Author's judgement: 
Here A Beautiful Day, strong colors for noble purposes. The theme of revenge, of private justice, of direct, personal and immediate compensation for a serious offense or violence, is recurrent in cinema. Just to refresh your memory we can start from afar with the whole western saga, passing through Kill Bill by Quentin Tarantino, and we get in the way Star Wars by George Lucas, to then get to the trilogy of the Korean Park Chan Wook with Oldboy and sequels. It is a subject that human history has for millennia reported as central to human affairs, whether private or public, and exemplary stories are told in literature, from Homer to Shakespeare, from Dante to Alexandre Dumas.
It was released in theaters in recent days A beautiful day by Scottish director Lynne Ramsay, already awarded at Cannes last year for best screenplay and best male performance. The story is harsh and violent and is portrayed in a way that is rarely seen on the big screen. The story and the images are for viewers with strong stomachs, accustomed to distilled adrenaline rushes.
The protagonist, a capital letter Joaquin Phoenix, a former war veteran with all kinds of human atrocities behind him, by profession he is a hitman for a good purpose (which is saying something). He is assigned to find and free a little girl prey to a gang of pedophiles made up of powerful politicians. Precisely in this perverse and wicked circle he finds himself entangled in a vortex of pure atrocity where he himself will be victim and executioner. The film ends as it should be in a limbo of moral judgment to be verified. The bad ones will perish in hell and the good ones will live in peace but, perhaps, the sense of justice is – at least momentarily – set aside.
The film flows almost perfectly. The direction is solid, attentive to the scan of the times, to the well-groomed but not affected images. Sequences and close-ups of the characters and situations are edited with the right timing and small but precious shooting inventions are not uncommon. The whole film plays on the stage presence of the protagonist who, not surprisingly, has deserved the right recognition with a prestigious award. The scenes of violence have a strong emotional impact and do not appear stronger than many other films of the genre. They come back to memory Taxi Driver by Martin Scorsese, as well as David Cronenbergh with A History of Violence of 2005. The comparison is not allowed: this A beautiful day deserves attention for the originality and modernity of the direction (it should be noted that the film is produced by Amazon Studios and in those parts they have in mind the new narrative languages necessary to package a universal product) and bodes well for the future.
Side notes: save the ticket money for The professors arrive by Ivan Silvestrini. A rare example of how cinema is not made, of how the little good of national productions is damaged. Everything ungrammatical, from the dialogues to the characters, from the lights to the shots. While resisting at the box office Escobar - the charm of evil, a mediocre film but one that gives an idea of how good the three Ss of cinema and television are: sex, blood and money.
Put two proposals on the calendar. The first is the return to theaters, for just two days from 12 to 14 May, of the documentary film Maria by Callas. For those who love bel canto it is an unmissable event. The second date that we propose is with the vision of the remastered and restored version of Ultimo tango a Parigi by Bernardo Bertolucci from 1972, presented to the recent Bifest – Bari International Film Festival – with original scenes and dialogues. Screenings are scheduled for May 7,8,9 and 23,24 but it is necessary check in your own cities where there may be variations.
