out that they have a lot of the same interests. Their friendship gradually turns into love, and they promise to be loyal to each other.
Shirō eventually tells Shizuku the story of Baron and how this cat figurine is a symbol of love that Shirō found and lost during World War II. The orange and white cat that lives in the shop is named Moon. These two cats inspire Shizuku to write her first story, with encouragement from Seiji, who wants to be the first person to read the story, which is called “Baron’s Tale.” Likewise, Seiji has written a song called “Wings to Fly” that he eventually shares with Shizuku.
What the live-action “Whisper of the Heart” movie shows in the adult lives of Shizuku and Seiji is how they are dealing with a long-distance romance. There is a 10-year leap between the connected storylines with hardly any information on what happened in between those 10 years. All viewers know is that at 24 years old, Shizuku still lives in Tokyo, while Seiji is now a working as a professional cellist who has moved to Italy, where he has been living in Rome for at least three years. Seiji is the leader of a neo-classical music group.
Shizuku’s career plans aren’t going as smoothly. She has given up on being a novelist and has become a book editor. A conversation shown early in the movie reveals that Shizuku left a large publishing company (where her former boss wants to hire her back) and is now working at a small publishing company whose specialty is children’s books. And the job is mostly miserable for Shizuku.
For starters, she has a demanding boss (played by Takuma Otoo), who doesn’t hesitate to yell at Shizuku and belittle her, often in front of her co-workers. His biggest gripe is that Shizuku hands in manuscripts that he thinks are lackluster, but Shizuku can never seem to do anything that will please him. Meanwhile, Shizuku is also dealing with a difficult author named Mr. Sonomuro (played by Kei Tanaka), who is one of the company’s most famous writers. Mr. Sonomuro’s complaint about Shizuku is she’s not authentic enough when communicating with him and making editing suggestions.
These criticisms might be valid, but Shizuku’s boss in particular seems to take pleasure n humiliating her. Shizuku is constantly in fear that she is about to be fired, so she is nervous and on edge when she’s at her job. And this insecurity makes her even more likely to mess up and get shouted at by her boss all over again.
Shizuku’s only emotional comforts in life come from her romance with Sheiji, as well as her close friendship with her two housemates: Yūko Harada (played by Rio Uchida) and Tatsuya Sugimura (played by Yuki Yamada), who are a couple. Shizuku, Yūko and Tatsuya have known each other since they all went to the same school together as teenagers. Back then (as shown in flashbacks), there was a love triangle going on that threatened to ruin the friendship between Shizuku and Yūko, but it all got sorted out, as Shizuku and Yūko ended up with the guys they wanted. Sara Sumitomo has the role of teenage Yūko, and Towa Araki has the role of teenage Tatsuya.
But lately, Shizuku’s relationship with Seiji isn’t making her as happy as it used to make her. She wonders if this relationship will last if it keeps going the way it’s been going, which is that the relationship hasn’t progressed to a commitment, such as a co-habitation, an engagement and/or marriage. Yūko and Tatsuya listen to Shizuku lament that she’s been in the relationship with Seiji for 10 years, “and I’ve got nothing to show for it.”
Seiji seems happy in Italy, and he has told Shizuku that he doesn’t want to move back to Japan because his career (which requires a lot of traveling) is going well. Meanwhile, Shizuku wants to stay in Japan. Will this couple take things to the next level, will they continue the way they that’ve been going, or will they break up? “Whisper of the Heart” shows this dilemma in a sort of wandering way, interrupted by more flashbacks.
The cast members’ performances in the movie are good, but not spectacular. The least interesting parts of the movie have to do with Shizuku at her job. In this job setting, viewers will soon grow tired of seeing repeats of similar scenarios, where Shizuku feels underappreciated and misunderstood. She has a sympathetic male co-worker (played by Keisuke Nakata), but Shizuku looks muted and emotionally disconnected in most of these workplace scenes. And it becomes boring to watch.
The flashbacks to the teenage Shizuku and teenage Seiji are cute but just give background information and offer a frame of reference when certain locations are revisited years later. The real heart of the story has to do with the adult Shizuku and the adult Seiji. Some of it is treated like a soap opera, but the movie is also has great messages about being true to oneself and not letting self-doubt get in the way of pursuing dreams.
“Whisper of the Heart” also realistically shows how true love and trust can exist in a relationship, but the timing of the relationship and what each person wants out of the relationship have to be compatible if the relationship is going to last. It’s a hard lesson to learn for the couple at the center of “Whisper of the Heart.” Each person in the relationship has to decide individual priorities and whether or not those priorities are a good match for the desired partner.
The couple in this version of the story has the benefit of more maturity than they would have had if the story remained in the couple’s teenage years. This maturity ultimately give viewers a better idea of what will happen to Shizuku and Seiji, since they are making decisions as adults, not as teenagers who are still living with their parents. However, “Whisper of the Heart” also shows in no uncertain terms that growing up doesn’t mean growing out of the need to be loved.
Capelight Pictures released “Whisper of the Heart” in select U.S. cinemas on February 3, 2023. The movie was released in Japan on October 14, 2022.
Culture Representation: Taking place in World War II-era Italy in the 1940s (and briefly in 1916), the animated film “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” features cast of human characters (all white Italians) and magical creatures representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: An elderly wood carver/carpenter makes a puppet boy that comes alive and then goes on a quest to become a human being.
Culture Audience: “Pinocchio” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and the original 1940 “Pinocchio” movie and are interested in seeing a unique retelling of this classic story.
Sebastian J. Cricket (voiced by Ewan McGregor) in “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” (Image courtesy of Netflix)
“Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” is a stellar example of how to do a highly creative movie remake that maintains the spirit of the original while making imaginative revisions. It’s destined to be a classic in stop-motion animation. The movie takes a while to get to the action-adventure part of the story, so be prepared for a lot of very talkative scenes in the first half of the film. “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” is such a visual treat that lets viewers get to know the characters in a meaningful way, the leisurely pace in the movie’s first half is not too much of a detriment to the film overall.
Oscar-winning filmmaker del Toro had been trying to make a stop-motion animation version of “Pinocchio” since 2002, when the Jim Henson Company acquired the rights to make Carlo Collodi’s 1883 children’s fairy tale “The Adventures of Pinocchio.” “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” (whose animation is inspired by illustrator Gris Grimly’s interpretation of Pinocchio) is directed by del Toro and Mark Gustafson, with the movie’s adapted screenplay written by del Toro and Patrick McHale. The book was famously made into Disney’s 1940 musical animated film “Pinocchio.” “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” keeps the gist of the story (an Italian wooden puppet named Pinocchio that wants to become a human boy) and brings it into the 20th century.
It’s not a political movie or a preachy film, but “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” is primarily set during World War II, when Italy was under the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. A such, “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” has themes about the horrors of war and how people can become puppets under an oppressive government. The movie keeps the original story’s meaningful messages about family love, coping with death and self-acceptance. There are touches of comedy in “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,” but people should not expect a perky musical. The movie’s overall tone is dramatic.
“Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” begins with a flashback to 1916, in an unnamed part of Italy, where a kind and amiable wood carver/carpenter named Geppetto (voiced by David Bradley) lives happily with his son Carlo (voiced by Gregory Mann), who’s 10 years old. Geppetto is a single parent. Carlo’s mother is not seen or mentioned in the movie. The movie’s intermittent narrator is a nomadic cricket named Sebastian J. Cricket (voiced by Ewan McGregor), who has settled in Geppetto’s home workshop to write a memoir about his extensive travels.
One day, Carlo finds a pine cone and gives it to Geppetto so that Geppetto can plant the pine cone, with the expectation that it will grow into a tree. Carlo gives this gift to Geppetto on the day that he accompanies Geppetto to a carpenter job at the local church, where Geppetto is restoring a giant statue of Jesus Christ on a crucifix. Suddenly, military airplanes appear in the sky, and a bomb is dropped on the church. Geppetto escapes, but Carlo is killed instantly.
About 25 years later, Geppetto is a very lonely elderly man, who is still grieving heavily over the death of Carlo. He sometimes gets drunk to try to cope with his emotional pain. The pine cone that Carlo gave to him all those years ago has now grown into a pine tree. In a drunken rage, Carlo cuts down the tree and makes a wooden boy puppet out of the tree, as a tribute to Carlo. Sebastian observes it all.
One night, the benevolent Wood Sprite (voiced by Tilda Swinton) visits the workshop, and finds out from Sebastian that the puppet was made so that Geppetto wouldn’t be lonely and to remind Gepetto of his son Carlo. (The Wood Sprite is called the Blue Fairy in other versions of “Pinocchio.”) The Wood Sprite brings the boy puppet to life, and names the puppet Pinocchio (also voiced by Mann), while Sebastian witnesses this magical spell. The Wood Sprite calls herself a “guardian” on Earth. She tells Sebastian: “I care for little things, the forgotten things, the lost ones.” And she asks Sebastian to help her look after Pinocchio.
