FilmJerk Favorites

A group of unique directors and the essential works that you've got to see.

||| Sergio Leone |||
Sergio Leone

Leone’s career is remarkable in its unrelenting attention to both American culture and the American genre film, exploring the mythic America he created with each successive film examining the established characters in greater depth.

Only his second feature (a remake of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo), Leone's landmark "spaghetti western" caused a revolution and features Clint Eastwood in his breakthrough role as "The Man With No Name". This classic brutal drama of feuding families wasn’t the first spaghetti Western, but it was far and away the most successful up to that time.

Plot is of minimal interest, but character is everything to Leone, who places immense meaning in the slightest flick of an eyelid, extensively using the extreme close-up on the eyes to reveal any feeling, as demonstrated by Clint, who squints his way through this slam-bang sequel to A Fistful of Dollars as a wandering gunslinger that must combine forces with his nemesis to track down a wanted killer.

The final chapter in the groundbreaking trilogy follows Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach as they form an uneasy alliance to find a stash of hidden gold. Leone focuses on his central theme as they find themselves facing greed, treachery, and murder, showing that the desire for wealth and power turns men into ruthless creatures who violate land and family and believe that a man’s death is less important than how he faces it.

Recommended by CarrieSpecht

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After Midnight (Dopo Mezzanotte)

By EdwardHavens

December 2nd, 2004

It’s very easy to fall for “After Midnight” (Dopo Mezzanotte), a light, breezy and joyous little Italian film which celebrates love, apprehension, 13th Century mathematician Leonardo Pisano Fibonacci and the age of silent cinema. Set in the cavernous and majestic Mole Antonelliana in Turin (think an indoor Eiffel Tower entirely devoted to movies), this charming, picturesque three-person dramatic comedy is a pleasure to behold and one any lover of cinema would be wise to keep on their radar of films to seek out.


As most of the city of Turin goes to sleep, three of the city’s residents are hard at work. Sort of. Amanda (the curiously luminescent Francesca Inauda) tries to finish her nightly duties at a local fast food joint a bit early, so she doesn’t miss the last bus at midnight back to her Falchera neighborhood, lest she walk home alone five miles in the middle of the night. Her boyfriend, known around as The Angel of Falchera (Fabio Troiano), occasionally picks her up at work, when he’s not out stealing cars for a living, but then all he wants is some quick shagging back at her place before slinking back to work, or some other hussy he has on the side. And there is Amanda’s one regular customer, Martino (Giorgio Pasotti), who comes more for the few moments of personal contact with his dream girl than for the greasy burger and fries. Not that Amanda would ever notice the adorably cute young man on her own, until one fateful evening when she drenches her imperious boss with scalding oil and runs into the first open building she sees as she runs away... the Mole Antonelliana, where Martino works alone all night as the night watchman.

In need of a place to hide out while the police are looking for her, Amanda is fortunate to find Martino has converted one of the Mole’s hidden upstairs rooms into a quiet living space he has built, which mimics the ingenuity he has seen in several silent movies with Buster Keaton (to whom this film is dedicated to). As the narrator of the film, who sounds like the Italian version of the chronicler of “Amélie,” points out, “Martino likes Buster Keaton movies from a strictly practical point of view. They give him ideas to improve his daily life, which is what should be said of any good movie.” So while Amanda hides out in the Mole, she slowly starts to fall for Martino, while The Angel, unaware of where she is hiding, busies himself with Amanda’s roommate, setting up a rather peculiar romantic quadrangle. Amanda doesn’t want to give up The Angel, but doesn’t want to shut out Martino, while The Angel isn’t exactly ready to let go of Amanda, but he doesn’t want to force her to stay with him either. Martino is fine with whatever happens, as long as it means being with Amanda, and the roomie hopes Amanda eventually gives up on The Angel so she can have him all to herself.

Director Davide Ferrario clearly knows and loves movies, deftly paying homage to the spirit of the filmmakers of yore, often emulating the pre-sound era by telling his story with an economy of words and an abundance of images, smartly enticing stimulating but unassuming performances from his quartet of actors, all relative newcomers to American audiences, which helps us effortlessly accept them for whom they are. Perhaps not ironically, Ferrario and his cinematographer Dante Cecchin chose to shoot “After Midnight” in high definition video, which gives the film that same slightly ethereal atmosphere which helped Michael Mann perfectly set the tone for his recent “Collateral.” If there can be any complaints about the film at all, which effortlessly passes by in a expeditious 89 minutes, it would be concerning the unsatisfying, albeit not unexpected, resolution of one of the major character’s dilemma, handled in such an unpropitious manner that a small portion of the film’s considerable good will wears off.

”After Midnight” may never come to a theatre near you, if you do not live in one of the major metropolitan areas, which would be a shame. We go the movies for many reasons, none more so than to be entertained, which this film does with much success.

My rating: A-