Ovosodo (1997)
Life... what a sweet, cruel, silly thing.
Genre : Comedy, Drama
Runtime : 1H 40M
Director : Paolo Virzì
Writer : Francesco Bruni, Paolo Virzì, Furio Scarpelli
Synopsis
From childhood to fatherhood, Piero learns things the hard way while growing up in a working-class neighborhood of Livorno.
Five high school students from different walks of life endure a Saturday detention under a power-hungry principal. The disparate group includes rebel John, princess Claire, outcast Allison, brainy Brian and Andrew, the jock. Each has a chance to tell his or her story, making the others see them a little differently -- and when the day ends, they question whether school will ever be the same.
This teenage drama deals with the emotional chaos of a high school graduate at the beginning of a new period of his life. 19-year-old Daniel is frustrated: he wants his great love Luca to be the "first" woman in his life, but she seems to be unreachable, so he is still a virgin. During his community service as a male nurse, his boss Anna falls in love with him and they finally have sex. Suddenly Luca is interested in Daniel...
Kati drives the VW bus of her parents even without a license quite fast. But what else should one do in the Bavarian province? Kati and her best friend Jo keep asking themselves this question when they philosophize about God and the world with the tip in one hand and the beer in the other hand. After all, Kati's swarm Mike has just come back from the Bundeswehr, but while she dreams of the great love, he seems to take the matter far less seriously. And there's only stress with her dad.
Set in the changing world of the late 1960s, Susanna Kaysen's prescribed "short rest" from a psychiatrist she had met only once becomes a strange, unknown journey into Alice's Wonderland, where she struggles with the thin line between normal and crazy. Susanna soon realizes how hard it is to get out once she has been committed, and she ultimately has to choose between the world of people who belong inside or the difficult world of reality outside.
Oskar Matzerath is a very unusual boy. Refusing to leave the womb until promised a tin drum by his mother, Agnes, Oskar is reluctant to enter a world he sees as filled with hypocrisy and injustice, and vows on his third birthday to never grow up. Miraculously, he gets his wish. As the Nazis rise to power in Danzig, Oskar wills himself to remain a child, beating his tin drum incessantly and screaming in protest at the chaos surrounding him.
In 1973, 15-year-old William Miller's unabashed love of music and aspiration to become a rock journalist lands him an assignment from Rolling Stone magazine to interview and tour with the up-and-coming band, Stillwater.
At a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, a bumbling dispatcher’s apprentice longs to liberate himself from his virginity. Oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds him, this young man embarks on a journey of sexual awakening and self-discovery, encountering a universe of frustration, eroticism, and adventure within his sleepy backwater depot.
A couple of high school graduates spend one final night cruising the strip with their buddies before they go off to college.
Various experiences of childhood are seen in several sequences that take place in the small town of Thiers, France. Vignettes include a boy's awakening interest in girls, couples double-dating at the movies, brothers giving their friend a haircut, a boy dealing with an abusive home life, a baby and a cat sitting by an open window, a child telling a dirty joke, and a boy who develops a crush on his friend's mother.
A film about three teenagers - Klara, Mina and Tanutscha - from the Berlin district of Kreuzberg. The trio have known each other since Kindergarten and have plenty in common. The three 15-year-olds are the best of friends; they are spending the summer at Prinzenbad, a large open-air swimming pool at the heart of the district where they live. They're feeling pretty grown up, and are convinced they've now left their childhood behind.
Lili, a pouty and voluptuous 14-year-old, is caravan camping with her family in Biarritz. She's self-aware and holds her own in a café conversation with a concert pianist she meets, but she has a wild streak and she's testing her powers over men, finding that she doesn't always control her moods or actions, and she's impatient with being a virgin. She sets off with her brother to a disco, latching onto an aging playboy who is himself hot and cold to her. She is ambivalent about losing her virginity that night, willing the next, and determined by the third.
Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation with his daughter's attractive friend.
County Durham England 1984 the miners strike has started and the police have started coming up from Bethnal Green starting a class war with the lower classes suffering caught in the middle of the conflict is 11-year old Billy Elliot who after leaving his boxing club for the day stubbles upon a ballet class and finds out that he's naturally talented. He practices with his teacher Mrs Wilkinson for an upcoming audition in Newcastle-upon Tyne the audition is for the royal Ballet school in London.
Expecting the usual tedium that accompanies a summer in the Catskills with her family, 17-year-old Frances 'Baby' Houseman is surprised to find herself stepping into the shoes of a professional hoofer—and unexpectedly falling in love.
Anaïs is twelve and bears the weight of the world on her shoulders. She watches her older sister, Elena, whom she both loves and hates. Elena is fifteen and devilishly beautiful. Neither more futile, nor more stupid than her younger sister, she cannot understand that she is merely an object of desire. And, as such, she can only be taken. Or had. Indeed, this is the subject: a girl's loss of virginity. And, that summer, it opens a door to tragedy.
Determined to have a normal family life once his mother gets out of prison, a Scottish teenager from a tough background sets out to raise the money for a home.
In Mexico, two teenage boys and an attractive older woman embark on a road trip and learn a thing or two about life, friendship, sex, and each other.
A group of male friends become obsessed with five mysterious sisters who are sheltered by their strict, religious parents.