At first, Geppetto is frightened by the sight of Pinocchio being alive, but he eventually loves Pinocchio like a son. One day, Pinocchio follows Geppetto to church, where the parishioners treat Pinocchio with fear and suspicion. The churchgoers think that this talking puppet is demonic, but Geppetto assures them that Pinocchio is just a puppet. Still, Pinocchio is treated like an outcast in the village from then onwards.
The church’s priest (voiced by Burn Gorman) and the village’s podesta (voiced by Ron Perlman), who represent the village’s top authority figures, order Geppetto to send Pinocchio to school, so that Pinocchio can learn the rules and laws of this Italian society. Viewers will have to overlook that most of the main characters have British accents in the English-language version of this movie. Because most of movie’s voice actors do not have Italian accents, it’s one of the few details that “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” gets wrong, but most viewers won’t notice or care.
The very stern podesta has a son named Candlewick (voiced by Finn Wolfhard), who often lives in fear of his domineering father and tries hard to please his father. The podesta is quick to judge others harshly and is eager to dole out punishment to anyone he thinks doesn’t follow his orders. Candlewick and Pinocchio are around the same age, in terms of emotional maturity level, and their relationship at first consists of Candlewick being a bully to naïve Pinocchio.
For example, Candlewick plays a mean-spirited prank on Pinocchio by suggesting that Pinocchio move closer to a fire to get warmer. As a result, Pinocchio’s legs get partially burned off, but Geppetto compassionately makes new and improved legs for Pinocchio. Candlewick and Pinocchio eventually become friends in a poignant storyline where they find out they have more in common than Candlewick thought. Pinocchio also wants to please Geppetto like a dutiful son. These father-son issues are recurring themes in the movie’s story.
Pinocchio doesn’t go to school as planned, and he ends up being lured into working at a carnival as the star act. The carnival is led by greedy and unscrupulous Count Volpe (voiced by Christoph Waltz), who is cruel and abusive to his loyal and sweet-natured monkey Spazzatura (voiced by Cate Blanchett). The rest of “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” has faithful renditions of the original story while adding very different new plotlines to the movie.
Sebastian the cricket (who is a purple instead of the traditional green) is not an ever-present sidekick with Pinocchio. In this movie, Pinocchio actually spends more time with Candlewick. “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” also has a character called Death (also voiced by Swinton), who is the sister of the Wood Sprite. Both sisters are blue magical creatures that talk without moving their mouths. The character of Death has a lot to do with some of the main changes to the story.
There are some pleasant original songs performed in “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,” but none that will become iconic such as “When You Wish Upon a Star” from Disney’s 1940 version of “Pinocchio.” Alexandre Desplat, who wrote the terrific musical score for “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,” collaborated with Roeban Katz on the movie’s original songs “My Son” (performed by Bradley) and the Mann-performed “Fatherland March,” “Big Baby Il Duce March” and “Ciao Papa.” It certainly would have been easier (and lazier) to try to replicate the Disney songs from 1940’s “Pinocchio,” so the filmmakers of “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” deserve some credit for not relying on the same old type of tunes.
The voice cast in “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” is top-notch and delivers the expected emotions on a very entertaining level. John Turturro has a supporting role as a doctor, while Tim Blake Nelson voices the four Black Rabbits that encounter Pinocchio. Mann’s high-pitched British voice is perfectly fine, but might be a little bit of a distraction for people who think Pinocchio should’ve sounded more Italian or southern European in this movie.
Waltz has played many villainous characters, so his interpretation of Count Volpe has the expected amount of sleaze and smarminess. Blanchett’s voice work is the biggest surprise because many people would never guess she’s the wordless voice of a monkey in this movie. McGregor’s distinctive voice seems underused, since the cricket character isn’t as prominently featured in “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,” compared to other “Pinocchio” movies. However, Sebastian gets a big scene in “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” where his strong-willed and opinionated personality is expressed in full force when scolding Geppetto for not appreciating Pinocchio.
As for the movie’s visuals, the animation is striking, gorgeous and often emotionally rousing. It is stop-motion animation that represents the best of what could be done creatively and technically when this movie was made. The ending of “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” is a major departure from the original book and 1940’s “Pinocchio,” but the conclusion is handled in a way that’s of a much higher quality than Disney’s inferior 2022 remake of “Pinocchio.”
Fantasy films of del Toro often walk the line between whimsy and melancholy in telling stories of life and death. “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” is no different and is, without question, one of del Toro’s most impressive movies. Some people looking for more action sequences in this movie might be disappointed, but “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” has much more to offer than being a superficial joy ride.
Netflix released “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” in select U.S. cinemas on November 9, 2022. The movie will premiere on Netflix on December 9, 2022.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Poland and Italy, the dramatic film “EO” features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A former circus donkey named EO experiences highs and lows and different levels of freedom and captivity during his travels.
Culture Audience: “EO” will appeal primarily to people interested in an emotionally moving film that follows the life of a specific animal for a certain period of time.
Lorenzo Zurzolo and EO (played by Tako) in “EO” (Photo courtesy of Janus Films and Sideshow)
“EO,” a dramatic film made to look like a documentary, tells the fascinating and sometimes-harrowing story of a lovable donkey named EO, whose life becomes uncertain after losing his circus home. The “EO” film is so impressive with its realism, some viewers might think that it’s a non-fiction movie. Of course, one of the biggest indications that “EO” is a fictional film is that Oscar-nominated French actress Isabelle Huppert has a role as a fictional character in the movie. Her screen time in “EO” is less than 15 minutes, but she makes her screen time very memorable, as she almost always does in her on-screen roles.
Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski (who co-wrote the “EO” screenplay with Ewa Piaskowska), “EO” is filmed cinéma vérité-style, shown entirely from EO’s perspective. “EO” had its world premiere at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, where the movie won the Jury Prize and Cannes Soundtrack Award for Best Composer. “EO” composer Pawel Mykietyn’s score is certainly the musical soul of the film, because there are some sections of the movie with no human dialogue. “EO”—which also screened at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival and the 2022 New York Film Festival—is Poland’s official entry for Best International Feature Film consideration for the 2023 Academy Awards.
“EO” begins in Poland, where is EO performing in a circus tent with his handler, an actress named Kasandara (played by Sandra Drzymalska), who treats EO with kindness and respect. Kasandra’s boyfriend is a circus co-worker named Wasyl (played by Maciej Stepniak), who is controlling and mean-spirited. An early scene in the movie shows Wasyl hitting EO because he doesn’t think EO is moving fast enough. Sensitive viewers be warned: There’s even worse animal cruelty later on in the movie.
The circus is under pressure because animal-rights activists are protesting outside while the circus operates. The activists want the circus to be shut down because they think that circuses and carnivals have rampant animal torture and other animal abuse. Early on in the movie, the circus goes bankrupt, so all the circus’ animals are repossessed. Kasandra is devastated.
The rest of “EO” shows what happens in EO’s life as he goes from place to place. His journey takes him from Poland to Italy. And his travels include living on a farm; being a stray animal; encountering a truck driver named Mateo (played by Mateusz Kościukiewicz); and befriending a young nomad named Vito (played by Lorenzo Zurzolo), who is training to be a priest and has a history of being the lover of an unnamed wealthy countess, played by Huppert.
There’s a lot more that happens in the movie, but it’s best if people know as little as possible about “EO” except the basic concept of the film and why EO ended up as a donkey without a permanent home. Viewers will be swept up in the suspense over what will happen to EO. And although it’s not really accurate to say that the movie’s donkey (whose real name is Tako) is acting, he certainly shows enough personality for viewers to feel empathy for him.
One of the standout characteristics of “EO” is the stunning cinematography by Michal Dymek. Many of the scenes are drenched in rich hues, such as red and blue, making the movie sometimes look like a very artsy nature documentary. And because the camera angles are often from the donkey’s perspective, viewers will get EO’s outlook on the contrasting beauty and horror at that exists this world for animals that are treated like property instead of like a member of Earth’s ecosystem family.
“EO” isn’t a completely perfect film, because the movie is occasionally slow-paced and has scenes that seem to drag on a little longer than necessary. However, the point of “EO” is that life for animals (especially when living in harsh conditions) can often be depressing and dull by human standards, even if the animals are surrounded by a gorgeous landscape. This isn’t the type of fantasy movie where a stray animal has to find a home and almost every scene is an adventure scene. “EO” is a striking and effective reminder that how we treat animals represents the best and worst of humanity.
