Le Amiche (Italian 1955)
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
With: Eleonora Rossi Drago, Madeleine Fischer, Yvonne Furneaux, Valentina Cortese, Gabriele Ferzetti, Anna Maria Pancani, Ettore Manni, Franco Fabrizi
Michelangelo Antonioni was considered one of the great film directors, mostly for a trio of films in the earky 60s, including L’avventura (1960). He may be best known here for Blow-Up (1966), a wonderful, but perhaps dated, examination of reality vs. perceived reality.
Le Amiche was filmed earlier, with a more conventional intent. Melodramatic, tending toward soap opera, it looks like The Real Housewives of Turin played in Mad Men drag.
Clelia (Drago) has returned from Rome to her hometown, Turin, to open a salon branch outlet. In her hotel, she finds Rosetta (Fischer) dying in the next room of an overdose of sleeping pills. Clelia becomes involved with Rosetta and her friends Momina (Furneaux), who is separated from her husband and easily replaces lovers; Nene (Cortese), an artist married to a painter, Lorenzo (Ferzetti) who is jealous of her success; and Mariella (Pancani), somewhat hapless.
Clelia meets Carlo (Manni), assistant to the salon’s architect Cesare (Fabrizi). And the whole round of class and social differences, betrayal and bad behavior begins. It all ends badly.
There are beautiful visual compositions and period clothes, and a group of attractive people being manipulated by the rich and bored Momina. The whole film is very 1950s in tone and execution, and reflects life in Italy before the Fellini period.
If you are a devotee of Antonioni, you should see this. For everyone else, it is not essential, but may be a nice diversion from what we are seeing now.
B-
Due Date
Director: Todd Phillips
With: Robert Downey, Jr., Zach Galifianakis, Michelle Monaghan, Jamie Foxx
This is a genre movie, to wit: the story of a relatively normal, if a bit up-tight, person who meets a serious oddball, and the oddball clings like a parasite and destroys the other person’s life. For a while. Then, they become friends at the end. Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Dinner for Schmucks, many more.
This movie is saved, but just barely, by Downey, who makes the most of a cliched character. He plays Peter, a businessman, who must get home to LA from Atlanta to see the birth of his child. He meets Ethan (Galifianakis), whose deranged behavior gets Peter on the no-fly list. So, they drive to LA together.
You could practically write this yourself. Ethan has peculiar and disgusting personal habits, Peter tries to ditch him, but is too nice a guy to do it, and they have run-ins with people and get beat up and steal a Mexican police car, and... You get the idea.
Worst example of the film’s humor: Ethan must masturbate to get to sleep at night, and his ugly little dog joins him in an inter-species circle-jerk. Ick.
The movie doesn’t deserve an F, but the fact that it rates higher than a D- is because of Downey. Monaghan and Foxx are wasted, alas.
D
Megamind (Animated 3-D)
Director: Tom McGrath
Voices of: Will Ferrell, Brad Pitt, Tina Fey, Jonah Hill, David Cross
The really good thing about this movie is that, if Will Ferrell is not visible in the flesh, and he is playing a character not his usual arrogant nitwit, he’s pretty good.
Two babies are launched into space from dying planets and land on earth in the same place, Metro City. As they grow up, Metro Man (Pitt) becomes the standard-issue superhero, while Megamind (Ferrell) assumes the role of his arch-villain nemesis. Megamind didn’t really want to be a villain, but he was fated for it.
When they are grown, they are at war with each other, Metro Man always the victor, of course. Roxanne (Fey), a pretty TV reporter always seems to be on the scene with her trusty dork of a cameraman, Hal (Hill), who is always trying to get her to go out with him.
Roxanne gets most of the good lines, an excellent choice, and Fey snarls them out with steely sarcasm. As the plot progresses, Megamind defeats Metro Man and takes over the city, while capturing Roxanne, on whom he has always had a crush. All goes well for a while, until Megamind realizes that life is empty without his old foe. He seeks to recreate him by injecting Hal with Metro Man’s DNA, and creates Tighten, not a superhero, but a super jerk, who runs amok and acts out Hal’s frustrations about Roxanne.
Faced with a villain worse, and much stupider, than him, Megamind decides that he needs to re-examine his life. After all, he says, the bad guy never gets the girl.
Fun, clever and full of zingers, this is not a bad way to spend an hour-and-a-half. Don’t expect anything on the level of Toy Story, but a bearable Ferrell movie is unique in itself.
B