To Rome With Love (2012)

To Rome With Love (2012)

Available at Amazon.

To Rome with Love is a 2012 magical realist romantic comedy film written by, directed by, and starring Woody Allen. The film is set in Rome, Italy. The film was released in Italian theaters on April 13, 2012, and opened in Los Angeles and New York City on June 22, 2012.

The film features an ensemble cast, and Allen himself in his first acting role since 2006's Scoop. The story is told in four separate vignettes: a clerk who wakes up to find himself a celebrity, an architect who takes a trip back to the street he lived on as a student, a young couple on their honeymoon, and a funeral director who has a talent for singing in the shower.

To Rome with Love follows four interspersed but unrelated plotlines taking place in Rome.

American tourist Hayley falls in love with and becomes engaged to Italian pro bono lawyer Michelangelo while spending a summer in Rome. Her parents, Jerry and Phyllis, fly to Italy to meet her fiancé and his parents. During the visit, Michelangelo's mortician father Giancarlo sings in the shower and Jerry, a retired—and critically reviled—opera director, feels inspired to bring Giancarlo's gift to the public. Jerry convinces a reluctant Giancarlo to audition in front of a room of opera bigwigs, but Giancarlo performs poorly in this setting. Michelangelo accuses Jerry of embarrassing his father and trying to use him to revive his own failed career, which in turn breeds discontent between Michelangelo and Hayley. Jerry then realizes that Giancarlo's talent is tied to the comfort and freedom he feels in the shower; Jerry stages a concert in which Giancarlo performs at the Teatro dell'Opera while actually washing himself onstage in a purpose-built shower. This is a great success, so Jerry and Giancarlo decide to stage the opera Pagliacci, with an incongruous shower present in all scenes. Giancarlo receives rave reviews, while Jerry is unaware that his direction has again been slammed as he doesn't understand Italian and so cannot read the reviews. Giancarlo decides to retire from opera singing, because he prefers working as a mortician and spending time with his family. But he appreciates being given the chance to live his dream of performing Pagliacci, and his success has mended the relationship between Michelangelo and Hayley.

Newlyweds Antonio and Milly plan to move from their rustic hometown to Rome because Antonio's posh uncles have offered him a job in their family's business. The couple check into their hotel, and Milly decides to visit a salon before meeting Antonio's relatives for the first time. She becomes hopelessly lost and loses her cell phone, but ends up stumbling upon a film shoot where she meets Luca Salta, an actor whom she idolizes. He invites her to lunch. Back at the hotel, Antonio is worried that Milly has not returned in time for their lunch date with his aunts and uncles. Anna, a prostitute, then arrives, having mistakenly been sent to his room. Despite his protests, she wrestles him into a compromising position just as his relatives arrive; the only way he can think to save face is to introduce Anna as Milly, and he convinces her to pose as Milly for the day. The group goes to lunch at the same restaurant where Luca takes Milly. Antonio becomes jealous as Luca flirts with Milly, but they don't see him. Antonio's uncles and aunts then take him to a fancy party. Antonio has nothing in common with the people to whom his uncles introduce him, but most of the male guests turn out to be Anna's clients. Anna and Antonio go for a walk in the garden, and Antonio talks about how pure and good Milly is. When Anna finds out he was a virgin before he met Milly, she seduces him in the bushes. Meanwhile, Luca brings Milly to his hotel room and tries to seduce her. Milly decides to have sex with him, but then a gun-armed thief emerges from hiding and demands their valuables. Suddenly, Luca's wife and a private investigator arrive. Milly and the thief climb into bed and fool Mrs. Salta into believing the hotel room is theirs while Luca hides in the bathroom. Once his wife has left, Luca runs off. The burglar flirts with Milly and she has sex with him instead. When she returns to the hotel room, she and Antonio decide to return to their rustic hometown—but first they begin to make love.

Leopoldo lives a mundane life with his wife and two children. The best part of his day is watching his boss's beautiful secretary Serafina walk around the office. Inexplicably, he wakes up one morning to discover that he has become a national celebrity. Paparazzi document his every movement. Reporters ask him what he had for breakfast, if he wears boxers or briefs, whether he thinks it will rain. Leopoldo even becomes a manager at his company, and Serafina sleeps with him. He begins dating models and attending fancy film premieres. The constant attention wears on him, though. One day, in the middle of interviewing Leopoldo, the paparazzi spot a man "who looks more interesting," and they abandon Leopoldo. At first, Leopoldo welcomes the return to his old life. But one afternoon he breaks down when no one asks for his autograph. Leopoldo has learned that life can be monotonous and wearying whether one is a celebrity or a normal man. Still, it is much better to be a weary celebrity than it is to be a weary regular man.