Janus Films and Sideshow will release “EO” in select U.S. cinemas on November 18, 2022.
Culture Representation: Taking place in the Italian region of Calabria, the dramatic film “A Chiara” features a nearly all-white cast of characters (with one black person) representing the working-class, middle-class and criminal underground.
Culture Clash: After her father disappears, a 15-year-old girl finds out that her tight-knit and loving family has dark secrets.
Culture Audience: “A Chiara” will appeal primarily to people interested in a well-acted coming-of-age stories about people born into families leading double lives.
Claudio Rotolo, Giorgia Rotolo, Grecia Roloto, Swamy Rotolo and Carmela Fumo in “A Chiara” (Photo courtesy of Neon)
“A Chiara” presents in stark and haunting ways how a family can be destroyed by secrets and lies, and how a child caught in the crossfire can try to heal from the trauma. This two-hour drama needed better film editing, but the performances are compelling. Viewers need patience to get through some of the repetitive aspects of “A Chiara,” but the best sections of the movie outweigh the weaker sections. “A Chiara” had its world premiere at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Directors’ Fortnight Award.
Written and directed by Jonas Carpignano, “A Chiara” (which means “To Chiara” in Italian) takes place in Italy’s Calabria region and mostly in the city of Gioia Tauro. The Guerrasio family lives in Gioia Tauro, in what seems to be a tranquil, middle-class existence. This tight-knit and loving clan includes Claudio Guerrasio (played by Claudio Rotolo), his wife Carmela Guerrasio (played by Carmela Fumo) and their three daughters: Giulia Guerrasio (played by Grecia Rotolo), who turns 18 years old in the story; Chiara Guerrasio (played by Swamy Rotolo), who is 15 years old; and Giorgia Guerrasio (played by Giorgia Rotolo), who’s about 5 or 6 years old.
Chiara is an energetic, curious and athletic child. She’s first seen doing rigorous exercises in a school gym. And later, it’s shown that she’s on the school’s track team. Chiara has a small group of friends at school. Chiara’s closest pal is a girl about her age named Giusi (played by Giuseppina Rotolo), who frequently joins Chiara in their semi-secretive habit of vaping.
At home, all seems to be going well. Chiara, Giulia and Giorgia like to horse around in a playful manner. But amid all this family fun, there are ominous signs that Chiara senses that something is wrong. While she’s alone in the living room one evening, Chiara sees her father outside the house, and he’s talking to another man in a very intense conversation. They are too far away for Chiara to hear what they’re saying, but she senses that they want to keep the conversation private. She says nothing and goes back into another room.
In other parts of the movie, when Chiara sees things that she knows she’s not supposed to see, the movie’s sound becomes muffled, as if she’s trying to block out what she’s witnessing. “A Chiara” uses hand-held cameras (with cinematography by Tim Curtin), to give the film more of a “home movie,” intimate feel. Some viewers might not like all the shaky cam footage in “A Chiara,” but the filmmakers seem to be going for a vibe where a viewer gets to tag along like a documentarian, rather than “A Chiara” looking like a slick and overly polished drama.
Life seems to be blissful for the Guerrasio family during Giulia’s 18th birthday party, which is being held at a restaurant, with about 30 guests at the party. The movie has a segment of about 15 or 16 minutes (a little too long and needed tighter editing) showing this party, where it doesn’t show much except people talking, eating and dancing. Everyone is in good spirits, and things go very smoothly during this celebration.
At the party, there’s a dance contest where Claudio, who is among the four “judges,” casts the deciding vote between final contestants Giulia and Chiara. He votes for Giulia, who is declared the winner. Later, Claudio dances with Chiara and tells her that he had to vote for Giulia because it’s her birthday. A smiling Chiara says that she understands.
Despite the party being a joyful celebration, there are some more subtle clues that Claudio is troubled. During the group dinner, Claudio is asked to make a birthday toast to Giulia, but he refuses. Instead, he insists that his brother Pasquale (played by Pasquale Alampi) say the toast. At the table, Claudio tells Giulia that he’s proud of her. “You are my life.” They both get emotional and start crying.
About three or four rough-looking men, who are not family members or friends, also show up at the party. Later, when Chiara and Giusi go outside to smoke, four other men approach them on the street and start scolding the teens for smoking. Chiara defiantly tells them to mind their own business, and things start to get tense. But then, the group of men see another group of four men, and their attention turns to these other men for a possible confrontation.
Chiara and Giusi are relieved that this encounter with these men didn’t escalate into something dangerous. As Giusi and Chiara walk back toward the restaurant, they both see Chiara’s father Claudio on the street in a heated conversation with the rough-looking men who were at the party. The men seem to be following Claudio, who sees Chiara and makes a hand gesture, as if to tell her to go away. Claudio then quickly gets in his car alone and leaves.
At home later that night, Chiara hears her parents having a panicked discussion. Chiara spies on them, but the viewers can’t hear what’s being said, because the movie’s sound is muffled. Chiara follows her parents outside without them seeing her. Chiara sees her father jump over a wall and leave.
When Chiara goes out on the street a short while later to look for her father, she sees a man on a motorbike pass by her father’s car and throw something at it. The car almost instantly blows up in flames. Luckily, no one was in or near the car. However, Chiara’s mother runs outside and frantically takes Chiara in the house with her.
When the police arrive to investigate, Chiara overhears her mother tell the cops that she didn’t see anything and that the family did not receive any threats. And where is Claudio? Carmela tells Giulia, Chiara and Giorgia (who are all huddled in fear in the same bed): “Everything is under control. Don’t worry. I just spoke to the police.”
When Giulia asks about the sisters’ father, Carmela replies, “Your father is out there, taking care of everything. You know your dad.” But do they really know their dad? Claudio doesn’t come home.
And when Chiara goes to school the next day, she notices that some of the students are avoiding her or talking about her behind her back. It isn’t long before Chiara finds out her father’s big secret and why he disappeared. Chiara goes home and angrily confronts her mother, who essentially admits that it’s true. Claudio’s secret isn’t too surprising to viewers who see all the clues for what they are, but the secret is shocking to Chiara.
Much of the movie chronicles Chiara’s efforts to find her father. She skips a lot of her school classes to play “detective,” and this truancy has consequences that are shown later in the movie. The mystery-solving part of “A Chiara” is a little duller than it should have been. That’s because Chiara repeatedly goes back and talks to a shop owner named Antonio (played by Antonio Rotolo), once Chiara quickly figures out that Antonio knows a lot of her father’s secrets.
“A Chiara” is told from Chiara’s perspective and her determination to find out the whole truth, even if it hurts. Therefore, not much insight is given to how other members of the family are dealing with Claudio’s disappearance. There’s a powerfully acted scene where Chiara confronts Giulia about how much Giulia might have known, but that’s the limited extent that Chiara is shown having an emotional conversation with either of her sisters about their father’s disappearance.
What’s a little odd about the story is that Carmela seems surprised by how Chiara found out about Claudio’s secret, when it’s the most obvious way that anyone with access to a TV or the Internet could get this information. The only conclusion that viewers can reach is that Carmela is the type of person who likes to be deep in denial about things. It’s open to interpretation if this denial is to unselfishly protect her children or to selfishly cover up some complicit misdeeds.
“A Chiara” is a story inspired by real-life family members, who act as various versions of themselves in the movie. And that’s why the chemistry between these cast members looks so authentic. The movie is about a teenager who has to grow up very fast, but “A Chiara” at times lumbers along in how it tells this story, with the last 10 minutes of the movie looking quickly crammed in to have a rushed ending. This uneven pacing doesn’t detract from Swamy Rotolo’s memorable performance, which will keep viewers interested in finding out what happens to this teenager whose life and family are forever altered by her father’s bad choices.
Neon released “A Chiara” in select U.S. cinemas on May 27, 2022. The movie was released in Italy in 2021.
Culture Representation: Taking place from 1978 to 1997, mostly in Italy and New York City, the dramatic film “House of Gucci” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with one Latina and a few Asians) representing the middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: After middle-class Patrizia Reggiani marries into the wealthy Gucci family, family members start to battle over the Gucci empire of luxury goods, resulting in one of the family members getting murdered.
Culture Audience: “House of Gucci” will appeal primarily to fans of the movie’s star-studded cast, the Gucci brand and tawdry true crime movies.
