Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958), I Vitelloni (1953), Breaking Away (1979), Italianamerican (1974), Bread and Tulips (2000), Mine vaganti (2010), Big Night (1996), Loose Cannons (2010) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Italian Culture movies.
Storyline: Caught red-handed for a crime he swears he didn't commit, the hopeful criminal mastermind and--for now--small-time thief, Cosimo, entrusts the square-jawed boxer, Peppe, with the plan for a seemingly fail-proof pawnshop heist on the quiet Madonna Street. However, as the news of this lucrative job spreads like wildfire, instead, it's Cosimo's band of maladroit petty criminals--including a destitute photographer with fatherly obligations--who will take action for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But, will things work as planned?—Nick Riganas
Plot Keywords: comedy, crime, italian cinema, black comedy, heist, classic, farce ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Fausto Moretti, having seduced Sandra Rubini, the sister of his friend and companion Moraldo Rubini, is forced to marry her. After their honeymoon, he takes a job as a salesman of religious objects in a small shop. He isn't changed by his marriage and still looks for women, with his friends, when and where they can find them. He even tries to seduce the wife of his boss and is fired. After each episode, Sandra forgives him. He and his friends of similar temperament are content to be idle, chase girls and leave the work and job-hunting to others. After spending the night away from home with a girl, Sandra cannot forgive anymore and runs off with their child. Fausto and his friends search all over for them, fearing the worst.
Plot Keywords: coming of age, small-town life, friendship, youth, alienation, social criticism, 1950s ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Best friends Dave, Mike, Cyril and Moocher have just graduated from high school. Living in the college town of Bloomington, Indiana, they are considered "cutters": the working class of the town so named since most of the middle aged generation, such as their parents, worked at the local limestone quarry, which is now a swimming hole. There is great animosity between the cutters and the generally wealthy Indiana University students, each group who have their own turf in town. The dichotomy is that the limestone was used to build the university, which is now seen as being too good for the locals who built it. Although each of the four is a totally different personality from the other three, they also have in common the fact of being unfocused and unmotivated in life. The one slight exception is Dave. Although he has no job and doesn't know what to do with his life, he is a champion bicycle racer. He idolizes the Italian cycling team so much he pretends to be Italian, much to the chagrin...
Plot Keywords: coming of age, sports, cycling, small town life, friendship, dreams, competition ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Martin Scorsese interviews his mother and father about their life in New York City and the family history back in Sicily. These are two people who have lived together for a long time and know each other very well. They have retained individual identities and differing opinions, yet have found a way to live with each other, and both are fascinating story-tellers.—alfiehitchie
Plot Keywords: documentary, family, oral history, culture, immigration, new york, interview ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Life is often just "for sake of" and we need to know about it and want to benefit when we are presented with the occasion to. A bit for "sake of", a bit for choice, Rosalba, young and apart from anything a housewife of Pescara, during a bus trip after she found herself alone and...forgotten in a highway café, decides not to wait for her husband and sons to come back to pick her up but instead decides to find her own way home. She is a little offended that she has been forgotten by her family and has been told by her husband to stay put so, rebelling a little she finds herself hitch-hiking direct for Venice. Her adventure in Venice begins meeting strange but fascinating people. Fermo; an anarchistic florist, Grazia; a masseuse and Fernando; a waiter from Iceland that speaks his own language of Italian.—<caitlin_leroy@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: comedy, romance, female protagonist, midlife crisis, self-discovery, family, marriage ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Tommaso is the youngest son of the Cantones, a large, traditional southern Italian family operating a pasta-making business since the 1960s. On a trip home from Rome, where he studies literature and lives with his boyfriend, Tommaso decides to tell his parents the truth about himself. But when he is finally ready to come out in front of the entire family, his older brother Antonio ruins his plans.
Plot Keywords: comedy, drama, family, romance, lgbt, homosexual, brotherhood ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Primo and Secondo are two brothers who have emigrated from Italy to open an Italian restaurant in America. Primo is the irascible and gifted chef, brilliant in his culinary genius, but determined not to squander his talent on making the routine dishes that customers expect. Secondo is the smooth front-man, trying to keep the restaurant financially afloat, despite few patrons other than a poor artist who pays with his paintings. The owner of the nearby Pascal's restaurant, enormously successful (despite its mediocre fare), offers a solution, he will call his friend, a big-time jazz musician, to play a special benefit at their restaurant. Primo begins to prepare his masterpiece, a feast of a lifetime, for the brothers' big night.
Plot Keywords: food, brotherhood, dreams, family, tradition, cooking, passion ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: The youngest son (Riccardo Scamarcio) of an Italian pasta magnate plans to announce he's gay so that he won't have to take over the family business -- but his brother (Alessandro Preziosi) makes a startling announcement of his own.
