1141 Best Film & TV Releases Translated Into Italian (Page 51)
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (In Italian: Aiuto vampiro)
After Ukraine Is Not a Brothel and Casting JonBenet, Kitty Green makes her first scripted feature in one of the year’s very best. Julia Garner plays Jane, a Northwestern University graduate and aspiring film producer. Now she works as an office assistant for an industry executive. She does the work one would expect her, but it’s over the course of a day that she becomes aware of the predation going on. Comparisons to Harvey Weinstein have already been made, but to relate the two is to simplify the issues on screen here. Continue Reading →
Tiny Pretty Things
SimilarCigarette Girl, Dark Winds,
Roswell Soul Land 2: The Peerless Tang Clan,
When I saw that Netflix made all ten hour-long episodes of its new ballet show, Tiny Pretty Things, available to review, I was intimidated. Even during a global pandemic, ten hours of uninterrupted solo TV time can be hard to come by on short notice. Luckily, Tiny Pretty Things was built to be binged. Fast-paced and drama-filled, the story whisks viewers away from their own lives and plunges them into a grim, seedy world of backroom dealings, sexual blackmail, Machiavellian schemes, and, finally, ballet. Continue Reading →
Along Came Polly (In Italian: ...E alla fine arriva Polly)
Splat! In the first sixty seconds of Along Came Polly, Philip Seymour Hoffman eats pavement. Make that wax: his character, the self-absorbed Sandy Lyle, slips on the dance-floor of his best friend’s wedding, tumbling to the ground in classic slapstick fashion. Hoffman does a great drop, instantly putting a smile on my face – a smile that (unlike the actor) would rarely fall for the remainder of the runtime. Continue Reading →
The Stand
SimilarFrom, Sám vojak v poli,
This review was written jointly by Spool staff writers Beau North and Megan Sunday. Continue Reading →
Se7en (In Italian: Seven)
Director David Fincher’s movies are generally fascinated with creating a mythos around his characters that then breeds an egotistical obsession of oneself. It’s no wonder famous people like Mark Zuckerberg, Orson Welles, and the Zodiac Killer became points of fascination for him. He is also fascinated by propaganda and engages in it a bit himself. Continue Reading →
Safety (In Italian: Safety - Sempre al tuo fianco)
Watch afterThe Flash (2023),
StudioWalt Disney Pictures,
At first glance, Disney+’s latest sports biopic Safety is a film about a particularly extraordinary individual. It is, after all, about a young man who faces insurmountable odds and comes out on top. But while its subject is a compelling protagonist, the real focus of the movie is an extraordinary community. Continue Reading →
The Mandalorian
Created byJon Favreau,
StarringKatee Sackhoff, Pedro Pascal,
Previously on The Mandalorian: Pain. Continue Reading →
Gunda
Watch afterBarbarian (2022),
Since its premiere at this year’s Berlinale film festival, much of the press around Viktor Kossakovsky’s involving, subtly radical Gunda has fixated on the intimacy of its form. Presented without any narration, subtitles, or extraneous context and shot in stark but crucially un-distracting black and white photography (Kossakovsky has been forthright about not wanting to draw attention to beauty), this is pastoral portraiture that’s keenly aware of reflecting — but not exerting its purpose. Continue Reading →
The Wilds
There are two moments in The Wilds that so succinctly summarize the show’s tone, we have just have to start with them. In the first episode, Leah Rilke (Sarah Pidgeon) barrels directly down the lens of the camera and declares the life of a teenage girl in America in the 21st Century to be literal hell as if in direct conversation with the audience. Then, later in the series, Rachel Reid (Reign Edwards) searches for the word melodrama, applying it to the actions of her fellow island isolated survivors. And that’s The Wilds for you. Tremendously unsubtle and one-hundred percent aware of it. It also happens to be very good. Continue Reading →
Assassins
SimilarBack to the Future Part III (1990), Dr. No (1962), Face/Off (1997), Lucky Number Slevin (2006), Minority Report (2002), The Man with the Golden Gun (1974),
In February 2017, Kim Jon-sam, the brother of Kim Jong-un, was walking through a Malaysian airport. Preparing for a flight back home to China, Jon-sam was suddenly hit with a substance by two women. Shortly after, Jon-sam developed a limp, went unconscious, and was dead within an hour. The brother of North Korea’s leader had died through exposure to a nerve agent called VX, one of the deadliest toxins on the planet. Continue Reading →
