Giuppi's Movie Reviews

The Canaro's killing ("Il delitto del Canaro" in Italian) is one of Italy's most gruesome crimes in recent history. The night of February 18th 1988, Pietro De Negri, a dog coiffeur and small-time cocaine dealer living in Magliana (a small neighborhood in Rome), brutally murdered Giancarlo Ricci, a former boxer and cocaine addict who had long been physically abusive towards him. It's better to leave off the details of the homicide: it's enough to say that the mutilation of several body parts was involved. This tragic episode clearly influenced the realization of Dogman , though it's quite clear that Matteo Garrone ( Gomorra, Tale of Tales ) does not intend to do a faithful telling of a true story: the characters' names have been changed (Pietro De Negri becoming Marcello and Giancarlo Ricci becoming Simone), the story is set in present times instead of 1988 and the actual events play out in a very different way, especially towards the end. These ar...

Ernest Hemingway was one of the greatest American writers of all time. He had a gift for vivid descriptions, a talent for conveying complex and layered thoughts with a clear, simple language and a profound ability to observe human behaviors and feelings. That said, adapting his work to the screen is incredibly difficult: Hemingway's novels are full of personal, intimate reflections that carry the meaning of the whole story. In a movie, it's difficult to translate those inner thoughts in a way that does not appear didactic or excessively expository, but, on the other hand, removing them means getting rid of the thematic complexity of the author's work. Unfortunately, this is the case of A Farewell to Arms , Frank Borzage's adaptation of the 1929 novel. Hemingway himself hated the movie, and it's not hard to see why: the novel, a masterpiece, was a powerful, thoughtful meditation on values such as honor, bravery and love and a devastating depiction of a world tor...

Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's Prime Minister in four governments, is one of the most fascinatingly puzzling figures of the country's last thirty years. His life is surrounded and punctuated by scandals and controversies, like the unknown source of his money early on in his career, the accusations of him being linked to Mafia, his tax frauds, his affairs with underage girls and prostitutes, his attempts to create laws ad personam to protect himself from criminal charges, his influence over Italian television and his inappropriate or even downright offensive behavior and remarks during national and international political meetings. The list goes on, and yet Berlusconi is still beloved and held in high esteem by a surprisingly large portion of Italian population - at this year election, Berlusconi's party (Forza Italia) received 14% of the votes even though the man himself was currently banned from any legislative office for six years (a sentence overturned in the last two d...

In 1940, Tennesse Williams wrote a play called  Battle of Angels . After Tallulah Bankhead turned down the leading role, the play premiered on Broadway with Miriam Hopkins instead. It was a spectacular failure, both critical and financial. About fifteen years later, after having become one of the most successful and acclaimed playwrights, Williams rewrote his earlier play into Orpheus Descending  but once again his work did not result into a success. Apparently, telling this story was a passion project for Williams and the lack of appreciation for it caused him great frustration. He adapted his play into the film  The Fugitive Kind in 1960: but even the film, in spite of the author's popularity and the presence of three Academy Award winners in the cast, was a failure, earning not-so-great reviews and not a lot of money. Nowadays, the movie is rarely remembered and that's a pity. Sure, just like the play itself, it's not quite perfect: for example, the character deve...

To most people, Gregory La Cava is known as the director of classic screwball comedy My Man Godfrey (1936), the enchanting, lively tale of a homeless man who becomes the butler of a wealthy family. The rest of his filmography is for the most part rather forgotten: films like The Affairs of Cellini (1934), Private Worlds  (1935) and Primrose Path (1940) are mostly remembered because of their Oscar-nominated performances, if they are at all, and among the few people that have actually seen them they are not held in particularly high esteem. Stage Door , loosely based on the play of the same name, is a peculiar case, as it is neither as iconic and revered as My Man Godfrey  nor as obscure as the other movies - and it turns out it's a surprisingly strong piece. Centering around a group of aspiring actresses in New York, Stage Door is not a movie that wants to be revolutionary in its thecnique, nor a social commentary, nor a thoughtful reflection on the theatrical world. ...

Crossfire is an interesting movie for two reasons: the first one is that it is the first B movie to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Picture; the second one is that it is a social message film and a noir thriller at the same time. Nowadays, it's a rarely remembered movie but to be fair a certain importance should be acknowledged to it, because it is an example of how a relatively low-budget film can still be stylistically and aesthetically remarkable and also because of its attempt to treat a socially significant matter within the story of a murder mystery. That said, it's not a movie that achieves everything it sets out for itself and it's also one that has clearly suffered from the passing of the years. But its ambition is still worthy of praise and respect. The story begins with the beating and killing of Joseph Samuels (Sam Levene) at the hands of two men in his own apartment. Samuels, a discharged soldier, was a Jew. Police captain Finlay (Robert Young) is...

Though presented as a true account of the life of the actress Frances Farmer, Frances  has been proved in later years to be a largely fictionalized telling of her story, more based on the actress' inaccurate biography written by William Arnold rather than historical facts. Speaking for myself, I'm not particularly bothered by the lack of historical inaccuracy as long as it is not ridiculously and blatantly obvious and most importantly does not betray the nature of the person involved (a recent exemple is The Greatest Showman , in which P.T. Barnum, by all accounts an exploiter, is turned into a champion of diversity and human rights). The problems with Frances extend past its historical innacuracy: for instance, the movie's choppy editing results in a rather uneven pace and for every visually appealing frame there is one that feels even clumsily shot. Ultimately it is neither a great biopic nor a great film, but Jessica Lange's incendiary, showstopping performance ...