Jeremy Irons in “House of Gucci” (Photo courtesy of Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures)
Just like a fake Gucci item, “House of Gucci” is a tacky sham that quickly falls apart. Don’t be fooled into thinking this is a high-quality movie, just because of the celebrity names and Oscar pedigrees of the movie’s headlining stars and director. The movie looks good, when it comes to production design, costume design, makeup and hairstyling. But the screenplay is atrocious, the acting is uneven, and director Ridley Scott helmed “House of Gucci” like it’s an idiotic melodrama made for mediocre television, but with a much higher budget than most TV-movies will ever have. (“House of Gucci” even has some laughably bad freeze-frame shots as lazy ways of putting emphasis on a particular emotion.)
It’s all the more reason for viewers to be disappointed that several Oscar winners and Oscar nominees have stepped into this “smoke and mirrors” cesspool of a movie. We all know that the fashion industry is all about image and how someone looks on the outside. That doesn’t mean that a movie about the Gucci empire’s biggest scandal needs to be shallow and superficial too.
The weakest link in “House of Gucci” is the screenplay, written by Becky Johnston and Roberto Bentivegna. They adapted the screenplay from Sara Gay Forden’s 2000 book “The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour and Greed.” The “House of Gucci” movie is slipshod in certain details, by getting some basic facts wrong about this notorious murder case. And many parts of this movie are surprisingly dull. Don’t expect there to be any riveting scenes of a murder trial in “House of Gucci.” There aren’t any. There’s a poorly written, anti-climactic courtroom scene that’s rushed into the movie.
The Gucci murder case involved a complex group of real-life people, who are mostly reduced to caricatures in the movie. However, a few of the “House of Gucci” cast members make the film watchable because of their performances: Lady Gaga, Jeremy Irons and Jared Leto. They stand out for completely different reasons.
Lady Gaga is compelling to watch as the scheming Patrizia Reggiani, who was at the center of the Gucci scandal because Reggiani was convicted of masterminding a murder plot. The details of the Gucci murder case are well-documented, but in case anyone reading this review doesn’t know anything about the case before seeing the movie, this review won’t reveal who was murdered. (Although it’s pretty obvious, when you consider who would have to die for Reggiani to inherit a large share of the Gucci fortune.)
Lady Gaga’s performance as Patrizia Reggiani takes a deep dive into campiness, occasionally comes up for air in earnestness, and sometimes lounges around in limpness. Overall, Lady Gaga has the type of on-screen magnetism that even when Patrizia is doing awful things, it’s with the type of villainous charisma where you know this character is capable of convincing some people that she did very bad things for very good reasons.
A campy performance isn’t necessarily a problem if the rest of the actors are on the same wavelength. Unfortunately, “House of Gucci” director Scott failed to bring a cohesive tone to this movie. Other “House of Gucci” actors give performances that are not campy at all but come across as if they truly believe this is a serious, artsy drama worthy of the highest accolades in the movie industry in every top-level category.
That’s the kind of performance that Adam Driver gives in “House of Gucci,” where he portrays Patrizia’s beleagured husband Maurizio Gucci. Maurizio met Patrizia when he was a law student and had no intention of joining the family business. Driver’s portrayal of Maurizio has the type of personality transformation that actors usually relish.
Maurizio goes from being mild-mannered and easily manipulated when he meets Patrizia while he was in law school to becoming a ruthless and recklessly spending businessman who casts Patrizia aside when he decides to move in with his mistress Paola Franchi (played by Camille Cottin) and divorce Patrizia. Their divorce became final in 1994.
“House of Gucci” makes it look like Maurizio abandoned not only Patrizia but essentially neglected their daughter Alessandra after the divorce. The three actresses who portray Alessandra in “House of Gucci” are Nicole Bani Sarkute (Alessandra at 3 years old); Mia McGovern Zaini (Alessandra at 9 years old); and Clelia Rossi Marcelli (teenage Alessandra).
In reality, Patrizia and Maurizio had two children together: daughters Alessandra (born in 1976) and Allegra, born in 1981. The erasure of Allegra from the movie is just one of the many details that “House of Gucci” gets wrong. The movie also changes the timeline of when Patrizia and Maurizio met and got married. In the beginning of the movie, Patrizia meets Maurizio in 1978. In real life, Patrizia and Maurizio met in 1970 and got married in 1972.
In the “House of Gucci” movie version of Patrizia’s life in 1978, she was working as an office manager for her stepfather’s truck transportation business in Milan, Italy. Patrizia and Maurizio meet at a nightclub party of one of his friends. Maurizio is standing behind the bar, and Patrizia mistakes him for the bartender, so she asks him to fix her a drink. Maurizio thinks that she’s confident and sexy. He tells her that she reminds him of Elizabeth Taylor.
Patrizia seems much more interested in Maurizio when he mentions that his last name is Gucci. Patrizia asks Maurizio if he wants to dance. He says no. The scene then cuts to Patrizia and Maurizio dancing together on the dance floor. Patrizia’s persuasive personality sets the tone for much of their relationship.
It seems like the “House of Gucci” filmmakers decided to change this couple’s courtship to take place in the late 1970s solely for the purpose of having disco music in the movie’s scenes that depict the early years of their relationship. After all, Lady Gaga looks better twirling or slow dancing on a 1978 dance floor where there’s a disco ball and Studio 54-type of partiers, instead of a scene at a 1970 party that would probably have to be staged with a bunch of rich-looking hippies.
Therefore, the “House of Gucci” soundtrack serves up its share of disco music, such as Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love,” Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls,” Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” and Donna Summer’s “On the Radio.” Later, when the movie’s timeline goes into the 1980s, the soundtrack features songs such as the Eurythmics hits “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” and “Here Comes the Rain Again.” The soundtrack songs often blare in “House of Gucci” in music-video-styled sequences that further cheapen the look of the movie.
The first sign that Patrizia is willing to do whatever it takes to get what she wants is when she stalks Maurizio on campus at his law school. She follows him into a library and pretends to “coincidentally” run into him again. This scene is like something right out of a Lifetime movie. Maurizio has no idea that he’s being targeted, so he goes along with Patrizia’s seduction and is eventually convinced that their relationship is true love.
Irons gives an understated and believable performance as Rodolfo Gucci, Maurizio’s widower father, who is the only Gucci family member who holds on to his dignity in this movie. Rodolfo is immediately suspicious of Patrizia and her intentions for his only child. Rodolfo doesn’t come right out and use the words “gold digger” when he warns Maurizio not to marry Patrizia, but Rodolfo expresses his concerns that Patrizia is not a woman of substance and that she seems to be latching on to Maurizio because of the Gucci family fortune.
Even though Rodolfo vehemently disapproves of Patrizia, it turns out that Rodolfo and Patrizia actually agree on something: They both think that Maurizio should go into the Gucci family business. However, Maurizio’s refusal to follow his father’s wishes leads to him being estranged from Rodolfo for a while.
Maurizio is kicked out of the family home and cut off from his family’s financial support. With nowhere else to go, Maurizio moves in with Patrizia and her parents. Maurizio gets a job working for Patrizia’s stepfather Fernando (played by Vincent Riotta), who’s depicted in the movie as someone who engages in shady business practices.
To put an emphasis on how much Maurizio is estranged from his former life, when Patrizia and Maurizio get married in a church, the movie makes a point of showing that the pews on the bride’s side of the aisle are filled with her family members and friends, while the pews on the groom’s side of the aisle are almost empty. George Michael’s 1987 song “Faith” is played in the movie’s soundtrack after Patrizia and Maurizio exchange vows and walk happily out of the church. This soundtrack choice is an example of more of the movie’s carelessness with details, because the wedding took place years before “Faith” was released and before Michael was even a pop star.
Meanwhile, Rodolfo’s older brother Aldo Gucci (played by Al Pacino, hamming it up in the type of moody roles he’s been doing recently) doesn’t trust Aldo’s dimwitted son Paolo (played by Leto) to be in charge of any part of the family business. Aldo reaches out to Maurizio to come back to the family fold, but Maurizio still hesitates. Patrizia eventually joins forces with Aldo to persuade Maurizio to reconcile with his family and become part of the Gucci business empire. Maurizio eventually agrees, because at this point in his life, he still wants to please Patrizia. For a while, Patrizia and Maurizio made their home base in New York City during Maurizio’s rise in the Gucci business.
More scheming and manipulations ensue, exactly like how you expect them to play out in a movie that is plagued with clumsy clichés. Patrizia and Maurizio are not shown having any meaningful conversations that are not about his family, money or business. In other words, the movie falls short of convincing viewers that Maurizio and Patrizia had a deep emotional love that would make him blind to her gold-digging ways.
