Tag: comedy

Revolver Rani

  By

★★
“More bemusing than amusing.”

revolverraniThe problem with satire, is you have to know what’s being satirized in order to appreciate it. In this case, the twin targets are Indian politics and Bollywood – the local movie industry. I am better informed about the latter than the former, though this is as much because I know virtually nothing about their politics, as because I have the soundtrack to Singh is Kiing [and, yes, that is how it’s spelled]. So it’s possible the satire here went over my head; however, given it was a box-office flop in its home territory, it’s perhaps more likely, this just isn’t very good.

I do get that the heroine appears based on Phoolan Devi, the subject of Bandit Queen. who transitioned from outlaw to politics. Here, Alka Singh, a.k.a. “Revolver Rani” (Ranaut), has just seen her group toppled in elections by her opponents in the Tomar party, led by her nemesis Udaybhan Singh (Hussain) – there is also a blood feud there, as Rani killed one of his relatives in her outlaw days. Her political career is further derailed by Alka falling for wannabe Bollywood actor, Rohan Mehra (Das), and the Tomars decided to take some of their revenge on her by kidnapping him. While she rides to the rescue and succeeds in liberating him, their relationship grows increasingly complicated: not only does she have to deal with the Tomars, her uncle (Mishra), who has been carefully plotting her rise to power and influence over the preceding years, is also unimpressed with what he sees as Rohan’s distraction. So he drugs his protege, and forces Rohan to marry in order to get him out of the picture, even though alka is, by now, pregnant with his child.

It is, presumably, deliberate that the songs here are quite extraordinarily crappy, featuring lyrics like “I am not bad, I am brutal, my baby/I will eat you like noodle, my baby.” And do not even get me started on the band of Michael Jackson impersonators, hired to perform at an event. The main issue is that, after a fun, animated opening credit sequence and Alka’s rescue of her boyfriend, we see virtually nothing of her bad-assishness until the very end of the film. Despite her fondness for metallic lingerie, “Revolver Rani” spends most of the intervening time – and, in keeping with Bollywood tradition, that is a lot of time (this runs 132 minutes in total) – either unconscious or wanting to be little more than a mother and housewife. She eventually does rebel against her uncle and his scheming betrayal, just as the Tomars send their forces to take her out, and the resulting gun-battle is impressively-staged; the very end also suggests Kabir has more than a passing acquaintance with Kill Bill. It is, unfortunately, very much a case of “too little, too late,” and while I admit this may play better to a native audience, any unprepared Westerner picking it up off Netflix is going to be very, very confused.

Dir: Sai Kabir
Star: Kangana Ranaut, Vir Das, Zakir Hussain, Piyush Mishra

My Young Auntie

  By

★★★½
“Serious kung fu, light gags.”

youngauntieHui won the Best Actress award at the first ever Hong Kong Film Awards for her role in this 1981 film, in which she plays Cheng Tai-nun, a young martial-arts expert who marries an elderly landowner so that his unscrupulous brother won’t be able to take the landowner’s assets upon his death. Instead, title passes to Tai-nun, who heads off to Canton to stay with her (much older) nephew, Yu Cheng-chuan (Lau), and his son Yu Tao (Ho), whose hip, young ways clash badly with Tai-nun much more traditionalist views. But the brother plans to steal the dead to what he considers “his” estate, and it’s up to Tao and Tai-nun to prevent that – with the help of a roster of elder relatives and Cheng-chuan, who must also be coached in the ways of kung-fu.

There’s three-quarters of a very good film here, and Hui is amazing; not someone to whom I’d paid any attention before, she was both lithe and graceful. This isn’t limited to her fighting skills. Perhaps the peak of the film is a masked ball which Tai-nun is tricked into attending by Tao, and her lack of dance skills are embarrassingly exposed, in a range of genres from tango to swing. It’s brilliant, because you get a real appreciation for the coordination required in making yourself look incredibly uncoordinated. That this turns into a massive and well choreographed sword-fight, with Tai-nun dressed as Marie Antoinette [at a guess] is merely a very pleasant bonus. Director Lau went on to helm Drunken Master II and this has much the same approach, combining comedy and action to good effect; the laughter flows naturally from the characters, rather than (as so often) appearing forced; the caption from the trailer, quoted at the top, gets it about right.

