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Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Nanni Moretti in Stable Condition After Suffering Heart Attack in Rome
Italian auteur Nanni Moretti suffered a heart attack on Wednesday and is reportedly in intensive care in stable condition, according to Italian news reports. The 71-year-old idiosyncratic director, actor and screenwriter, who won the 2001 Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for 'The Son's Room,' was rushed in the afternoon to Rome's San Camillo hospital where he underwent surgery. Italian news agency Ansa reported that he was in stable condition. More from Variety Taraji P. Henson to Host AmfAR Cannes Gala, Duran Duran to Perform (EXCLUSIVE) Cannes Prizewinner Anasuya Sengupta, BAFTA Breakthrough Actor Sindhu Sreenivasa Murthy Lead Tulsea's New Talent Roster (EXCLUSIVE) 'In Retreat' Producer Tackles Gulf Wife Syndrome in Film Bazaar Drama Project 'Kurinji' Moretti previously suffered a mild heart attack in October last year. Known as an acerbic moralist and social commentator, Moretti most recently competed in Cannes in 2023 with high-concept meta-comedy 'A Brighter Tomorrow,' in which he stars as a Roman director who is shooting a period piece set in Rome in 1956. Before being hospitalized he was in pre-production on a new film, details of which are not known. Moretti has often constructed his films around his own persona, appearing as the central character, starting with his 1976 Super-8 debut 'Io Sono un'Autarchico' and its follow-up, 'Ecce Bombo,' which humorously captured the discontent gripping Italy in the bleak 1970s, and, of course, the autobiografical 'Caro Diario,' 1994, which marked his international breakthrough. Subsequent standout works comprise scathing 2006 Silvio Berlusconi satire 'The Caiman' and 'We Have a Pope' in which he depicted a Pontiff's crisis of faith. Moretti last month attended a retrospective of his work at the Bari International Film & TV Festival in southern Italy. He was celebrated in 2024 with a Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival for the restaured version of 'Ecce Bombo' which screened in the Venice Classics section. Best of Variety All the Godzilla Movies Ranked Final Oscar Predictions: International Feature – United Kingdom to Win Its First Statuette With 'The Zone of Interest' 'Game of Thrones' Filming Locations in Northern Ireland to Open as Tourist Attractions
Boston Globe
30-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
‘I'm Still Here' tells the powerful real-life story of resilience under military dictatorship
Director Walter Salles returns to the political filmmaking he employed in the 2004 Che Guevara film, 'The Motorcycle Diaries.' Like that film, this one follows a protagonist who becomes an activist after being jarred by political events. Eunice's story hits close to home for Salles; he knew the Paivas, including their son, Marcelo Rubens Paiva, upon whose memoir 'I'm Still Here' is based. Selton Mellon and Fernanda Torres in "I'm Still Here." Alile Onawale/Sony Pictures Classics Advertisement For the first 40 minutes or so, we also get to know Eunice and Rubens, their five children and their housekeeper, Maria José (Pri Helena). The youngest kids, Marcelo (Guilherme Silveira), Babiu (Cora Mora), and Nalu (Bárbara Luz) are blissfully oblivious of the ramifications of living under military rule. Their oldest, Veroca (Valentina Herszage), is fast becoming politically aware, to the point where she's sent to London to keep her out of trouble. The dramatic story arc of daughter Eliana (Luiza Kosovski) reveals the dangers Eunice feared Veroca would face. The family lives across the street from a gorgeous, white-sand beach with pristine waters — an idyllic locale lushly shot by cinematographer Adrian Teijido. (His occasional use of Super-8 film is also visually intriguing.) The opening scene puts us in the water with Eunice as she floats in meditation. Her kids play on the beach, eventually finding a stray mutt they name after Veroca's boyfriend, Pimpão (Caio Horowicz). This section unfolds leisurely, with scenes of parties, get-togethers, and beach volleyball games. But Salles never lets us get too comfortable. A military helicopter breaks the tranquillity of Eunice's swim. Veroca and her friends are stopped in a tunnel and manhandled by soldiers looking for the kidnappers of several foreign ambassadors. And Rubens takes secret phone calls, the kind that would surely arouse suspicion. Advertisement Fernanda Torres as Eunice in "I'm Still Here." Adrian Teijido/Sony Pictures Classics 'I'm Still Here' takes a darker turn once Rubens is kidnapped by strange men from the government and plainclothes guards start surveilling the house. Eunice and Eliana are also removed from the house, with the former being tortured for days. Though these scenes are understated, they're still harrowing. Salles is more concerned with exploring Eunice's resolve and desire for justice than showing explicit brutality, as evidenced by the two jumps in time the film employs in its final moments. We check in on the family 25 years later, in 1996, and again in 2014, when Torres's own real-life mother, Fernanda Montenegro, appears in an effective cameo. Torres does an excellent job here. We watch Eunice struggle