Maurizio and Patrizia have a passionate sex life in the beginning of their relationship, so the movie implies that lust, not love, was what really brought this couple together. The sex scenes in “House of Gucci” aren’t very sexy because they look more like parodies of soap-opera-styled sex. Items on tables are shoved aside and crash on the floor to make room on the table for whatever sex act occurs. Any vigorous thrusting doesn’t look erotic but looks more like someone having a robotic workout routine at a gym. And the orgasms sound very fake.
It’s not much of a surprise that “House of Gucci” is a very “straight male gaze” movie where only women’s nude private parts are shown, not men’s nude private parts. And speaking of people in “House of Gucci” in various states of undress, this movie has a semi-obsession with Patrizia being seen in bathtubs or saunas. Apparently, the filmmakers want viewers to think that life is supposed to be more luxurious if you take baths instead of showers.
The supporting characters in “House of Gucci” are either over-the-top ridiculous (Salma Hayek as Giuseppina “Pina” Auriemma, a self-described psychic who befriends Patrizia), or bland as bland as can be (Jack Huston as Gucci financial advisor Domenico De Sole; Reeve Carney as fashion designer Tom Ford) with no intriguing personalities. Pina is a stereotypical con artist who gives vague predictions to Patrizia (“I see a big fortune coming your way”) and mystical-sounding advice, such as telling Patrizia that Patrizia should wear more red for “protection” and more green for “cleansing.”
The fashion industry is a mere backdrop to the betrayals and lies that usually originate from Patrizia and spread like a virus to other members of the Gucci family. For example, “House of Gucci” wastes an opportunity to give a fascinating insider’s look at the Gucci empire. Instead, the movie gives trite portrayals of the massive reinvention that the Gucci brand underwent from the 1970s to the 1990s. The movie serves up a fast-food version of what happened on the business side of the Gucci story.
“House of Gucci” unrealistically makes it look like it was only Patrizia who had the business sense to tell the family in the 1980s that it was devaluing the Gucci name by licensing the brand to cheap-quality merchandise, and that they needed to go back to Gucci being synonymous with luxury. The Gucci brand was then repositioned as “hip/trendy” (not old-fashioned) luxury. For all of her supposed business skills, Patrizia isn’t actually showing doing any real work as a so-called Gucci powerhouse. According to this movie, all she seems to be good at doing is telling people what to do.
The “House of Gucci” role of fashion designer Ford, a native of Texas who is credited with helping further reinvent the Gucci brand in the 1990s, is literally a walk-on role: The most memorable things that he does in the movie is give the traditional end-of-show designer stroll on a runway after showing a collection, and when Ford reads a newspaper article that praises him, he walks out of the room to say that he can’t wait to call his mother.
At no point in the movie is anyone in the Gucci empire shown having a strong relationship with Ford, even though he was a driving force at Gucci, where he worked from 1990 to 2004, with most of those years spent as Gucci’s creative director. There are some hints that De Sole had his own agendas and ambitions, but the character is written in a completely boring and hollow way. Unless you’re a fashion aficionado who knows about De Sole and his further ascent in the Gucci empire, you might have a hard time remembering his name after watching this movie.
“House of Gucci” is also problematic in how it portrays women, because the three female characters with the most prominent speaking roles are either villains (Patrizia and Pina) or a mistress (Paola). Vogue magazine editorial executive Anna Wintour (played by Catherine Walker), actress Sophia Loren (played by Mãdãlina Ghenea) and Paolo’s wife Jenny Gucci (played by Florence Andrews) have meaningless cameos in “House of Gucci.” Even back in the 1970s to 1990s, when this movie takes place, women were so much more important in the fashion industry than what “House of Gucci” makes it look like.
Out of all the portrayals of the Gucci men in “House of Gucci,” Leto’s performance as Paolo is the flashiest one. Much of the performance’s standout qualities have to do with the top-notch prosthetics that Leto wears to make him look like a completely different person who is heavier and older than Leto’s real physical appearance. However, Leto does show some actor panache by having an amusing Italian accent, and he plays Paolo’s buffoon role to the hilt, bringing some intentional comedic moments.
Leto’s performance is only marred by some silly-looking scenes, such as when Paolo does an awkward dance of jubilation with Patrizia when she deceives aspiring fashion designer Paolo into thinking that his horrendous fashions are fabulous and worthy of being part of the Gucci brand. It’s the type of scene that looks like something Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd would’ve rejected for their Two Wild and Crazy Guys act on “Saturday Night Live.” Paolo’s words and actions get more cartoonish as the movie goes along. A low point is when Paolo urinates on a Gucci scarf in a fit of anger.
Unfortunately, the best performance efforts by the “House of Gucci” cast members can’t overcome the very cringeworthy screenplay that ruins this movie. In one scene, when Patrizia and Maurizio have an argument, she chokes up with tears and says: “I had no idea I married a monster.” He replies coldly, “You didn’t. You married a Gucci.” In another scene, Pina snarls at someone, “Don’t fuck this up, ’cause I’ll put a spell on you!” In another scene, Paolo says, “Never confuse shit with chocolate. They may look the same, but they’re very different. Trust me, I know!”
The Paolo character might want to warn people not to confuse defecation with chocolate, but viewers should be warned not to confuse “House of Gucci” with being a superb film. For a movie that’s supposed to be about a haute couture/luxury fashion brand, it wallows in the muck of cheap gimmicks, sloppy screenwriting and a lack of self-awareness about how horrendous the worst parts are. The end result is a tawdry mess. And you can’t erase the stink from that.
Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures will release “House of Gucci” in U.S. cinemas on November 24, 2021. “House of Gucci” is set for release on digital and VOD on February 1, 2022. The movie’s release date on Blu-ray and DVD is on February 22, 2022.
Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city and in Italy, the romantic drama “Time Is Up” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: At an unnamed high school, a “good girl” who’s an aspiring physicist falls for a “bad boy” who’s a rising star on the school’s swim team, even though she already has a boyfriend who’s on the same swim team.
Culture Audience: “Time Is Up” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching cliché-ridden, badly acted dramas about teenagers.
Sebastiano Pigazzi and Bella Thorne in “Time Is Up” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)
“Time Is Up” is an example of what happens when filmmakers think that all you need for a romantic drama are some pretty actors and a scenic trip to Italy. It’s too bad they forgot about actually making a good movie. This substandard film is like being in a car wreck of teen drama clichés. And that’s not just because the movie actually does have a car wreck, which causes the female protagonist to experience amnesia soon after she has fallen in love with someone new.
“Time Is Up” is also one of those movies that has a trailer that gives away 85% of the plot, including the amnesia part of the story that doesn’t happen until the last third of the movie. There’s only one plot twist in the movie that isn’t in the trailer: It involves a secret same-sex affair of two people whose reputations would be ruined if the secret got out.
“Time Is Up” director Elisa Amoruso co-wrote the movie’s atrocious screenplay with Lorenzo Ura and Patrizia Fiorellini. The movie attempts to go for the tone of an epic romance, but in reality, “Time Is Up” is a cheesy teen soap opera. One of the movie’s biggest flaws is in its casting: The main actors who portray high schoolers look too old to be in high school.
We’ve seen this formula too many times before: A “good girl” in high school falls for a brooding “bad boy.” If he goes to the same school, he’s usually a new student who’s a mysterious and troubled loner. There’s usually some obstacle that prevents them from getting together right away. (The obstacle is usually a love triangle.) And so, the would-be couple will spend a lot of screen time pouting and eyeing each other lustfully before one of them makes the first move.
“Time Is Up” is a parade of pouting by cast members who know how to look sullen and bored more than they know how to act. Vivien (played by Bella Thorne) is in her last year in high school in an unnamed U.S. city. She’s an aspiring physicist (with a preference for quantum physics), who spouts this laughable, pseudo-physics mumbo jumbo in a voiceover narration in the beginning of the film:
“In the void, pairs of particles are continuously created. Their only destiny is to meet and disappear into each other. When two particles that have interacted with each other are separated, they are no longer distinct particles. The same thing happens when two people fall in love. Even when life pulls them apart, they’ll always carry a trace of the other person inside.”
As soon as you hear this silly schmaltz, you know you’re going to have to brace yourself for more as this movie plods to its very predictable end. Vivien attends an unnamed private high school, where most of the students come from privileged families. Her boyfriend Steve (played by Sebastiano Pigazzi) is a star of the school’s male swim team. Vivien has a sassy best friend (played by Bonnie Baddoo), who seems to be just a token character because the filmmakers never bothered to give her character a name.
Also on the school’s swim team is a new student named Roy (played by Benjamin Mascolo), a heavily tattooed rebel who lives in a trailer park. Roy has a swimming scholarship to attend the school. He has the talent to be the best swimmer on the team. Roy was born in Italy and moved to the U.S. with his family when he was in middle school, so he still has an Italian accent.
