Sunday, July 11 – 11:30 AM
CHLOE
Directed by Atom Egoyan
With Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson, Amanda Seyfried
US/Canada/France, 2009, 96 minutes, rated R for sexual content

Catherine and David are a well-to-do couple whose marriage is in crisis; will hiring young “Chloe” to test David’s fidelity save it? Catherine seems to think so. But when Chloe reports back to her, it’s not clear whether Catherine wants her suspicions allayed or confirmed. And it soon becomes evident that Chloe may want something more besides cash from their business arrangement.

“A master of sexual obsession and seduction. Chloe, one of Atom Egoyan’s best, begins as a hypnotic story of suspicion and jealousy and continues through passion and eroticism to an unexpected conclusion.” – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

“Few filmmakers have the gift of Atom Egoyan, the Canadian director of Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter, of establishing a mood so supercharged that your internals combust.”
– Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer

“Moore and Neeson beautifully underplay their roles, lending screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson's (Secretary) dialogue an unexpected, palpable poignancy.” – Michael Rechtshaffen, Hollywood Reporter

Sunday, July 25 – 11:30 AM
Sponsored by Cinema Italiano of St. Thomas Aquinas College
VINCERE
Directed by Marco Belloccio
With  Filippo Timi, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Fausto Russo Alesi
Italy/France, 2009, 128 minutes

The tale of Benito Mussolini’s rise to power via a fictional retelling of his seduction and catastrophic betrayal of his reputed “first wife,” Ida Dalser. The cost of her love for the future dictator is devastating. Their relationship is traced from their initial meeting through the birth of their son (when he’s married to another) to his powerful fascist victories. A sustained, aesthetically exhilarating and exhausting portrait.

“Writer-director Marco Bellocchio's Vincere is an amazing, galvanic experience.” – Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor

“Well, if you care about movies, I'm telling you to carve out time for Vincere, a strange and powerful blend of historical fact and dreamlike imagination that captures both the charisma and the murderous madness of the young Benito Mussolini.” – Andrew O’Hehir, salon.com

“The great Marco Bellocchio burlesques Il Duce while sweeping you up in the excitement of his rise. The movie, a near-masterpiece, is a monument to intoxication: of sexual conquest, of military conquest, and, most of all, of cinema.” – David Edelstein, New York Magazine

“Vincere, which comes as close to grand opera as can be achieved without anyone actually bursting into song, feels like a big movie – handsomely mounted, full of dark shadows counterpointed with stray shafts of light, with dramatic close-ups of faces driven by passion and madness and heavy silences brutally interrupted by clashing tympani. Yet the movie's scale is small and resolutely personal, filtering politics discreetly through character and individual destiny.” – Ella Taylor, NPR

“Like the Hollywood B-movie directors of the golden age who created worlds out of shadows, Mr. Bellocchio resurrects the tragedy of an entire nation with newsreel footage, some smoke, bits of Futurist art and the image of one Italian son in whose devastated face you see millions.” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times