The main problem is a final third which unceremoniously shunts Tai-nun off to one side, with the climax pitting Tao and his older uncles against their thieving relative, as they try to get the property deed back to its rightful owner. If decent enough, there’s nothing at all to separate it from a plethora of other films of its kind and type from the era, and you just wish they had given Hui – perhaps with Ho – a final chance to shine, instead of all but eliminating her from the movie that bears her character’s name. Still, if you can keep your brain around the blizzard of generational family loyalties (or, alternatively, ignore them completely), you’re in for a fun time. If it could fairly be accused of throwing everything but the kitchen sink at the wall, more than enough sticks to justify it, and Hui makes for a striking heroine, whose other films I am clearly going to have to chase down.

Dir: Lau Kar Leung
Star: Kara Hui, Hsiao Ho, Lau Kar Leung, Wang Lung Wei, Gordon Liu

Chastity Bites

  By

★★★
“Not-so real housewives.”

chastitybitesA somewhat successful modernization of the vampire legend, it sees feminist wannabe journo Leah (Scagliotti) clashing with the popular clique at her high-school, under their queen bee Ashley (Okuda). Just as Leah is preparing a devastating expose on how the cool girls are planning a mass virginity loss, the ground gets pulled out from under her by the arrival of Liz Batho (Louise Griffiths), a counselor who begins a devastatingly successful abstinence program, the Virginity Action Group, into which Ashley and her cronies buy in, for their own ends. Liz also lures in the local moms, with her devastatingly impressive line of skin-care products. Leah digs into the past of Ms. Batho and thanks to a helpful tip from her Internet search engine (which is, at least, a first in cinematic plotting!), realizes Liz is – gasp! – Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who escaped being walled up in her chamber, and has roamed the world ever since, using the blood of virgins to sustain her youth. But since Leah’s relationship with local police soured following an article calling them racist, she’s going to have to stop the Countess using her own resources.

The results are sporadically funny. It’s a nice reversal on the usual horror trope of “have sex and die,” [albeit not the first: Cherry Falls already got there], and some of the characters are a hoot. Griffiths hits the spot just right as Bathory, combining elegance and threat with just a hint of Katie Holmes, and Okuda makes the Alpha Bitch far more rounded than most depictions [it took Chris to realize where we’d seen her before; she plays Tinkerballa in popular web-series The Guild] But she and Scagliotti are both clearly past high-school, well into their twenties, and so aren’t convincing teenagers. The heroine also appears to have eaten a dictionary, leading to dialogue that is both forced and not as witty as it thinks it is. Worst of all, I could have done entirely without Leah’s lesbian sidekick (Raisa), since her main purpose in the film appears to be to allow for embarrassingly-bad banter with her gal-pal.

It does make some nice stabs (hohoho) at social satire, in particularly the hypocrisy of high-school and American vs. European values, but it’s a bit too monotone in its approach. I did appreciate its almost entirely gynocentric nature. The only male character of note, is in the film mostly to ensure Leah is no use to the Countess, and when the chips are down, rather than rescuing anyone, is disposed of with ease, leaving Leah to face her immortal enemy alone. However, there remains too much of a problem with the heroine, who comes over for much of the movie as smugly PC, rather than someone with whom I’m interested in spending time. It’s this which restricts the film’s eventual success, leaving it as more of a respectable time-passer than an outstanding triumph.

Dir: John V. Knowles
Star: Allison Scagliotti, Louise Griffiths, Amy Okuda, Francia Raisa

Zero Motivation

  By

★★★½
“Inaction heroines.”

zeromotivationWhile a period of national service in the armed forces may seem a good idea in theory, this satirical Israeli film is likely a good depiction of what it means in practice: a lot of thoroughly unmotivated soldiers, who just want to kill time and GTFO back to civilian life. This may not seem like an inspiring subject for a movie, yet somehow, ends up an endearing and amusing look at life in the armed forces, when your chief responsibility is basically to be in charge of shredding unwanted documents. For there is, it appears, a lot of bureaucracy and shuffling of paperwork in the the Israeli army, and that’s what Daffi (Tagar), Zohar (Ivgy) and their colleagues have to do.