The Promise
StarringShohreh Aghdashloo,
The Prom, the latest entry in Ryan Murphy’s incessant takeover of Netflix, follows a group of down-and-out Broadway stars (played by Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman, and Andrew Rannells) as they try to resurrect their waning careers with some good PR. The cause that these actors choose is that of Emma Nolan (Jo Ellen Perlman), a teenager in a small town in Indiana who wants to attend her school’s prom with her girlfriend, but the PTA won’t allow it. The group decides to charge into this small town and force them to have an inclusive prom. What ensues is a shallow but sweet musical about fighting for the chance to love -- fitting for an adaptation of a whimsical, if lightweight, 2016 Broadway musical. Continue Reading →
Ammonite (In Italian: Ammonite - Sopra un'onda del mare)
It's not the first time the two have worked together, having met to build the score for 2016's Lion and working on several projects since. Together, they've built a clear sense of collaboration which bears out in Ammonite's intimate, complicated scoring -- which echoes the growing intimacy between Winslet and Ronan as, respectively, 19th-century paleontologist Mary Anning and a young woman she's tasked to care for. Continue Reading →
The Expanse
SimilarCrusade, Golden Years, Terra Formars: Bugs-2 2599, The Ark, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
StarringShohreh Aghdashloo,
With the announcement last month that Amazon Prime Video's The Expanse will end after season six, it's bittersweet for many fans (including myself) to see the true end of the show in front of us. Still, it's a miracle we got three more seasons of the show at all, considering Amazon's hail-Mary save after Syfy's cancelation of the show post-season 3. Season 4 (the first after its move to Amazon) was an ambitious, if slightly slower and atonal, adventure; if the first three episodes of season 5 are any indicator, The Expanse is back to what it does best, expanding its scope while getting more personal than ever. Continue Reading →
Let Them All Talk (In Italian: Lasciali parlare)
SimilarEternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004),
Steven Soderbergh may be best known for his remake of Ocean’s Eleven, a commercial hit featuring a cast of dashing male stars (and Julia Roberts). Who needs eleven when you’ve got Meryl Streep, Dianne Wiest, and Candice Bergen aboard a real-life ocean liner? In Soderbergh’s newest, Let Them All Talk, he embarks on a return trip to his indie filmmaking roots, bringing along celebrity pals and a few tricks of the trade he’s learned in his prolific career. Continue Reading →
Star Trek: Discovery
SimilarALF, Battle of the Planets, Ben 10, Farscape,
Roswell Stargate SG-1 The Journey of Allen Strange, The Transformers, Valvrave the Liberator,
StarringAnthony Rapp, Blu del Barrio, David Ajala, Doug Jones, Mary Wiseman, Sonequa Martin-Green, Wilson Cruz,
It’s appropriate that the first part of “Terra Firma” debuts during the holiday season since the episode plays like a Star Trek version of A Christmas Carol. Emperor Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) is our Scrooge, the grumpy, cynical curmudgeon who sees nothing but weakness and folly in everyone around her. Continue Reading →
Songbird
Back in mid-March, Simon Boyes called Adam Mason about an idea for a pandemic thriller. The two writing partners quickly sketched out a plot outline, it began to pick up traction, and it was only a matter of days before Michael Bay came on to the project as a producer. The name would be Songbird. It’d also begin filming that July with Mason directing and come out in December, less than nine months after its inception. All of this said, it’s hard to dissect what’s worse: the fact that people exploited a global tragedy so quickly, or the final result. Continue Reading →
Wild Mountain Thyme (In Italian: Il profumo dell'erba selvatica)
Watch afterBlack Widow (2021), Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023),
StarringJon Hamm,
An adaptation of his play Outside Mullingar, which was panned by Irish critics, John Patrick Shanley’s Wild Mountain Thyme follows a pair of neighboring farmers as they try to find love despite an ongoing land dispute they get caught up in. When the trailer to this film came out, it was immediately mocked for awful accents and a questionable depiction of Ireland. From watching, it turns out those criticisms were correct. This is a soulless film that does little more than create some pretty shots for the Irish tourist board. Continue Reading →
Wander Darkly (In Italian: Vagando nell’oscurità)
