Italian Cinema Today

“The Leisure Seeker” is Italian director Paolo Virzìs first English-language feature film. Starring Helen Mirren as Ella and Donald Sutherland as John, it follows a couple who leave town, traveling from Massachusetts to Florida, without informing anyone, including their two adult children. The kids find out about their departure when their son, Will, pays them a visit and is informed by the couple’s neighbor that she heard them depart very early in the morning in their 1975 Winnebago, which bears the name of the film’s title. Will then launches a hunt to find his parents and return them safely home, but Ella has other plans. She intends to take John, an intellectual and aficionado of Ernest Hemingway, to the Hemingway Home & Museum in Key West.   John is grappling with dementia and Ella, who copes with her sorrow by drinking a steady stream of whiskey, is clearly knocking on death’s door. “The Leisure Seeker” is a testament to their right to spend their final days as they wish ...

With a gift for melding disparate clips into compelling documentaries, he has captured the spirit of Italian cinema from the 1930s to the present. Marco Spagnoli is one of Italy’s most prolific film journalists, having made numerous documentaries on the country’s beloved film icons and reporting in-depth about cinema for a variety of publications.   Among his most compelling works is the 2011 documentary “Hollywood Invasion,” which zooms in on Italian and European cinema during the “Dolce Vita” decades from 1950-80. Utilizing NBC newsreels to tell his story, Spagnoli offers an extraordinary take on this period in cinematic history.   The film features rare clips of Hollywood stars like Gregory Peck, Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe roaming about Italy in the 1950s, as well as tantalizing behind-the-scenes glimpses of several American productions. Marilyn Monroe in a scene from  “Hollywood Invasion”  You’ll have a front-row seat to the creation of iconic moments like...