Italy – Stream On Demand

Clint Eastwood stars in Sergio Leone's 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'

‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ on Peacock

!Featured, Blu-ray, Classic, Cult Movies, DVD, Essential Viewing, Peacock, Spaghetti Cinema, SVOD, western 12/04/2021 Sean Axmaker

Clint Eastwood stars in Sergio Leone’s classic Civil War epic, arguably the definitive spaghetti western.

Clint Eastwood stars in the iconic spaghetti western by Sergio Leone

‘A Fistful of Dollars’ on Peacock

!Featured, Blu-ray, Classic, Cult Movies, DVD, Peacock, Spaghetti Cinema, Streaming Movies, SVOD, western 12/01/2021 Sean Axmaker

Clint Eastwood stars in Sergio Leone’s uncredited remake of Kurosawa’s ‘Yojimbo,’ which launched the spaghetti western into an international phenomenon.

‘Blood and Black Lace’ – Birth of the giallo on Criterion Channel

!Featured, Blu-ray, Criterion Channel, Cult Movies, DVD, giallo, Halloween, horror, SVOD, thriller 10/25/2021 Sean Axmaker

Mario Bava’s elegant 1964 slasher picture as ballroom dance, bathed in intense, unreal sprays of red and purple and green, is where the distinctly Italian horror genre known as giallo was born.

Dario Argento’s ‘Tenebrae’ on Shudder and AMC+

!Featured, AMC+, Blu-ray, Cult Movies, DVD, giallo, Halloween, horror, Shudder, SVOD, thriller 10/24/2021 Sean Axmaker

Argento returned to the classic giallo form in this 1982 thriller starring Anthony Franciosa as an author targeted by a killer.

‘Enchanted April’ – an Italian escape

!Featured, Academy Award nominee, based on a novel, drama, DVD, Have You Seen...?, Romance, Streaming Movies, SVOD 09/19/2021 Sean Axmaker

Four women break out of their confined lives and roles when they rent a Italian villa in this romantic drama of reawakening. Josie Lawrence, Miranda Richardson, Polly Walker, and Joan Plowright costar with the beautiful Mediterranean landscape.

Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, and Claudia Cardinale star in Luchino Visconti's adaptation of Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s novel

Burt Lancaster is ‘The Leopard’ in Luchino Visconti’s masterpiece

!Featured, Academy Award nominee, Blu-ray, Cannes winner, Classic, Criterion, Criterion Channel, drama, DVD, Essential Viewing, historical, International Classics, literary adaptation, SVOD 07/20/2021 Sean Axmaker

A lush, powerful, complex drama set during Italy’s 19th century revolution and one of the grand masterpieces of world cinema.

Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills star in the Billy Wilder comedy

‘Avanti!’ with Jack Lemmon on Amazon Prime Video

!Featured, Amazon Prime Video, based on a play, Blu-ray, Classic, Comedy, DVD, Romance, SVOD 07/17/2021 Sean Axmaker

Billy Wilder was one of the great directors of classic American comedy. Avanti! (1972), based on the play by Samuel Taylor, is one of the director’s attempts to adapt his trademark mix of wit, romance, and sex to the more permissive era of the 1970s and one of the best films in the last act […]

Karl Malden and James Franciscus in the giallo by Dario Argento

Dario Argento’s ‘Cat O’Nine Tails’ on Amazon Prime and Criterion Channel

!Featured, Amazon Prime Video, Blu-ray, Cult Movies, DVD, giallo, Halloween, horror, suspense 05/12/2021 Sean Axmaker

The Cat O’Nine Tails (Italy, 1971), Dario Argento’s second feature, follows up his directorial debut The Bird With the Crystal Plumage in genre, style and “animal” theme (stretched into a trilogy with Four Flies on Gray Velvet). In Bird, Argento explores, pushes at, and plays with the mechanics of suspense and murder mystery spectacle in […]

Dominique Sanda and Stefania Sandrelli in Bernardo Bertolucci's 'The Conformist' starring Jean-Louis Trintignant

Bernardo Bertolucci’s ‘The Conformist’ on Criterion Channel

!Featured, Academy Award nominee, Blu-ray, Criterion Channel, DVD, Essential Viewing, historical, International Classics, Politics, SVOD 02/24/2021 Sean Axmaker

Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970), his dense, visually intricate, and stylistically ornate adaptation of the revered novel by Alberto Moravio, tosses sex, desire, politics, and personal responsibility into the Fascist era before World War II. Marcello (an actively repressed Jean-Louis Trintignant), a petty bourgeois man in late 1930s Italy, joins the Italian Fascist party as […]

‘Starcrash’ – the most marvelously ridiculous ‘Star Wars’ knock-off on Amazon Prime

!Featured, Amazon Prime Video, Blu-ray, Cult Movies, DVD, Science Fiction, Spaghetti Cinema, SVOD 10/19/2020 Sean Axmaker

The shamelessly and fabulously derivative Italian space opera Starcrash (1979) is both the most ridiculous and the most irresistible of all the Star Wars knock-offs of the late seventies and eighties. Caroline Munro spends much of the film in a black latex bikini as the great outlaw starship pilot Stella Star, who is arrested by […]