I Love Italian Everything

Updated October 10, 2014

in no particular order…

1. Pane e Tulipani (Bread and Tulips) is my favorite movies of all time from any country and in any language and I have watched it over 100 times. It’s about Rosalba, the unappreciated housewife that runs away from home and finds out what her life was meant to be. Director: Silvio Soldini – Watch Instantly With Netflix.
2. Non Ti Muovere (Don’t Move), directed by and starring Sergio Castellitto and based on his wife’s (Margaret Mazzantini) best-selling novel, has one of Penelope Cruz’s best performances. She plays the prostitute, Italia, in a role that only the bravest of actresses would take. Director: Sergio Castellitto – Get it from Netflix.
3. Cesare Deve Morire (Caesar Must Die), directed by the Taviani brothers and starring actual inmates in a Roman maximum security prison won more awards than any other Italian film last year. Directors: Paolo and Vittorio Taviani. 
4. Nuovomondo (The Golden Door) is a story that Italian-Americans may appreciate more than Italians.  A Sicilian family leaves behind everything they know to pursue the land of milk and honey in America in the early 1900s. Director: Emanuele Crialese – Watch it instantly with Netflix.
5. 5.il Divo is about the life and political career of Italy’s controversial Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti. Toni Servillo’s portrayal of Andreotti may be his best. Director: Paolo Sorrentino – Get it from Netflix.
6. Gomorra (Gomorrah) is a play on the word Camorra, the name of the Neapolitan mafia, and the film is based on the book by Roberto Saviano, who has needed body guards ever since he wrote it. Directed byMatteo Garrone – Watch it instantly with Netflix.
7. Io Non Ho Paura (I’m Not Scared) is the story of a young boy in southern Italy that finds a child who has been kidnapped. Based on a true story, it deals with the “anni di piombo”, the years in Italy in which there were many kidnappings by extremist groups. Director: Gabriele Salvatores – Get it from Netflix.
8. Reality, Matteo Garrone’s newest, is about Luciano, who is obsessed with areality TV show. Luciano is played by Aniello Arena, who missed the Cannes premier of the film because he is serving a life sentence and was only able to appear in the movie through a prison release program. Director: Matteo Garrone.  Rent Reality From Netflix.
9. Ḕ Stato Il Figlio is probably the most underappreciated movie of 2012. Directed by Daniele Ciprì and starring Toni Servillo, it’s the story of a family who loses a daughter to a stray mafia bullet. The government compensation they receive complicates their lives in ways they never could have imagined. Director: Daniele Ciprì.
10. 

    Caterina Va In Citta (Caterina In The Big City) – When her father decides that he’s too good for their small town and moves the family to Rome, Caterina gets thrown to the wolves (high school girls). Director: Paolo Virzì – Watch It Instantly On Netflix.

11. La Bestia Nel Cuore, Don’t Tell, was nominated for an Academy Award in 2006 and stars Giovanna Mezzogiorno as a young women who begins to remember her dark past. DIrector: Cristina Comencini – Get it from Netflix.
12. Vincere (Winning) is the story of the secret (or made up, depending on who you talk to) marriage between Ida Dalser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) Benito Mussolini (Filippo Timi). Timi’s performance was called one of the best of 2010 that wouldn’t win an Oscar. Director: Marco Bellocchio –Watch It instantly on Netflix.
13. 

    Pranzo Di Ferragosto (Mid-August Lunch) – Gianni Di Gregorio is Gianni, the mamma’s boy whose apartment gets turned into an old lady retirement home for Ferragosto. Director: Gianni Di Gregorio – Watch it instantly on Netflix.