John, a well-known architect, is visiting Rome with his wife and their friends. John lived there some thirty years ago, and he would rather revisit his old haunts than go sightseeing with the others. While looking for his old apartment building, John meets Jack, an American architecture student who recognizes him. Jack happens to live in John's old building, and invites him up to the apartment he shares with his girlfriend Sally. (Throughout the rest of the story, John appears suddenly and inexplicably around Jack and makes unusually frank observations of events; reviewers have suggested that either John is an older mentor Jack imagines for himself, or John is reliving events from his past.) Sally tells Jack that she invited her best friend Monica, an actress, to stay with them while she recovers from a rough breakup. According to Sally, Monica gives off a sexual vibe that drives men crazy. John predicts Monica will bring trouble, but Jack can not imagine why he would be attracted to his girlfriend's best friend. Monica arrives, and one of her first conversations with Jack is about her intense sexual relationship with a female lingerie model. Because Sally has classes, she often asks Jack to show Monica around Rome. Monica impresses Jack with her knowledge of literature and art. Meanwhile, John keeps telling Jack that Monica will lead him to trouble and he criticizes her pseudo-intellectual facade. Even though John cautions Jack against cheating with Monica, he begins to succumb to her charms. Sally sets Monica up with one of their friends, and Jack is jealous of their relationship. One night he and Monica decide to cook dinner for Sally and for Monica's boyfriend. They flirt more and more until Jack kisses Monica; they go down to his car to have sex. Jack plans to leave Sally for Monica, but they decide Jack should wait until Sally finishes her midterms for Jack to break up with her. The trio go out for lunch after Sally's exams, and when they are alone, Jack tells Monica he plans to dump Sally that night. They make plans to travel to Greece and Sicily together. Then Monica receives a phone call from her agent and learns she has been offered a role in a Hollywood blockbuster. She will film in Los Angeles and Tokyo for the next five months and she immediately becomes completely focused on preparing for the role. She forgets about traveling with Jack, and he realizes how shallow she is. John and Jack walk back to the Roman street corner where they met and they part ways.

Branded (2012)

Branded (2012)

Available at Amazon.

Branded (also known as The Mad Cow and Москва 2017) is a 2012 Russian and American science fiction film written and directed by Jamie Bradshaw and Aleksandr Dulerayn. It was released on September 7, 2012.

As the movie begins, the names of famous visionaries including Joan of Arc, Albert Einstein and Alexander the Great flash on the screen. A caption reads, "All of them saw things others didn't see. All of them changed the world."

In the early 1980s, in Soviet Russia, young Misha Galkin is in a public park at night looking at the stars. Suddenly the stars shift into the outline of a cow's head, which turns and looks at him. Moments later, Misha is struck by lightning. A woman examines him and, seeing that he is still alive, predicts that his life will not be ordinary.

In present-day Russia, Misha (Ed Stoppard) has grown up to become a high-powered marketing executive working with Bob Gibbons (Jeffrey Tambor). When Bob's niece Abby (Leelee Sobieski) comes to visit from America, Bob warns Misha to keep his hands off the girl, but despite Bob's warning, Abby and Misha drift into a relationship. Misha tells Abby various trivia about the history of marketing, such as that Vladimir Lenin invented modern marketing, and that Communism was the first true global brand.

Meanwhile, on a private Polynesian island, a marketing guru named Joseph Pascal (Max von Sydow) is meeting with the executives of fast food companies. The guru tells them that, to make fast food profitable again, they must change public perceptions of beauty and "make fat the new fabulous." An unseen voice-over narrator says that the companies agreed to carry out the guru's plan.

In a series of documentary-style flashbacks, narrated by the same unseen narrator, we see how Misha used his natural marketing savvy to rise from a poor clerk to a marketing exec. Misha's big break came when he met Bob, an American hired to spread Western brands and businesses in post-Communist Russia. In the present, Bob discovers Abby's relationship with Misha and is furious.