Adrienne (Sienna Miller) and Matteo (Diego Luna) are miserable together, that much is immediately clear. They snipe at each other over the course of their date night, a substitute for therapy they can’t afford that of course Matteo has forgotten about. They have a new baby at home and a new mortgage and a lot of old, festering issues that all seem to be bubbling to a head when the unthinkable happens. A car careens into theirs, cutting their argument short, killing Adrienne. Probably. She thinks. She… isn’t exactly sure. Continue Reading →
The Godfather Part III (In Italian: Il padrino - Parte III)
SimilarEternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), West Side Story (2021),
Directed byFrancis Ford Coppola,
Although it’s since been cemented as a derided flop upon its release 30 years ago this month, The Godfather: Part III (1990) was neither the critical nor critical disaster people remember it to be. It was a decent financial success and would go on to be nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture. However, a number of factors cropped up to help trash its reputation. It had a chaotic production that reached its apex when red-hot star Winona Ryder, cast as Mary Corleone, left the production just before her scenes were to be shot. Francis Ford Coppola replaced her with his non-actress daughter Sofia. Continue Reading →
The Letter for the King
Netflix's latest overstuffed fantasy adaptation is a challenge for viewers' time & patience.
Visiting the source material before watching an adaptation can be a difficult decision to make. On the one hand, going into a viewing experience as fresh and free of expectations as possible typically feels like the best-case scenario. On the other hand, some level of awareness can make it easier to follow the early installments of, say, a six-episode Netflix series.
To be a little less opaque, not being familiar with The Letter for the King’s source material -- the Dutch 60’s fantasy novel De brief voor de Koning -- makes the early goings of the Netflix series a bit of a slog. The first episode of newcomer showrunner Will Davies’s effort in particular feels very nearly inert. Too many characters are introduced with little clarity on their back story, and there's too much switching from location to location without giving us a true feel for the world. It's so much setup to achieve so little connection with the audience.
However, as Tiuri (Amir Wilson) begins to undergo the trials of becoming a knight more in earnest in episode 2, the world starts to take shape. More important, the show starts to develop a personality. In addition to finally separating Tiuri out as our lead, the supporting characters snap into relief. We see the mix of nobility, arrogant callousness, and underhandedness of Tiuri’s adopted father and namesake Sir Tiuri the Valiant (David Wenham). Sir Fantumar’s (Omid Djalili) thirst for power and disgust for others starts to reveal itself. Additionally, characters who ultimately do not figure stronger into the narrative become easier to spot. Continue Reading →
Bloodshot
Vin Diesel nicely keys into more stoic shootouts, but the movie around him can't weld together its medley of genre inspirations.
As Ray Garrison aka Bloodshot (Vin Diesel) tumbles down an elevator in midair combat with Jimmy Dalton (Sam Heughan) and Tibbs (Alexander Hernandez), one may experience deja-vu. This, in some ways, is unsurprising—Bloodshot rarely seems interested in breaking new ground. However, the scene brings a deeper kind of recognition derived not just from familiar story beats, but also the visuals. The plasticine nature of these CGI constructs turns out to be a covert bit of nostalgia, smuggling Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man-level effects into a nastier superhero film 18 years later.
The extent to which this will please viewers will, of course, vary. For this critic, there’s something charming about it. This is the kind of movie comic book fans would have been nearly thrilled to see in the early 2000s: a not-quite-faithful adaptation animated by competent direction and actors willing to embrace the content without tipping into self-seriousness.
That said, it feels likely to get a different reception in 2020. The superhero film has grown so much in scope and depth so much in the past two decades. As a result, Bloodshot feels a bit unstuck in time. It’s a throwback to an era that’s passed and, depending on how inclined audiences are to take a sidelong glance at it, the film also operates as a sort of commentary. It seems to be reflecting the evolution of the action movies from their ‘80s ascendance to their superpowered present. Continue Reading →