Spartacus (1960)
Movie Watch
Director Stanley Kubrick tells the tale of Spartacus (Kirk Douglas), the bold gladiator slave and...
Bugged!: Just the Travel Bug...
Book
Trot the globe wearing a robe, nibbling cheese, speak Spanish to the Chinese, Roam around Rome,...
Vindolanda
Book
AD 98: The bustling army base at Vindolanda lies on the northern frontier of Britannia and the...
John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)
Movie Watch
Legendary hitman John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is forced out of retirement once again by a former...
Arianna Huffington recommended Meditations in Books (curated)
Sign of the Cross (Cal Donovan, #1)
Book
Abruzzo, Italy: a young priest suffers the stigmata of the crucifixion. The Vatican, Rome: the...
Examined Lives
Book
Who are we? How should we live? Professor James Miller introduces twelve great philosophers who...
Gareth von Kallenbach (977 KP) rated To Rome with Love (2012) in Movies
Aug 7, 2019
Offering amplified versions of reality, “To Rome with Love” simultaneously feels close to home and utterly foreign. And this ebb and flow defines the entire picture.
With a blend of actors the film runs a marathon of bipolar juxtaposition. From familiar Hollywood faces, playing characters so typified that they needn’t be explained, to European actors, who bring honest perspective to the tourist filled environment.
And “To Rome with Love” is unexpected. There’s a Baldwin in a self-reflective role. Roberto Benigni plays a character that is downright drab. All while sharing a series of stories that question the absurd nature of the human experience.
The film shakes viewers up by exposing them to moments so stereotypic that are simple to grasp yet impossible to believe. And the result is effortless comedy.
Moreover, using only simple effects, strategic angular tricks and precise framing of scenes, “To Rome with Love” gets the audience thinking. The result is an hour and forty minutes that fly by like a dense vacation, too good to explain to your friends back home.
While I will avoid the pretentious research and amplified hyper analysis that follows Woody Allen, I do want to make one point clear; this is a film that anyone, regardless of interest in film study, is apt to enjoy, sure to find funny, and for a few might, even serve as a launch pad to into the cinema of the human condition.