But when Vivien and her best friend attend a swim practice, it looks like Roy could be putting his scholarship in jeopardy. Roy has been slacking off during practice, so he gets yelled at by the team’s coach Dylan (played by Nikolay Moss). Dylan warns Roy that if Roy doesn’t improve, Roy won’t be chosen for the swim team’s competitions, and he could lose his scholarship.
Roy shouts back at Dylan: “What are you? My dad? I already have one! I fucking hate him!” Meanwhile, Steve smirks nearby when he sees this conflict between Roy and Dylan, because Steve wants to be considered the team’s best swimmer. Steve feels somewhat threatened that Roy (who’s a better swimmer) could outshine Steve on the team.
One day, Steve, Vivien and Vivien’s best friend are riding in Steve’s car when Roy becomes the topic of the conversation. Vivien’s best friend thinks that Roy is very attractive, and she mentions that she wouldn’t mind having a one-night stand with Roy. She asks Steve for more information about Roy. Steve says that Roy mostly keeps to himself.
Vivien and Steve seem to have a solid relationship on the outside. But lately, Steve has been very preoccupied and doesn’t have time for Vivien in the way he used to have time for her. He’s also not as affectionate with her as he used to be.
Vivien’s best friend notices that the romance between Vivien and Steve has cooled down. Even though Vivien insists that she’s happy with Steve, her best friend comments, “You’re not happy. You’re serene, which is totally different.”
The romantic spark has also apparently dwindled in the marriage of Vivien’s parents. Early on in the film, Vivien (who is an only child) finds out that her mother Sarah (played by Emma Lo Bianco) has been having an affair with another man. Vivien’s businessman father (played by Giampiero Judica), who doesn’t have a name in the movie, is away from home a lot because of his work.
As for Roy’s family, he lives with his widowed father (who’s a mechanic) and pre-teen sister in a dumpy and cluttered trailer. Roy’s father is American, and Roy’s late mother was Italian, which is why Roy and his parents lived in Italy for the first 11 or 12 years of his childhood.
Roy later tells Vivien that one of the reasons why he has hard feelings toward his father is because Roy didn’t want to leave Italy, but it was his father’s decision to move to the United States after Roy’s mother passed away. Roy eventually reveals to Vivien how Roy’s mother died. (Antonella Britti portrays Roy’s mother in this brief flashback.)
At a costume party at a student’s house, Vivien and Roy see each other across the room and they start dancing together. And because this movie is filled with teen movie clichés, a fight inevitably breaks out at the party. You don’t have to be a psychic to know who ends up in the brawl.
Vivien and Roy have another encounter when she’s in the parking lot of a restaurant at night. It’s the same restaurant where Vivien saw her mother on a date and kissing another man. In the parking lot, some young thugs start to harass Vivien. But lo and behold, Roy shows up and comes to Vivien’s rescue.
It turns out that Roy knows these troublemakers because he’s been involved with some criminal activities with them. Later in the movie, Roy is shown committing burglary by breaking into a house with one of his hoodlum pals. They don’t get caught, and the burglary is never mentioned in the movie again.
Vivien’s problems at home and her problems with Steve have upset her to the point where she starts doing her own version of rebelling. There’s a scene where she shows up in a classroom where the teacher is handing out a test to the students. Vivien doesn’t even sit down before she decides she’s going to walk out of the class without taking the test. She doesn’t just walk out. She has to do a dramatic, pouty saunter, as if she’s on some kind of fashion runway.
And what do you know: The swim team is traveling out of the country to go to a swimming competition. And guess where they’ve gone? Italy. Vivien wants to bring the passion back to her romance with Steve. And so, she decides to go to Italy to surprise Steve at the hotel where the swim team is staying.
For reasons that won’t be revealed in this review, Steve isn’t available for most of the trip. But guess who’s available to show Vivien around this part of Italy? You get the gist of what happens in the movie’s trailer. There are no real surprises in how Roy ends up courting Vivien, even though he tells her in a not-very-convincing way that he doesn’t want to fall in love.
Vivien and Roy get together, of course, and they even have (cliché alert) a couple’s signature song: Frankie Valli’s 1967 hit single “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You.” Expect to hear this tune played multiple times in the movie.
“Time Is Up” is plagued by a lot of uneven acting. Thorne can sometimes rise to the occasion in the melodramatic scenes. But too often, she recites her lines in a wooden and emotionless way. Mascolo is even worse, since his acting is very stiff and unnatural in too many parts of the movie. He’s an example of an actor who was hired more for his physical appearance than anything else. The fact that Thorne and Mascolo became a couple in real life doesn’t help their lackluster acting skills in this movie.
The rest of the cast members are adequate in their performances, which are overshadowed by the cringeworthy dialogue throughout much of the movie. The cinematography often tries to make “Time Is Up” look glossy and glamorous, but mostly the movie comes off looking like a badly edited and cheap-looking romance novel. And worst of all for a romance movie, the main characters have personalities that are as plastic as Ken and Barbie dolls. At least Ken and Barbie aren’t as forgettable as this lazy and unimaginative film.
Vertical Entertainment released “Time Is Up” for one night only (via Fathom Events) in U.S. cinemas on September 9, 2021. The movie was released on digital and VOD on September 24, 2021.
Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed Riviera town in Italy, the animated film “Luca” features an all-white cast of characters portraying the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: In a world where sea monsters can transform into humans when they’re on land, a teenage sea monster rebels against his parents’ rules by hanging out on land, and he makes plans to run away with another teenage sea monster who has become his best friend.
Culture Audience: “Luca” will appeal primarily to people interested in predictable but enjoyable animated films about family, friendship and self-identity.
Alberto (voiced by Jack Dylan Grazer) and Luca (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) in “Luca” (Image courtesy of Disney/Pixar Animation Studios)
How do you know you’re watching a Pixar movie, besides the great visuals? The lead characters are usually male and struggling with identity/self-esteem issues, they go on an adventure with least one sidekick, and they find out the meaning of life with some tearjerking moments. The End.
Pixar Animation Studios’ “Luca” (directed by Enrico Casarosa) follows this same formula to mostly entertaining results in this story about sea monsters and humans. It’s not a groundbreaking animated film, but it’s a definite crowd-pleaser that can appeal to several different age groups. The underwater scenes in the movie are the most visually stunning, but it’s not too surprising, considering that Pixar is also the studio behind 2003’s far superior, Oscar-winning “Finding Nemo,” which was set primarily underwater. “Luca” spends most of the story on land.
Pixar, which is owned by Disney, sets itself apart from Disney Animation Studios by putting more emphasis on original stories about characters who want to feel comfortable with themselves for the first time in their lives. Therefore, the adventures in Pixar tend to have more at stake on a personal level than defeating an evil villain, because low self-esteem is often the story’s biggest villain. The visuals in Pixar films also tend to be more intricate and dazzling than Disney Animation films.
However, it’s concerning that when the world’s population and movie audiences are at least 50% female, Pixar continues to have a majority of feature-length movies where the stories are dominated by male characters. Maybe that’s because almost all Pixar movies are written and directed by men. “Luca” is no exception. The “Luca” screenplay was written by Jesse Andrews and Mike Jones.
Pixar films tend to be very male-centric for lead protagonists, whereas Disney Animation films have more of a gender balance in their lead protagonists. (Disney princesses. Need we say more?) Disney Animation also has a mix of films that are from original and adapted screenplays, since many classic children’s books and fairy tales have been made into Disney animated films.
“Luca” takes place in Italy in an unnamed town near the Riviera, which is populated by sea monsters that can transform into humans when they’re on land. Because human beings have a reputation for killing sea monsters, it’s become normal for sea monsters to fear and mistrust humans, just as many humans fear and mistrust sea monsters. Therefore, it’s not unusual for parent sea monsters to teach their children never to go on land.
That’s the case with Luca Paguro (voiced by Jacob Tremblay), an adolescent sea monster, who sounds like a boy who’s about 13 or 14. His overprotective parents—Daniela Paguro (voiced by Maya Rudolph) and Lorenzo Paguro (voiced by Jim Gaffigan)—have instilled strict rules that Luca can never go on land (anything above the sea is called “the surface”) because it’s too dangerous. Daniela is more paranoid than Lorenzo is about Luca going on land because she’s certain that Luca will be hurt or killed if he does.
Luca’s parents keep him so sheltered that they don’t tell him that sea monsters have the ability to transform into humans when they’re on land and can go back to being sea monsters when underwater. If a sea monster is on land, and water touches a sea monster’s body, the sea monster’s body takes on sea monster physical characteristics, depending on how much water has made contact with the body. And you know that’s going to happen in this movie when Luca gets into some precarious situations.