They work in the office of their base, under the wary guise of long-suffering matriarch officer Rama (Klein), who tries to encourage their military habits into concepts such as, “Being a paper shredding NCO is what you make of it.” Of course, being young women, they are more interested in men, personal drama and owning the office high-score on Minesweeper. Or in Daffi’s case, getting out of the desert and being sent to an urban post like Tel Aviv. That requires her completing officer training, but when she does, Daffi discovers exactly why Rama perpetually has that look, and sets up a staple-gun shoot-out (right) with Zohar, after Daffi tries to erase her games.

Writer-director Lavie based the script on her own experiences, saying, “Like most girls during their two years of service, we didn’t risk our lives. But we were definitely in danger of dying of boredom.” There’s definitely an air of Private Benjamin here, and in particular Goldie Hawn griping, “I joined a different army. I joined the one with the condos and the private rooms. ” While the conscripts here are under fewer illusions on their way in, it does a wonderful job of illustrating the gap between the broader perception of army life, and the tedious reality, which involves far more meetings, forms and guard duty. And for the last-named, not even the exciting stuff at the gates, but safely inside the base, where the sole “threat” is soldiers who can’t find the canteen.

The film is loosely divided into three sections, and it manages to juggle the comedic and dramatic elements quite nicely, so that some quite sharp shifts in tone are not too jarring. It’s certainly a concept which could easily be extended to a TV series – think M.A.S.H. in the Israeli desert, though I would certainly not have minded some more actual action. As is, the film may be almost the antithesis of what you’d expect in a “girls with guns” movie, yet you’d be hard-pushed to conclude this was a particularly bad thing. What it may lack in pulse-pounding, adrenalin-powered gunplay, is balanced by a selection of quirkily entertaining characters and a sharply-observed script.

Dir: Talya Lavie
Star: Nelly Tagar, Shani Klein, Dana Ivgy, Heli Twito

Hot Pursuit

  By

★★½
“Colombia 1, America 1.”

Your tolerance for this may well depend on your fondness for Modern Family, in which Vergara plays Gloria, who is much the same character: a Colombian spitfire trophy-wife. It works rather better there, as part of the broad palette of distinct individuals, and in an episode that lasts 30 minutes, including commercials. You get the sense she might not be too easy to live with, and the 85 minutes here does sometimes become more a slog than a pleasure, and we speak as big fans of Family. Here, rather than the wife of a closet magnate, Daniella Riva (Vergara) is married to the henchman of a drug lord, who gets gunned down after agreeing to testify against his employer  (Cosio), just as the straight-laced Officer Cooper (Witherspoon) arrives to escort them to court. When it becomes clear some corrupt cops are in on the action, Cooper and Riva are forced to strike out on their own, making for an unlikely odd couple, whose spiky relationship grows over the course of their unscheduled road-trip.

It’s certainly far from novel, and the whole concept is so well-worn and utterly predictable, the script might as well have grooves and be mounted on rails. This is not a film to watch if you want to be surprised, in any shape or form; it’s more like a comfy jersey, that you pull on, knowing exactly what to expect. As such, there are some moments which are genuinely amusing, such as when Cooper ends up coked-up by (literal) accident, chattering away like a highly-caffeinated dolphin. It’s not Witherspoon’s first entry here either; back in her early days, Freeway won our Seal of Approval, and more recently, we also reviewed Wild, which had her stepping out into the wilderness. This is a more obvious role, in more ways than one; like the story, Cooper is over-familiar from a hundred other comedies, and making her a woman isn’t sufficient deviation to create interest. Witherspoon certainly tries, and the effort is palpable; however, there’s only so far effort can take you, given such lazy writing.

With Vergara, the problem is almost the reverse; Riva certainly has more of an arc than Cooper, and is given some genuine motivation for her actions, rather than existing purely because the plot demands it. However, if you’ve caught one episode of Modern Family, you’ve already seen all this performance has to offer. It probably says a lot, that Vergara’s turn in Machete Kills offered a more highly-nuanced approach to acting. I’m thinking this is probably the first time Machete Kills and “highly-nuanced” have ever been used in the same sentence. The end result just about manages to skate by on the charisma of its two leads, and I can’t say we were ever bored; that hardly counts as anything even approaching a glowing recommendation, however, and you should be in a thoroughly undemanding mood before approaching this one.