Misha is hired to do marketing for a new reality TV show, "Extreme Cosmetica," in which an overweight girl will undergo extensive plastic surgery to become skinny and beautiful. Everything goes wrong when, after the first operation, the girl falls into a coma. The public turns against the show and the glorification of skinny bodytypes in general, and Misha, as the show's marketer, becomes the scapegoat. He is swarmed by protesters, beaten by police and arrested. When he is released from jail, he angrily confronts his former partner Bob, saying that he's realized the truth: the show and the coma was all orchestrated in order to induce Abby and Misha to split up. Bob denies it ("it would take millions of dollars to manipulate public opinion that way, and it would take the greatest assassin in the world to fake the operation to put that girl in a coma!") Later, at a bar, they get in a fight, and then, Bob has a heart attack.

Full of guilt from the "Extreme Cosmetica" girl's fate, Misha realizes that "his marketing powers are a curse" (as explained by the narrator) and he leaves Moscow and withdraws from modern society. Six years later, Abby tracks him down to a rural community where Misha is living the simple life as a cowherd. While Abby is visiting him, Misha has a strange dream. In a dreamlike state, he performs the Red Heifer ritual, sacrificing a red cow and bathing in its ashes. When he wakes up from the ritual cleansing, he discovers to his horror that he has developed the ability to see strange eel- or blob-like creatures which cling to people's necks and appear to be the embodiment of marketing brand desires.

Abby takes Misha to her apartment in Moscow where she reveals that she is rich (due to an inheritance from Bob) and that they have a six-year-old son. In the intervening six years, the "fat is fabulous" campaign has changed society, everyone is overweight and images of fat people are used in advertising everywhere. Their son is also overweight and loves "The Burger" and other junk-food brands. Distressed by his grotesque visions no one else can see and disgusted by the rampant commercialism around him, Misha impulsively trashes Abby's apartment. Frightened by his behavior, Abby leaves Misha and takes their son with her.

Misha develops a plan to fight back against the branding-creatures using their own methods. Going back to his old company, he accepts a job to do marketing for Dim Song, a vegetarian Chinese restaurant chain. At the meeting with the executives, he perceives tentacles growing out of their necks connecting them to the collective Dim Song corporate-branding entity. Using dialogue which parallels Pascal's speech to the fast food executives earlier in the movie, he promises to fix Dim Song's problems. Misha's solution is to cause a fake anti-beef scare (using the public's fear of a mysterious virus similar to Bovine spongiform encephalopathy a.k.a Mad cow disease) which will frighten people from eating meat, thus turning them towards vegetarian food.

The anti-beef scare works, and burger sales drop precipitously. From the rooftop of a building, Misha watches a dragon-like entity hatch from an egg on top of the Dim Song building and fly towards The Burger restaurant, ripping apart and killing The Burger's corporate embodiment. Misha predicts that The Burger will go bankrupt within a week, and his prediction comes true. Back on the Polynesian island, the marketing guru tells the distressed fast food executives that they are in trouble, but there is still a way to save their brands. Before he can tell them his new plan, however, he is vaporized by a bolt of lightning.

Misha continues his plan to destroy the world's major brands by using fear-based marketing to make customers afraid of them one by one. In a CG sequence, the brand creatures fly over the city attacking and killing one another: "Yepple" killing "GiantSoft", etc. Public opinion turns against marketing in general, and the Russian parliament considers a bill banning all advertising. Depressed and alone in his corporate office, Misha leaves a message on Abby's cellphone, asking her for forgiveness. At that very moment, Abby shows up. Suddenly, the building is raided by anti-advertising protesters, who smash through the doors and assault the employees. Misha is struck down while he and Abby try to escape. At that moment, an emergency broadcast plays on TV, saying that Russia and the other nations of the world have agreed to ban all advertising. The protesters stop their rampage, but Misha is already lying on the floor, bleeding from a head wound.

Some time later, all advertising has been banned, the Moscow skyline is free of billboards, and bulldozers are crushing old advertising materials in the dump. In the hospital, Misha has awakened with a bandage on his head, and is playing with Abby and his son. In another room in the same hospital, the "Extreme Cosmetica" girl awakens from her coma and wanders out into the advertising-free city streets. The voice-over narrator explains that thanks to Misha, the world was changed forever. The camera pans up into the night sky and reveals that the narrator is the cow constellation that young Misha saw at the beginning of the movie.