Luca’s crusty-voiced grandmother, who doesn’t have a first name in the movie and is called Grandma (voiced by Sandy Martin), lives in the Paguro household. Grandma has been to the surface, where she says she hung out with humans to do things like play card games, so she isn’t afraid of the surface like Luca’s parents are. In one early scene in the movie, the family is having a meal together around a dining room table when Grandma starts to tell a happy memory of her time on the surface. However, Daniela gets upset and verbally shuts down Grandma by ordering her never to talk about her surface experiences to Luca.
Luca is a lonely sea monster who doesn’t have any sea monster friends underwater. He spends his days hanging out with fish. His favorite is a fish named Giuseppe. But since these fish can’t talk, Luca is starting to feel isolated. Luca secretly wishes that he could go to school with other kids, but his parents are apparently homeschooling him. His father breeds and handles show crabs for a living, and Luca is expected to do the same thing when he becomes an adult.
One day, Luca sees a young male sea monster in a diving outfit. At first, Luca is afraid because he thinks the individual in diving gear is a human. But the sea monster reveals himself to be a teenager who sounds like he’s about 15 or 16 years old. His name is Alberto Scorfano (voiced by Jack Dylan Grazer), who ends up capturing Luca with a fishing hook and bringing Luca to the surface.
It’s how a terrified Luca finds out for the first time that he has the ability to become a human when he’s on land. Alberto lives in an abandoned castle tower, and he says that his single father is frequently away because of the father’s busy job demands. There’s no mention of Alberto’s mother in the story.
Alberto is a bit of a daredevil and mischief maker. In the movie’s opening scene, two fisherman—elderly Tommaso (voiced by Gino La Monica) and young Giacomo (voiced by Giacomo Giannotti)—are on a boat at night. Giacomo is concerned about fishing in this part of the water, because he’s heard stories about deadly sea monsters living in the area. Tommaso is dismissive of these stories. But then, a sea monster (which viewers later find out is Alberto) steals some of items from the boat, including a gramophone, and the two fishermen chase him away.
In his newfound human body, Luca feels scared but excited. Alberto teaches Luca how to walk on two feet and other ways to navigate himself as a human. The two boys end up becoming fast friends. Luca sneaks off to spend time with Alberto as much as possible while his parents are working or asleep. (Luca uses a makeshift decoy to fool his parents if they’re watching from far away.) However, Luca knows that what he’s doing is strictly forbidden by his parents. And it’s only a matter of time before they find out his secret.
One of the first things that Alberto tells Luca when they meet is that everything is better above the surface. Alberto also says that the Vespa scooter is “the greatest thing that humans ever made.” Alberto even has a poster that says that a Vespa scooter equals freedom. It’s Alberto’s dream to have a Vespa scooter so that he can travel around the world. Soon, this dream becomes a shared obsession for Alberto and Luca.
In order to get the money to buy a new Vespa and start this dream adventure lifestyle, Alberto wants to enter a scooter racing contest called the Portorosso Cup, which is held on the other side of the sea where the main part of the town is. At first, Luca is hesitant, but Alberto convinces him to be his racing partner in the Portorosso Cup. Alberto builds a makeshift scooter to enter the contest.
When Luca’s parents find out that he’s been sneaking away to go on land, they punish him by telling him that Luca will be temporarily sent to live with his stern Uncle Ugo (voiced by Sacha Baron Cohen), who doesn’t seem to like children very much. Luca’s reaction? He runs away from home. Luca is now more motivated to win the contest so that he and Alberto can run away and start their adventurous life together without any parental supervision.
During Luca and Alberto’s blossoming friendship, Alberto teaches Luca how to get rid of self-doubt, which Alberto calls Bruno. There are many references in the movie to Bruno, which is the type of self-doubt that causes naysayer voices in someone’s head that tell people they can’t do something or that they’re not good enough. Thankfully, the movie doesn’t have actual Bruno voices because that would be too tacky and distract from the story.
The reigning Portorosso Cup champ is an arrogant bully named Ercole Visconti (voiced by Saverio Raimondo), who has won this contest several times in a row. And he has no intention of ever losing. Ercole predictably has two male sidekick followers—a brunette named Guido (voiced by Lorenzo Crisci) and a blonde named Ciccio (voiced by Peter Sohn)—who don’t speak for most of the movie and passively follow Ercole’s orders.
During the time that Alberto and Luca spend time in the town among humans, Alberto and Luca befriend a human teenager, who’s close to Luca’s age. Her name is Giulia Marcovaldo (voiced by Emma Berman), who is friendly and adventurous. She comes to the town every summer to live with her divorced father Massimo Marcovaldo (voiced by Marco Barricelli), who generously gives the three teens the money that they need for the Portorosso Cup entry fee.
Of course, getting to the Portorosso Cup isn’t without its problems. Ercole wants to thwart these young upstarts and does what he can to ruin their chances of winning the contest. Luca’s parents find out that he’s run away, and they go to the town to try to find him. Luca sees them, and has to spend a great deal of the movie trying to hide from his parents.
Meanwhile, Alberto gets jealous when Luca and Giulia start to become close. Arguments predictably ensue. In the preparations for the Portorosso Cup, the tables somewhat turn as Luca becomes more confident and Alberto becomes more insecure. And the Portorosso Cup isn’t just about winning, but in this movie it becomes a way for Luca, Alberto and Giulia to learn about how they can handle obstacles and what they really want to get out of life.
One of the best things about “Luca” is that it doesn’t clutter the movie with too many characters. The story is also very easy to follow, although it’s not very original, since a lot of animated/family films have already done the “high-stakes contest” as a plot device to have the heroes face off against the villains. All of the actors give fine performances, although it’s too bad that comedian Baron Cohen essentially has just a cameo as Uncle Ugo, whose time on screen is so brief it seems like a waste of Baron Cohen’s talents.
The most irritating flaw of “Luca” is its unrelenting promotion of Vespa. It comes off as aggressive shilling/product placement. And it somewhat taints the movie’s story because Vespa is elevated as this product brand that is the equivalent of freedom and happiness. It’s a shallow and materialistic message, even though the movie has a larger message of self-acceptance that’s more important.
The mistrust and prejudice that some humans and sea monsters have for each other are obvious metaphors of real-life bigotry. Just like in real life, some individuals are narrow-minded and hateful, while others are not. However, the movie has mixed messages about “assimilation” where individuals in the minority feel like they have to be more like individuals in the majority in order to be accepted.
Some viewers might have different opinions about what kinds of message this movie might be sending where a sea monster wants to live as a human. Alberto says in the beginning of the movie that human life on land is superior to animal life in the sea. That’s a message that probably won’t endear “Luca” to animal rights activists.
However, people need to see the movie to find out how these issues of species superiority and inferiority are handled. Because sea monsters can turn into humans, the movie takes the interpretation that they’re almost like biracial people who feel pressure to identify as one race over another. It’s enough to say that the main characters in “Luca” find out that real freedom comes from not being afraid to be who you are and not letting others put you into a narrow box of what they think you should be.
Disney+ will premiere “Luca” on June 18, 2021. The movie will have an exclusive, limited-run engagement at Disney-owned El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles, beginning June 18, 2021.
Culture Representation: Taking place mostly in rural Piedmont, Italy, the documentary “The Truffle Hunters” features an all-white group of people, from middle-aged to elderly, who are involved in the business of harvesting, selling and buying truffles.
Culture Clash: The truffle hunters, who are set in their traditional ways and live without modern technology, are part of a dwindling group of people whose livelihoods are threatened by climate change, pollution and construction that destroys forest trees.
Culture Audience: “The Truffle Hunters” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in a rarely seen Italian community that knows where to harvest coveted delicacies such as white Alba truffles.
Gianfranco Curti in “The Truffle Hunters” (Photo by Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw/Sony Pictures Classics)
The cinéma vérité-styled documentary “The Truffle Hunters” (which was filmed during a three-year period) is the type of movie that people will either find fascinating or dull. There’s no really no in-between, because viewers’ interest in watching this movie will largely depend on how much they want to peek into the secretive world of how the rare delicacy of white Alba truffles are found in Piedmont, Italy. It’s a very niche subject that isn’t supposed to be a blockbuster movie for generic audiences.
Directed by Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw, “The Truffle Hunters” takes place primarily in rural Piedmont, Italy, where several middle-aged and elderly men are continuing their traditions of truffle hunting in the forests. It’s a very competitive and mysterious tradition, where truffle hunters do not like to share information with anyone over where they find their truffles. The only real loyalty that they have in their truffle hunting is to their beloved dogs that they rely on to sniff out the truffles.