Dir: Anne Fletcher
Star: Reese Witherspoon, Sofia Vergara, Robert Kazinsky, Joaquín Cosio,

Miss Nobody

  By

★★★
“Climbing the corporate ladder can be murder.”

missnobodySarah Jane (Bibb) has been working for years as a unassuming secretary in a pharmaceutical company, and egged on by colleague and best friend Charmaine (Pyle), eventually gets up the courage to apply for an executive position. With some embellishment of her resume, she gets the post, only to have it yanked from under her when a new hotshot arrives. The hotshot makes a pass at her, leading to his accidental death; Sarah Jane has her position restored as a result of this untimely demise, and discovers her late rival had the plans for a wonder-drug with the potential to reverse Alzheimer’s. However, she soon realizes that further deaths will be necessary, both to keep her secret, and also continue her rise up the chain of command. Complicating matters, she starts dating one of the policemen (Goldberg) involved in the investigation of the slew of suspicious corporate deaths, by train, photocopier, gas explosion, etc.  Worse yet, someone clearly knows what Sarah Jane has been up to, and starts trying to blackmail her.

The film could have gone a number of different ways in terms of its approach, such as black comedy – Heathers would be the best example of that approach. However, Cox strenuously avoids the darker tone, opting to keep things frothy and light: there’s little or no doubt, for example, that Sarah Jane’s victims deserve some kind of retribution [although you can certainly argue whether their crimes reach a level where the death penalty is merited]. It does, of course, rely heavily on the stupidity of just about everyone beyond the heroine, the rest of the characters behaving in ways that would only happen in this kind of film. However, the cast are good enough to pull this off, with Bibb endearingly perky in the lead, and getting good support from Pyle (Cleaners), as well as Vivica A. Fox (Kill Bill) as another corporate rival, plus Barry Bostwick as the local Catholic priest, who has some difficulty coming to terms with the heinous crimes to which Sarah Jane confesses.

I was, however, unconvinced by the ease with which she slides from mouse-like secretary into serial-killing predator. Especially given – or, depending on your view of religious zealotry – even allowing for, her devout faith [she prays nightly before a shrine to St. George, a statue of whom played a formative role in her youth], it’s a slippery slope down which Sarah Jane less slides, than cheerfully sprints. The bubbly approach also seems awkwardly at odds with the subject matter, though the performances help deflect attention from this while the film is in motion. I’d likely have preferred a sharper edge to the corporate satire; there’s no shortage of potential targets there, yet this has about as much edge as a letter-opener, and that limits the impact, turning this into little more than a competently fluffy time-passer.

Dir: T. Abram Cox
Star: Leslie Bibb, Adam Goldberg, Missi Pyle, Kathy Baker

13 Frightened Girls!

  By

★★★
“Candy is dandy.”

3_13-frightened-girls-three-sheet-1963Though he produced Rosemary’s Baby, the legendary William Castle is best known for his gimmicky horror flicks such as The Tingler or House on Haunted Hill, which sought to enhance the cinematic experience with things like “Emergo” [a plastic skeleton on wires that flew out into the audience]. They’re awesome. This title sounds like another one – not least because it evokes his own 13 Ghosts from three years previously – and the poster (right) does little to dismiss that belief, but it is actually closer to Spy Kids. Not that Castle abandoned his eye for publicity, generating it here by an “international contest” to find the titular baker’s dozen, who could play the daughters of diplomats from 13 different countries. However, the film itself is played straight, and while undeniably dated, is so in an generally adorable matter. Who knew the Cold War – for this came out less than a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis – could be such fun?

The heroine is Candy Hull (Dunn), 16-year-old daughter of an American diplomat stationed in London, who attends an exclusive private school with the other diplo-daughters. They all hang out quite happily, entirely unfazed by the political shenanigans of the adults, more concerned with typical teenage girl things, such as boys and being popular. Candy, however, has her heart set on the embassy’s chief spy, Wally Sanders (Hamilton, whom you may recognize as the mayor in Jaws!). Through her friendship with Chinese girl Mai-Ling (Moon), she stumbles into, and defuses a plot to frame her father (Marlow) for the murder of a Russian liberal, leaving the evidence for Wally under the nom-de-guerre of “Kitten”. Wally is amazed, and Candy discovers that being a teenage girl with “diplomatic immunity” is a great cover to hear gossip and not have anyone pay you attention. However, her success eventually brings her notoriety, and the Chinese call on “The Spider” to find and kill the spy who has been leaking all their secrets.

