If you liked Transformers, you’re out of luck. Italians don’t have the money to make something like that. But try these Italian alternatives to your more reasonably budgeted favorite films.
You identify with Rebel Without a Cause, and youthful movies characters who drop out of society like Emile Hirsch’s in Into The Wild? Try Bernardo Bertolucci’s Io e Te. Io e Te is a study of youth, but it’s a study of the kind of antisocial youth’s dissociation that either a) not a lot of people experienced, or b) they don’t want to admit they’ve experienced, or c) they’ve blocked it out of their memory and could only remember experiencing it under hypnosis.
Lorenzo blows off the school field trip to hide in his basement for a few weeks and his solitary bliss is interrupted by a heroin addicted half-sister.
If you love psychological thrillers like Side Effects, The Machinist or Secret Window, you’ll love La Doppia Ora. La Doppia Ora has something that not many modern Italian movies have – a fear factor! There were a few things that made me jump right out of my seat, and I found myself covering my eyes. And it was done in the best kind of way; the threat was hidden in the shadows, waiting to jump out and say “boo” at any given moment when Sonia meets Guido speed dating.
Did you love the TV show The Wonder Years? Take a look at little Peppino’s childhood memories in Ivan Cotroneo’s Kryptonite Nella Borsa. Set in Napoli in the ’70s, his Dad is cheating on his Mom, his Mom has taken to her bed with depression, his uncle and aunt are babysitting by getting him high at hippie parties, and his older cousin dies. Oh, and all the kids at school hate him. What a little guy like Peppino needs in a situation like this is a Super Hero.
You liked Breaking Bad? (Who didn’t?) Try a much sillier Italian version, Smetto Quando Voglio. Breaking Bad’s Walter and Smetto Quando voglio’s Pietro are in the same boat; two frustrated college professors who are highly educated and bright but can’t get ahead decide to use their knowledge of chemistry to make money.
Biology professor Pietro sees an opportunity. He’s sure he can design his own drug; one that has none of the substances that are banned by the Italian government. It’s still illegal to sell what he comes up with, but that’s a minor technicality.
Remember Dave, starring Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver? An Italian film with the same general theme goes a lot deeper; In Roberto Andò’s Viva La Libertà when Enrico Oliveri, the secretary of the major opposition party, goes AWOL and hides out at an old girlfriend’s house in Paris (“What’s he doing here, Mom?” ” I think he just needs a little rest.”), an absurd and Pirandello-esque scenario works surprisingly well.
Did you find Billy Bob Thorton hilarious in Bad Santa? Sergio Castellitto is an arguably more twisted Grinch in Paolo Genovese’s Una Famiglia Perfetta. From the first scene, in which “Papà”, Leone, played by Sergio Castellitto, tells the youngest son that he is fat, hates his glasses, and he says he doesn’t understand why he has to spend Christmas with a son who is so fat and ugly, I was horrified/mesmerized.
You love all those Lifetime movies about a happy family that puts themselves in danger by hiring the WRONG nanny? You’re in luck, because Giuseppe Tornatore’s La Sconosciuta is the better than all of them.
In the middle of this rat’s nest of intrigue is Irina, a Ukrainian sex slave who has escaped to Italy in search of something and we are left guessing for a long time what that something is. She arrives in a northern Italian town with a big wad of cash, taking a terrible apartment, and intent on ingratiating herself in the lives of a rich Italian family that live across the street from her. We initially sympathize with her, but we become increasingly aware that she’s really bad news – on many fronts. She’s not going to let anything get in her way of reaching her goal – whatever that goal may be.
I Love Italian Everything 