BEFORE: OK, an update on this year's Doc Block, which I thought might end up connecting Mother's Day and Father's Day, because it's just about the right size for that. I added a couple of docs that aired on NETWORK TV, which are probably just cobbled-together interviews and archive footage about two popular dead actors, but they turned out to be just the thing for me. I now have a 33-film linked chain of docs, for which the main entry point is Adolf Hitler. Or, if I trim two films off one end, it's a circular chain of 31 docs, the last one happens to connect back to the first one via Paul McCartney. This is great news for me, it means if I wait for summer I can put the "right" film on July 4, maybe, and if I think of it as a big loop, I can enter the loop via any of a couple hundred actors, who are marked in green on my roadmap. It's like a big highway with many many on-ramps and off-ramps, and even though it goes in a big circle for a while and kind of ends back near where it started, theoretically it's connected to all the other highways, and I can go just about anywhere I want, more importantly, I can get ON the highway wherever I want, and I can travel in either direction. That's huge, it gives me the maximum amount of freedom from a programming standpoint., and there's so much overlap I can put all the music docs together, all the comic actors together, and I have the basic framework down, so I can add to it or subtract as I see fit. The OCD part of my brain is very happy today, but it took a lot of work to get it there.
Now, how I get in to the docs loop and where I exit will probably depend on what film(s) I watch about fathers for Father's Day, and that just can't be worked out yet. Or can it? I should at least put all the films on that theme together and see if any of them link up with each other, and note which ones link to documentaries, and I can count the days between Father's Day and July 4 to see how many steps there are. It's 18. Yah, I just fiddled around with it a bit, and there are a few good entry points, but none of them get me exactly where I want to be - I'm going to have to wait to see where I land on Father's Day, and then look for a good documentary entry point a few steps after that. For now I'll just color code the Rock Hudson doc and the Stan Lee doc as 2 possible starting points, but of course there are others. I could even split it up into two parts if I need to, there's that much overlap and multiple outs.
Toni Collette carries over from "Dream Horse" and she takes the lead in number of appearances for the year. Sorry, Tim Roth.
THE PLOT: An American mom inherits her grandfather's mafia empire in Italy. Guided by the firm's consigliere, she defies everyone's expectations as the new head of the family business.
AFTER: This is the opposite sort of film, the kind that doesn't link to much else that's on my list - there are just two actresses that link to other films, a few actors who have been in other notable films, just not recently, and a largely Italian cast who may have worked a lot in Italian movies and TV shows, but that's not something I tend to watch. So, simple solution, stash this one in-between two other films with Toni Collette in them.
There's a lot of history involved in Italian film production, from the Fascist propaganda films of the 1930's, to the "spaghetti Westerns" made in the 1960's. Fellini, Antonioni, Leone, on down to Begnini and Bozzetto, there are a number of famous directors, but they lack a cool "nickname" for their segment of the industry, like there's "Bollywood" for Indian cinema and "Nollywood" for African cinema. (It should be "Mali-Wood", or "Somali-Wood" but what do I know? Maybe they don't make movies in Mali or Somalia...)
Why stop there? The film industry in Nepal could be "Nepali-wood", the one in Mexico could be "Tamale-wood", any film made in North Carolina could be from "Raleigh-wood", and damn it, I know the pronunciation isn't spot on but "Itali-wood" was RIGHT THERE. (You just have to say "Italy" like it's "ee-TAHL-ee" instead of how we say it in America).
Anyway, it's another "fish out of water" story tonight, as Kristin, an American woman (played by an Australian actress) of Italian descent finds out her husband's been unfaithful, JUST before getting a call that her grandfather in Italy has died, and her presence is requested at the funeral, and her ticket to Italy is paid for. (Again, many screenwriters think you can just buy a plane ticket with no notice, or just head to the airport and get one there, good luck with that...) Once she arrives, a shoot-out breaks out during the funeral, which is a bit of a red flag. Turns out Gramps was the head of the Balbano crime family, and he'd sent his granddaughter to the U.S. as a child for her own protection. But his dying wish was to install her as the new Don, so it's up to her to resolve a territory dispute with the Romanos. (What could POSSIBLY go wrong?)
Kristin has come to Italy on her own personal journey, though, based on the Elizabeth Gilbert book "Eat, Pray, Love" only that last one is replaced by the F-word, and she doesn't do much praying, it seems. Ok, so she's there to eat and get laid, and when she meets Lorenzo, a handsome pasta-maker, it seems she's found the perfect match - but she also falls for Don Carlo, the head of the Romano family, who wants to seduce her and poison her, in some order. But Kristin accidentally switches the wine glasses and comes out on top in that exchange.
That's pretty much how the whole film plays out, with Kristin failing upwards and getting comically lucky time and time again. She dispatches a hit-man sent to kill her because she remembers her Krav Maga anti-rapist defense training, and she applies her previous knowledge from working for a pharmaceutical company to the criminal drug operations, meaning that she lowers prices in order to increase demand, and then she even guides the family winery back into successful operations, so it's not just a front for their criminal enterprises, it starts to make wine that, you know, tastes good. Why didn't anyone else think of that before? The only thing that could ruin everything would be if her cheating husband turned up out of the blue, wanting to get back together with her, or at least a free place to crash at an Italian villa.
Things go pretty well, though, which is another plot point that carries over from "Dream Horse", and Kristin makes plans to retire as Don, turning the operations over to her consigliere, but this sets off a round of protests from the other mob family, and even people in her own family who think they can run the operation better than her. Naturally there's a big comic shoot-out between the two families and the DIA (Italian national police that investigates the Mafia) - in the old days of film, they'd end things with a giant pie-fight, and a shoot-out is now sort of the modern equivalent of that, right? Just me? Anyway, Kristin is arrested and put on trial, but the court can't prove that she's anything but an American woman who inherited a winery and came to Italy to eat, pray and...well, you know. So she decides to stay, because she's found something that she's actually good at.
Oh, you just know somebody pitched this script as "The Godmother", right? But then that must have gotten shot down in a company meeting or it didn't test well. I didn't even pick up on the connection to "The Godfather", the orange muffins to the oranges, as symbols of death. But it's there... and since this film actually showed two people talking on the phone between Italy and the U.S. and getting the time difference RIGHT, I'm going to be a little kind with my rating.
Also starring Monica Bellucci (last seen in "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee"), Sophia Nomvete, Eduardo Scarpetta, Alfonso Perugini, Francesco Mastroianni, Giulio Corso, Dora Romano, Guiseppe Zeno, Vincenzo Pirrotta, Tommy Rodger (last seen in "Goodbye Christopher Robin"), Alessandro Cremona (last seen in "Spectre"), Alessandro Bressanello (ditto), Tim Daish (last seen in "Robin Hood" (2010)), Jay Natelle (last seen in "House of Gucci"), Yonv Joseph, Mitch Salm, Claire Palazzo, Giuseppe Zeno, Riccardo Martini, Gianpiero Zaino, Lana Gorianoy, Michelangelo Dalisi, Livia De Paolis, Duska Bisconti.
RATING: 6 out of 10 plates of gnocchi
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