to keep the truth from her youngest kids while simultaneously downplaying Eliana's fears that her father is dead. Later, we see her make personal and professional choices that lead her closer to a small but effective modicum of closure. The Paiva family, in 2014, in "I'm Still Here." Adrian Teijido/Sony Pictures Classics For her performance, Torres was nominated for the best actress Oscar, the second best actress nod for a Brazilian actor. (Montenegro received the first, for Salles's masterpiece, 1998's 'Central Station.') In an even bigger surprise, 'I'm Still Here' was also nominated for best picture alongside its expected best international feature nod. I wonder if the political timeliness of this film spoke to voters. Because, at one point, Eunice asks a witness who was kidnapped along with Rubens for help. 'My husband is in danger,' she pleads. The witness responds 'We're all in danger.' In today's environment, that exchange ought to hit a nerve. Advertisement ★★★½ I'M STILL HERE Directed by Walter Salles. Written by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega, based on the memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva. Starring Fernanda Torres, Selton Mello, Pri Helena, Guilherme Silveira, Cora Mora, Barbara Luz, Valentina Herszage, Luiza Kosovski, Caio Horowicz, Fernanda Montenegro. At Coolidge Corner, AMC Boston Common, Landmark Kendall Square, Alamo Drafthouse Seaport. 137 minutes. PG-13 (profanity, torture, brief nudity) Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe's film critic.
The Guardian
28-01-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Zodiac Killer Project review – true crime critique rescues aborted documentary
If Laurence Sterne made a true-crime documentary it might resemble this exasperating, sometimes negligible but also often amusing and rather insightful personal work from British film-maker Charlie Shackleton. It is a deconstruction of genre and a meta story of failure from which the director salvages a teaspoonful of success. Shackleton recounts his abortive attempt to make a film about the Zodiac serial killer, who murdered at least five people in the San Francisco Bay Area without being caught, and whose case is still open. It was also the subject of a movie by David Fincher. Shackleton intended to adapt a book entitled The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: The Silenced Badge by Lyndon E Lafferty, a former California highway patrol cop who died in 2016. Lafferty believed he knew the identity of Zodiac. He once witnessed someone at the wheel of a car behaving suspiciously, who at one stage engaged in a weird stare-out contest with Lafferty in a car-park. Serious criminals are often caught through minor traffic violations so, following a hunch which was to turn into a lifelong obsession, Lafferty recovered a photo of the car's owner using the licence plate and it resembled the police photofit of the Zodiac's face. But despite decades of sleuthing and covert surveillance, he never amassed evidence firm enough to persuade law enforcement to follow his lead. He was ordered to drop the case by his infuriated superiors – which Lafferty considered evidence of a cover-up but may just have been their fury at his timewasting. Lafferty later suffered the indignity of his work being mocked in the more authoritative book by Robert Graysmith. Shackleton had what he thought was the go-ahead from Lafferty's family to adapt his book. He did research, he scouted locations, he incurred expenses – but then they suddenly changed their minds and said he couldn't proceed. Why? Shackleton thinks it could be down to a more lucrative deal from Netflix or someone similar, or maybe they didn't like the line Shackleton was taking. Perhaps they suspected he was going to emphasise the tragicomedy of Lafferty's failure and didn't want him emerging as the David Brent of the Zodiac conspiracy community. Instead, Shackleton shows us the kind of movie he would have made, almost scene-by-scene, using long static shots of empty locations and his own wry voiceover, with information in the public domain so that he doesn't get sued for copyright. (This is a familiar move for Shackleton, whose collage films Beyond Clueless (2014) and Fear Itself (2015) used short clips under the 'fair use' rule.) I couldn't help wishing that Shackleton had simply cut his losses and gone on to another project that he could have made properly. However, this one is interspersed with very amusing comments on all the cliches and mannerisms of the true crime genre: the grimly downbeat opening titles, the procedural-fetish small lettering for the credits, the hackneyed Super-8 footage to indicate the killer's smalltown upbringing, the gloatingly presented crime-scene photos and, hilariously, the almost supernatural confidence of the real-life cops who speak on camera. These moments are very funny and interestingly researched; Shackleton is very shrewd on The Jinx, Andrew Jarecki's true-crime streamer from 2015, and the way that it was able to withhold crucial facts about guilt until the season finale without getting into trouble. Without this critique, Zodiac Killer Project really would be very thin. Even so, it's a bit slender but diverting nonetheless. Zodiac Killer Project screens at the Sundance film festival.