That doesn’t mean that friendships can’t be formed among the truffle hunters. It just means that even among close friends, it would be bad for an individual’s business to reveal secret truffle locations or ways that they find these locations. When they get together to talk business, they often lie about what they found so that they can mislead their competitors.
As a result of this cutthroat mentality, the dark side of truffle hunting is mentioned several times in the documentary: The hunting dogs are often at risk of ingesting poison that competing hunters put in the woods. No one is seen in the documentary actually planting the poison. But as soon it’s mentioned that truffle hunter dogs get poisoned, you just know that it’s probably going to happen to someone’s dog in this movie.
Because of all the deceit and dog murders involved in truffle hunting, truffle hunters can be very solitary and paranoid when they do their work. When they do gather in duos or groups, it’s usually so they can try to get information that will be in their own best interests. But they can’t really completely trust each other because of all the risks of sharing valuable information with rivals, many of whom don’t hesitate to murder dogs for the sake of trying to get ahead of the competition. Muzzles are placed on the truffle hunting dogs to try to protect them from poison, but these muzzles aren’t always effective in preventing a dog from ingesting something deadly.
In some of the scenes in “The Truffle Hunters,” cameras were placed on the dogs, so that there’s literally a dog’s eye-view during the truffle hunt. As expected, these are the part of the movie where there’s a lot of shaky cam footage. It’s an eye-catching technique that gives more of an adrenaline-pumping perspective of what it’s like to be on the hunt for truffles, since the dogs often run during the hunt, while their elderly human masters do not.
As shown in the documentary, the truffle hunters who are staunchly traditionalist refuse to go “high-tech.” The truffle hunters featured in the movie live in homes without computers, Internet access, cell phones or even televisions. And it should come as no surprise that truffle hunting in this part of Italy is not a job that is very welcoming to women. You get the feeling that the men involved in truffle hunting think of it as an exclusive fraternity, and they want to keep it that way.
The documentary is often very slow-paced, but it allows the viewers to have a sense of how lifestyles in this isolated rural area are stuck almost in a time warp, and people are reluctant to change. Truffle hunting is also a job that is having difficulty attracting young people, who are inclined to want jobs that pay more money or are located in more populated areas. None of the truffle hunters featured in the documentary has anyone in younger generations of their families who are willing to continue these traditions of finding truffles.
That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a demand for white Alba truffles. In fact, demand has risen, as these types of truffles have become increasingly harder to find. That’s partly because of the changing landscape/terrain affected by climate change, pollution and urban development that cuts down forest trees for wood or to make way for buildings. And it’s partly because there are less truffle hunters available to find and harvest truffles.
“The Truffle Hunters” might frustrate viewers who prefer documentaries that identify people by showing their names on screen when the people are speaking or first appear on screen. There are no “talking head” interviews, so viewers will find out an individual’s name if someone else says that person’s name in the movie. The people who are featured the most in the movie are:
Sergio Cauda, who was 68, when this movie was filmed, is the most adventurous and social one in the group. He hunts every day with his dogs Fiona and Pepe.
Aurelio Conterno, who was 84 when this movie was filmed, is a never-married bachelor with no children and has no humans living with him. He treats his female dog Birba like a kid who is his best friend.
Gianfranco Curti is an ambitious, middle-aged truffle dealer who buys from the truffle hunters and and sells to local and international merchants and restaurants.
Angelo Gagliardi, who was 78 at the time this movie is filmed, is an eccentric poet/farmer who wants to get out of the truffle hunting business because he thinks it’s become too corrupt. Just like Conterno, he’s the only human in his household and treats his dog (Nina) as his most trusted companion.
Egidio Gagliardi, who was 83 when this movie was filmed, is Angelo’s cousin and a truffle hunter/salesman who works with scientists to find the right trees and conditions to cultivate and harvest truffles.
Carlo Gonella, who was 88 at the time that this movie was filmed, sneaks out at night to find truffles, much to the disapproval of his wife Maria Cicciù, who fears for his safety when he’s truffle hunting.
Paolo Stacchini, who was 78 at the time that this movie was filmed, is a truffle authenticator/judge whose job is to determine the quality and value of individual truffles.
A great deal of the documentary shows what happens in the transaction phase of the truffle business. Truffle dealer Curti has taken over the family business from his father, but Curti is shown to be someone who is not as well-respected by the local truffle hunters as his father was. The hunters feel that Curti’s father was more polite and more understanding in dealing with the truffle hunters.
If there’s a “villain” in the movie, it would be Curti, who tries to lowball the hunters on purchase offers. At one point in a sale negotiation, he offers €150 for 100 grams of truffles. He’s a tough negotiator who puts up a lot of resistance to buy at a suggested higher price. In another scene, he has an argument with an elderly man named Franco, who accuses Curti of coming into his territory and buying truffles from his hunters.
And it’s shown later in the movie that Curti only sees truffles as a way to make as much money as possible, not as a food delicacy that he personally enjoys. In one scene, he has dinner with his daughter (who’s about 7 or 8 years old) and smugly says that it’s ironic that he sells so many truffles because he and his family don’t even eat truffles.
Because the dogs are so important to truffle hunting, they are exalted more than a typical household pet. Cauda takes a bath with his dog Fiona in his bathtub. Conterno thinks Birba is the best truffle-hunting dog in the area, and he cooks special meals for her and has conversations with her as if she were human. Gonella gets his favorite dog Tritina blessed by a local priest during a church service.
Conterno and his dog Birba are probably the ones who are considered the most successful truffle hunters in this group. And they appear to be sought-after by people who know the reputation of this dynamic truffle-hunting duo. In one scene, an unidentified man in his 30s has a meal at restaurant with Conterno and tries to entice the truffle hunter into sharing some the tricks of his trade.
The younger man says to Conterno: “You’re 84 years old. You have no wife, no children. You’re the best truffle hunter. Can you show me your secret spots? Or can I go truffle hunting with you?’
Conterno replies, “Never! Never! We can go truffle hunting, but in your place or in a place where neither of us knows. We can go to a new place.”
“The Truffle Hunters” also shows some of the disillusionment and strained relationships that can happen with people involved in truffle hunting. According to the “Truffle Hunters” production notes, cousins Angelo Gagliardi and Egidio Gagliardi didn’t speak to each other for 10 years, even though they lived only two miles from each other. Curti’s often-abrasive manner has caused tension because he’s aggressively positioned himself as the truffle dealer who wields the most clout with these truffle hunters.
Farmer spouses Gonella and Cicciù seem to have an overall happy marriage, but nevertheless bicker about his truffle hunting. She often gets exasperated and worried when he sneaks off to truffle hunt and she can’t find him. She doesn’t think it’s safe for him to truffle hunt in his advanced age. The spouses do have some harmonious moments together, such as a scene where he helps her sort and clean tomatoes in their kitchen.
And the dog poisonings have caused a certain distrust in the truffle-hunting community, because fellow truffle hunters who can be outwardly pleasant to each other can also secretly plot to murder each other’s dogs. The situation is compounded because it’s hard to prove who’s been poisoning the dogs. Even if there were eyewitnesses, you get the feeling that the people in this community wouldn’t snitch or go to the trouble of having anyone arrested for this crime.
Angelo Gagliardi also expresses why he wants to quit truffle hunting, by saying that “there are too many greedy people. They don’t do it for fun or to play with their dogs or to spend some time in nature. They only want money … People use poisons to kill the dogs.”
The die-hard truffle hunters who want to continue truffle hunting until they’re dead or physically unable to walk in the woods are clearly doing it as a passion, first and foremost. They don’t see it as a hobby or fleeting interest but as a way of life. They’re also truffle hunting because they like the competition aspect of this type of work. Truffle hunting is embedded in their identity, and they all naturally want to be considered “the best.”
Greed and egos certainly factor into truffle hunting. However, the documentary shows that these hunters are not the ones making the most money from truffle sales. The hunters seem to be happy with making enough money to live comfortably, because they’re definitely not getting rich from truffle hunting.
A certain part of the documentary also shows the process of preparing white Alba truffles at an auction house. They’re treated almost like rare jewels, with inspectors, deluxe displays and media photographers taking pictures. During an auction shown in the documentary, one truffle sold for $110,000.
The pomp and circumstance of truffle auctions are quite the contrast from the modest and simple lives led by the truffle hunters who go in the woods to find these treasured items. And that seems to be the whole point of this documentary: The people who harvest luxurious white Alba truffles probably have fascinating stories to tell and take pride in a custom that’s so rich in tradition that you can’t put a price tag on it.
Sony Pictures Classics released “The Truffle Hunters” in select U.S. cinemas on March 5, 2021.