In 1970s Iran, Marjane 'Marji' Statrapi watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family of a long dream being fulfilled of the hated Shah's defeat in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. However as Marji grows up, she witnesses first hand how the new Iran, now ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, has become a repressive tyranny on its own.
At a high-school party, four friends find that losing their collective virginity isn't as easy as they had thought. But they still believe that they need to do so before college. To motivate themselves, they enter a pact to all "score" by their senior prom.
An IT company hires an actor to serve as the company's president in order to help the business get sold to a cranky Icelander.
Postwar Germany, 1945. Leopold Kessler, an American of German descent, works as a sleeping car conductor for the Zentropa railway line. When he meets Katharina Hartmann, the railroad owner's daughter, and they fall in love, his life intersects with the dark and violent path of a mysterious organization opposed to the United States army military occupation.
Peppino is an aging taxidermist constantly ridiculed for being short and somewhat creepy. He meets Valerio, a handsome young man fascinated by Peppino's work. Peppino, in turn, becomes entranced by Valerio and offers him a large salary to come work as his assistant. But when Valerio meets Deborah, their fledgling romance is threatened by an insanely jealous third wheel.
A rich businessman is fed up with work, family, society, and goes with his accountant to Africa, in search of his brother-in-law who had vanished there in mysterious circumstances. They will find him alright - as a tribal chief, surrounded with lots of topless, shapely wives. They are going to return to civilisation, but will their friend come with them?
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...
When her social-climbing father is relocated from small-town North to his native Rome, 12-year-old Caterina enrolls to his old school, finding herself in an completely different environment where students rigidly divide themselves in subcultures based on social class and their parents' political affiliation.
April 24, 1993: it's the last broadcast of Radiofreccia, a small radio station that's closing after 18 years, barely one minute before coming of age. Bruno, one of its founders, starts to tell its story, which is also the story of a group of friends – especially troubled Freccia's – and a period of their youth in a little Northern Italian town.
Now 25, brilliant Marta seems to have her whole life ahead after majoring in philosophy, but she has to face the ugly truth for young graduates in Italy: a complete lack of work opportunities outside of temp jobs. While babysitting for single mother Sonia, she starts to work at the call center of a company selling junk to housewives, quickly rising through its ranks and experiencing first-hand the fanatical and exploitative competition culture pushed on young employees. Around her revolve other people, like delusional supervisor Daniela, her boss Claudio, fragile coworker Lucio, and well-meaning but inconsistent union official Giorgio.
The film tells the story of the Michelucci family, from the nineteen-seventies to the present day: the central character is the stunningly beautiful Anna, the lively, frivolous and sometimes embarrassing mother of Bruno and Valeria. Everything begins in the Summer of 1971, at the annual Summer beauty pageant held at Livorno’s most popular bathing establishment. Anna is unexpectedly crowned “Most Beautiful Mother”, unwittingly stirring the violent jealousy of her husband. From then on, chaos strikes the family and for Anna, Bruno and his sister Valeria, it is the start of an adventure that will only end thirty years later.
After accidentally coming into contact with radioactive waste, small-time crook Enzo Ceccotti gains superpowers. A misanthropic, introverted brute, he uses his new powers for personal gain until he meets Alessia, a mentally challenged girl who believes Enzo’s the hero from her favorite Japanese anime series, Steel Jeeg.
The summer of his high school freshman year, Hodaka runs away from his remote island home to Tokyo, and quickly finds himself pushed to his financial and personal limits. The weather is unusually gloomy and rainy every day, as if taking its cue from his life. After many days of solitude, he finally finds work as a freelance writer for a mysterious occult magazine. Then, one day, Hodaka meets Hina on a busy street corner. This bright and strong-willed girl possesses a strange and wonderful ability: the power to stop the rain and clear the sky.
A grieving couple retreats to their cabin 'Eden' in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.
Growing up in post-World War II era Arizona, young Sammy Fabelman aspires to become a filmmaker as he reaches adolescence, but soon discovers a shattering family secret and explores how the power of films can help him see the truth.
After an encounter with UFOs, an electricity linesman feels undeniably drawn to an isolated area in the wilderness where something spectacular is about to happen.
The destinies of two families are irrevocably tied together after a cyclist is hit off the road by a jeep in the night before Christmas Eve.
An impressionable teenage girl from a dead-end town and her older greaser boyfriend embark on a killing spree in the South Dakota badlands.
During an August vacation on the island of Ventotene, two groups of Italians with diametrically opposed political views and social backgrounds find themselves living together as neighbors. An incident concerning an African immigrant triggers a series of confrontations that reveal hidden secrets, desires, and grudges.
Comedy about the flawed Italian healthcare system of the time and a doctor's expeirence with it.
Rome, 1990. The night Italy's national football team is eliminated from the World Cup by Argentina on penalty kicks, a well-known film producer is found dead in the Tiber river. The main suspects for the murder are three young aspiring screenwriters, who–promptly taken to the police–start to tell their version of the story.
Convenience and video store clerks Dante and Randal are sharp-witted, potty-mouthed and bored out of their minds. So in between needling customers, the counter jockeys play hockey on the roof, visit a funeral home and deal with their love lives.