It’s a weird mix, cutesy with some fairly grim moments, such as Candy having to yank a blade out of a corpse, and a non-zero body count: I’m not sure who the target audience was for this. Some aspects do seem strange to contemporary eyes. Candy is perhaps too “grown-up”, and her crush on him now seems wholly inappropriate, their relationship causing Chris to mutter “pedophile!” under her breath on multiple times – not least when Wally threatens to spank her! But given the tenseness of the times, it’s far less polemic than it could be, not painting all Reds as bad, and it’s clear that whatever may have changed over the past 50 years, teenage girls clearly haven’t. Dunn makes for a plucky heroine, and there’s genuine tension here on occasion.

Dir: William Castle
Star: Kathy Dunn, Murray Hamilton, Hugh Marlowe, Lynne Sue Moon
a.k.a. The Candy Web

 

The Godmother

  By

★★★
“Romain in place”

godmotherDefinitely not to be confused with the upcoming film starring Catherine Zeta-Jones as Colombian drug-queen, Griselda Blanco, this is likely a much gentler piece of work. Jennifer (Anderson) in an English teacher, happily married to a Romanian accountant, Radu (Bucur) and with a young son, David (Iamcu). But her life is turned upside-down when her husband is arrested, for it turns out his main job was keeping the books for the area’s top mobster, Spanu (Alex). To prevent him from testifying, Spanu sends his goons after his accountant’s family, and Jennifer has to rely on her wits to survive. Eventually, she decides the best form of defense is attack, and sets up her own criminal organization, with some unlikely help in the shape of the local cops, some of husband’s book-keepers, and a former mobster turned monk.

It is, of course, all entirely implausible: in reality, a scenario like this would end in only one way, and would be neither gentle nor amusing. Fortunately, Spanu is largely incompetent, to the extent that it’s inconceivable how he could ever have made it to the top of the criminal underworld, and his minions are little better. Still, given that conceit, I spent most of the movie with a goofy smile on my face, watching “fish out of water” Jennifer coming to terms with her situation, and the oddball characters who surround her – the gangster monk, who spends most of the time drinking heavily and/or floating in the pool, was probably the most amusing. Though I do feel this missed a trick, not having a heroine whose character was located somewhere between Mary Poppins and Nanny McPhee, with a steely determination and implacable sense of propriety, e.g. scolding the villain for his poor table-manners. Still, Anderson brings a peppy likeability to the role. though the wrap-around section, concerning two street kids apparently finding her diary, doesn’t fit well with anything else.

It’s filmed in a mix of Romanian and English, which is a bit flaky at times, since some of the characters are clearly not acting in their native tongues. However, the script holds the threads together nicely, and even manages to find a way for the heroine to triumph – such an obvious conclusion, it doesn’t even count as a spoiler – that is not entirely contrived or impossible. Without giving too much away, it involves “turning” an operative sent into her camp, with the help of a strange medical student who sells body-parts on the side. While I’d like to have seen more action, that isn’t the real focus; however, it does show occasionally surprising invention, that allowed this to skate around its weaknesses.

Dir: Jesús del Cerro, Virgil Nicolaescu
Star: Whitney Anderson, Velea Alex, Stefan Iancu, Dragos Bucur

Robo-CHIC

  By

★
“Overdrawn at the comedy bank”

robochicDr. Von Colon (King) has completed his life-work, a female robot called Robo-CHIC (Shower and/or Jennifer Daly – we’ll get into the logic of this later), the second half of her name standing for Computerized Humanoid Intelligent Clone. At the same time, nerd terrorist Harry Truman Hodgkins (Ward) has planted a dozen nuclear bombs around the United States, times to go off at regular intervals. While he’s easily arrested, he is busted out during transit to the federal pen, falling under the control of evil overlord Quentin Thalian, who decides that if he holds Hodgkins hostage, he’ll then hold the nation hostage. And his demands won’t stop at getting girls to like him: he’ll also demand the police stand down so he can do whatever he wants. An unguarded remark by the Doctor – more or less along the lines of “somebody needs to do something!” – sets Robo-CHIC in pursuit of Hodgkins, along with TV reporter John Kent (Baker), and they have to resolve all this mess before any more stock footage of nuclear explosions occurs. And I haven’t even mentioned the biker gang, Satan’s Onions. They should be Satan’s Minions, but there was a screw up with their jackets. This does, however, provide a good indication of the extremely low-hanging comedic fruit at which this film aims.

