Meaning Of Life – Jeremy C. Processing

The Last One for the Road
(Le Città di Pianura)

Director – Francesco Sossai – 2025 – Italy – Cert. 15 – 100m

****

Two older men travel around Italy by car, constantly stopping for “a last one for the road”, joined by a young architecture student – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 10th

Night. Two men passed out in a car. A voiceover relates a local myth, shown to us in flashback as he describes it. On the day that Primo (Gianni Da Re) retires from the workforce, he is taken aside by officials and… presented with a gift from the company president (Roberto Citran from Conclave, Edward Berger, 2024; The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story, Peter Greenaway, 2003; Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, John Madden, 2001) who flies in by helicopter. As the latter leaves, he tells Primo the secret of life, but his words are lost in the noise of the ‘copter blades. At the back, a figure leaves.

In the car, moustache wakes up. It’s still dark. Dori (Pierpaulo Capovilla) is still out. They wake. The go for a last one for the road. Moustache, who is Carlobianchi (Sergio Romano), can’t remember what it was he was saying. It’s gone. It was something important.… Read the rest

The Inventor

Directors – Jim Capobianco, Pierre-Luc Granjon – 2023 – US, France, Ireland – Cert. PG – 100m

****

Towards the end of his life, inventor Leonardo da Vinci goes to live in France under the patronage of the King – stop frame / drawn animation composite is out in the UK’s Vue cinemas on Friday, March 8th

Rome, Italy, 1516. Leonardo da Vinci (voice: Stephen Fry) happily shows off a giant optical system of magnifying glasses for observing the heavens to his assistant Francesco Melzi (voice: Angelino Sandri). Francesco retorts that Leonardo ought to be worried about the Pope who has spies everywhere (and sure enough, there are eyes watching from nearby peepholes). Leonardo’s other assistant, the hulking, mute Zoroastro sources corpses for him, on which the curious Leonardo performs dissections and studies what he finds through making drawings in his quest for find the animated spirit of man, a search which, in dreams and visions, often leads him into confrontation with a mysterious, gargantuan, dark-hooded figure.

The inventor is summoned to Pope Leo X (voice: Matt Berry) who wants to know, why can’t Leonardo just make pretty things? The arrival of a messenger whose helmet is half crushed by a cannonball leads Leo to suggest Leonardo fashion him machines of war.… Read the rest