14. Habemus Papam (We Have A Pope) – Nanni Moretti directed, wrote, and starred in this story about the Pope’s identity crisis. Director: Nanni Moretti – Watch it instantly on Netflix.
15. Diaz: Non Pulire Questo Sangue (Don’t Clean Up This Blood) is about police brutality in the final days of the 2001 G8 Summit. Director:Daniele Vicari – Save this one for later release on Netflix.
16. La Finestra Di Fronte (Facing Windows) is Ferzan Ozpetek’s best film, about a holocaust survivor who teaches a young woman (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) how to live. Director: Ferzan Ozpetek – Get it from Netflix. Watch it instantly with Amazon.
17. Giorni e Nuvole (Days and Clouds) – Margherita Buy and Antonio Albanese play a successful couple whose life is thrown into a downward spiral after the loss of a job. Director: Silvio Soldini – Watch it instantly with Netflix.
18. Io Sono L’Amore (I am Love) has Tilda Swinton as a Russian woman who has married a rich Italian. Swinton’s from London and in this film she speaks Italian with a Russian accent! Director: Luca Guadagnino – Watch it instantly with Netflix.
19. Luce Dei Miei Occhi (Light Of My Eyes) is about Antonio  (played my favorite Luigi Lo Cascio) and his rather unhealthy love for Maria, played by Sandra Ceccarelli. Director: Giuseppe Piccioni – Get it from Netflix.
20. Salvo is highly charged, emotionally and sensorially, and yet quiet in a way very unlike other gangster movies. With minimalist dialogue, the camera may follow what mobster Salvo sees but we hear what blind Rita hears and the combination of the two immerses us in the story in a very unique way. Directors Antonio Piazza and Fabio Grassadonia
21. La Meglio Gioventu (The Best of Youth) is a BIG Italian epic that follows the lives of two brothers, from the 1960s to the 2000s. It was originally a TV miniseries and is 180 minutes but worth every second. Director:Marco Tulio Giordana – Watch it instantly on Netflix.
22. La Sconosciuta (The Unknown Woman) is Irena, a Ukrainian woman who escapes her life as a sex slave and goes to work as a nanny for an Italian couple. This thriller is an unusually unsentimental film from director Giuseppe Tornatore. Get it from Netflix.
23. 

    La Doppia Ora (The Double Hour) is a thriller that made me jump out of my seat in the movie theater. It stars Filipo Timi as a lonely widower who meets a mysterious hotel maid while speed dating. Director:Giuseppe Capotondi – Watch it instantly with Netflix.

24. La Stanza Del Figlio (The Son’s Room) is cinéma d’auteur at it’s best, with Nanni Morietti having written, directed, and starred in this Palme d’Or winner about the death of a son. DIrector: Nanni Moretti – Watch it instantly on Netflix.
25. Terraferma is a powerful story about the flood of illegal immigrants on the tiny Italian island of Lampadusa. Director: Emanuele Crialese – Save for future release on Netflix.
26. Il Capitale Umano (Human Capital) Stephen Amidon’s novel about upper crust Connecticut becomes Paolo Virzì’s story of upper crust northern Italy in this stunningly complex drama about money, families going haywire because of it, and a guy on a bike who, one dark snowy night, loses his life and brings theirs into glaringly sharp focus. Director: Paolo Virzì CHECK FOR MOVIE SCREENINGS
27. Buongiorno Notte (Good Morning, Night) is the story of the 1978 kidnapping of Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades. DIrector: Marco Bellocchio– Get it from Netflix.
28. La Nostra Vita (Our Life) has an amazing performance by Elio Germanoas a grieving father trying to pick up the pieces of his life and take care of his children after his wife dies. Director: Daniele Luchetti – Save for future release on Netflix.  
29. La Migliore Offerta (The Best Offer) is from Giuseppe Tornatore and stars Geoffrey Rush plays Virgil Oldman, a rich, famous, talented, and unscrupulous art auctioneer and collector whose elitism combined with OCD tendencies make for a solitary but apparently satisfying existence. His joy in life is his secret stash of portraits, women’s portraits from every era and genre. It’s an English language film, and you can GET IT FROM NETFLIX.
30. La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty) is scheduled to open in US theaters beginning in November 2013, so watch for it. For Gep Gambardella, (Toni Servillo), a journalist who wrote an important book years ago and has spent the time since resting on the laurels, everything in life seems like an exaggeration; a vapid, narcissistic, waste of time. IfPaolo Sorrentino’s masterpiece isn’t nominated for an Academy Award, I really don’t know what they are looking for.