Even given this, it misses more of than it hits, in particular with Dr. Von Colon, who comes over as some bizarre cross between Albert Brooks and Lloyd Kaufman – and not the good aspects of each, either. The only two people who have the right approach are Ward, and Rita Gonstodine as stunningly stupid newscaster and colleague of Kent’s, Bambi Doe. Those offer about the only times you laugh with the film, rather than cringing at it. Then, you have the fact that two entirely different actresses play the heroine during the film. It appears Shower, despite receiving a production credit, bailed on the production midway through shooting, but it was decided to replace her and keep shooting, on the basis the audience either wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t care. The blonde, curly wig worn by both helps, and it’s not as blatant as, say, Bela Lugosi in Plan 9, yet they also decided this was a story which needed to be told at a length of more than 100 minutes. Even if this was now a sunk cost, the correct decision when the lead actress left, would have been to shoot the bare minimum necessary with the replacement to qualify as a feature. Trust me, future generations of viewers would have thanked you.

This is so lacklustre, it barely qualifies as an action film. However, this is also so unfunny, it barely qualifies as a comedy, and long before this reaches its climax, your attention will be sorely taxed, because it feels perilously close to an idea rejected by Troma. And given the films Troma did make the same year this came out (1990) included Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. and A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell, that would set the bar so low, a limbo-dancing midget would encounter problems. Avoid, at all costs.

Dir: Ed Hansen + Jeffrey Mandel
Star: Kathy Shower, Ranson Baker, Kip King, Burt Ward

Blonde in Black Leather

  By

★★★½
“Girls on a Motorcycle”

“What if we free everyone? Everyone who wants to come with us, not just children.  We could make a gang that even Butch would be proud of.  Stop by all the laundrettes, tell them all to come with us. And if they don’t want to come, it’s their loss.”

blondeinblackleatherClaudia (Cardinale) has a humdrum life working in a laundrette, with a sleazy husband and no hope of anything more exciting in her future. Into the laundrette storms the titular woman, Miele (Vitti), whose devil-may-care attitude enthralls Claudia, and gives her the courage to throw away her staid existence and follow the blonde on the road. Miele is initially resistant to the idea of a travelling companion, but rides to the rescue, driving her bike through the railway station where Claudia is being harassed. Miele must make a mysterious appointment in Northern Italy with her lover, but that’s okay, as Claudia has a cousin, on the way, in Naples. However, as the two make their way, it gradually becomes clear that Miele could give Baron Munchausen a run for his money, when it comes to spinning tall tales, and both her mouth and impetuous actions, are as likely to get the pair into trouble as out if it.

It plays kinda like a pre-make (since it came out in 1975) of Thelma and Louise, directed by Stephen Chow, because it has the same mo lei tau (or “makes no sense”) approach. For instance, at one point, while Miele is re-enacting one of her alleged escapades. the bike careers off the road, with Miele left dangling from a tree. Several minutes later, after Claudia helps her down, in the background, you see the motor-cycle, still going, driving itself into the sea. Or later on, after they mistake a policeman for a criminal, they’re chased out the back of a train, and the film switches into b&w slapstick mode, with deliberately bad rear-projection, etc. No-one bats an eyelid at any of this. While the plot is flimsy, to say the least, it relies heavily on the charm of its leading ladies, and that aspect is a roaring success, right from the moment Vitti strides into the laundrette. Co-writers Barbara Alberti & Amedeo Pagani, who penned the script along with Di Palma, had just come off the similarly fetishistic The Night Porter, and Di Palma shoots proceedings with the eye of someone who was a cinematographer first (he was a frequent DP for Woody Allen in the eighties and nineties).

It’s a generally frothy confection, light in aim and intent, though has occasionally surprising moments of poignancy, and the reason behind Miele’s fantasies is impeccable. There is also a surprisingly impressive brawl (below), after the pair clean out a casino, in which Cardinale kicks ass thanks to some rather good staging. Considering Italy in the seventies was hardly a bastion of feminism, this is particularly impressive, and providing you aren’t looking for anything particularly meaningful – or even logical – has survived the forty years which have passed, much better than many of its era.

Dir: Carlo Di Palma
Star: Monica Vitti, Claudia Cardinale
a.k.a. Qui Comincia l’Avventura [“Here Begins the Adventure”]