Plot Keywords: comedy, romance, family, drama, italian, lgbt, cultural conflict ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Good hearted but not very wordly-wise, Dante is happy driving the school bus for a group of mentally handicapped children, while feeling he is somehow missing out on life and love. So he is very excited when after nearly being knocked down by her car he meets Maria, who seems immediately enamoured of him. He is soon invited to her sumptuous Palermo villa, little suspecting that this is part of a plot. He bears an amazing likeness to Maria's stool-pigeon gangster husband and it would be convenient for them if the mobster, in the shape of Dante, was seen to be dead and buried.—Jeremy Perkins {J-26}
Plot Keywords: comedy, crime, gangster, mistaken identity, humor, romance, absurd ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In 1935 a group of elderly British women, whom the Italians have named the Scorpioni, have chosen Italy, specifically Florence, as a place to live to blend their proper British sensibilities with their love of Italian art and culture. One of those Scorpioni, Mary Walsh (Dame Joan Plowright), works as the English secretary for Paolo Innocente (Massimo Ghini), who, in part because of his own wife's adamant refusal, largely neglects his illegitimate adolescent son, Luca (Baird Wallace), despite Paolo's want for Luca to grow up to be a proper young man, much like the English. Luca has lived in an orphanage since his dressmaker mother's death, death a concept that Luca does not yet understand. As such, he often runs away looking for his mother. On a mutual agreement between Paolo and Mary, Mary becomes Luca's guardian, she who will receive help in raising Luca by her fellow Scorpioni and financial help from Paolo as needed. Associated with the Scorpioni is a brash younger nouveau riche ...
Plot Keywords: historical, war, world war ii, italy, coming of age, female perspective, cultural clash ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Angelo Barberini is the oddball son of Italian immigrants Gino and Maria, who inadvertently ended up in Canada rather than the States. Angelo shocks his parents by moving out on his own without getting married, and shocks them further still when he reveals that he's gay. But his boyfriend, policeman Nino Paventi isn't as ready to come out of the closet -- especially not to his busybody mother, Lina.—Shannon Patrick Sullivan <shannon@mun.ca>
Plot Keywords: comedy, romance, family, lgbt, immigration, coming of age, cultural clash ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: When her father, Giancarlo is transferred to Rome from the small country town of Montalto Di Castro, Caterina, a 12 years old girl, will discover her new classmates, a totally new world, an ambient extremely divided politically. She starts developing her friendship with the "left side", represented by Margherita, and the right, Daniela, side of her class. She will lose herself, without knowing who she really is. However, maybe Edward, the young Australian boy, who lives in the apartment across hers, can help her more that she thinks.—filippo-3
Plot Keywords: comedy, romance, italy, city life, female protagonist, coming of age, culture clash ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: December 23, 1983: Just days before Christmas, the Oliverio family readies their Feast of the Seven Fishes, an Italian tradition stretching back to the old country of Calabria. Amidst the preparations, Tony Oliverio, a young man with big dreams and a bigger heart, wonders if he'll find love this Christmas season or spend it alone with his loud and loving family - Great Grandma Nonnie, Grandpa Johnny, Great Uncles Frankie and Carmine, his parents, his brother, and a host of friends. When Sarah, the girlfriend of his best friend Angelo, introduces Tony to Beth, it looks like Tony's holiday experience might take a turn for the better. That is unless Nonnie thinks Beth isn't good enough for her great-grandson, and Beth's Ivy League suitor doesn't steal her heart first. Come on inside, where it's warm, and the smells of cooking fish permeate the air, and let's have a visit.—Robert Tinnell
Plot Keywords: holiday movie, family drama, christmas, coming of age, 1980s, tradition, romance ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Overwhelmed by his wife, a postal worker from Northern Italy feigns disability to request a transfer to Milan. When he's unmasked, he is sent to a tiny village near Naples for two years. He moves there alone, scared and full of the typical prejudice about the south. But he meets lovely people who quickly make him feel at home. Now the challenge is to explain this to his wife, so he chooses to make her believe that his life is hell. A remake of the French film "Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis."—fleischman-49779
Plot Keywords: comedy, cultural differences, remake, humor, satire, small town, social satire ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: During a sunny Sicilian summer Tanino has a sweet and tender story with Sally, a young American tourist. But when summer is over, Sally flies back to the States forgetting Tanino and her camera. He instead cannot forget the girl and he decides to go to the States with the excuse of bringing back her the camera and to see the dreamland of any Sicilian. Tanino will discover that dreams don't always match with reality...—1felco
Plot Keywords: comedy, romance, italy, cultural clash, coming of age, youth, adventure ...
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