In Ieri, oggi e domani, Pedro Armocida and Boris Sollazzo investigate the cinema di genere in contemporary Italian film production. In the introduction, the authors clarify that their intention is not to deal with filmmakers’ attempts to create new genre trends or to find new or personalised styles, but to initiate a discussion on cinema di genere in Italy, with the intention of paving the way for future research. Ironically, the title of their introduction, ‘L'uovo di Colombo’ (a reference to a brilliant idea that seems simple after the fact) alludes to the almost impossible mission of discussing the cinema di genere in today's Italian cinema (pp. 13–17). The volume's title clearly refers to Vittorio De Sica's 1963 film Ieri, oggi, domani, suggesting that the commedia all'italiana is probably the most constant genre, as Marzia Gandolfi affirms (p. 23).

Overall, the volume is a very careful and detailed analysis of Italian film genres that developed in the new millenium and its thesis can be summarised by Gabriele Mainetti's statement: ‘Il cinema di genere si nutre dell'identità dei propri registi. Il cinema di genere non è diverso dall'altro cinema. Il cinema è sempre cinema di genere’ (p. 293: ‘The cinema di genere is firmly connected to the identity of its directors. The cinema di genere is no different from any other cinema. Cinema is always cinema di genere’). The book offers a wide range of thought-provoking essays that analyse Italian films released from2000 to the present. It is divided into ten sections, each of which discusses a different aspect of Italian cinema in connection with a film genre. In the section ‘Il nuovo cinema di genere’, Marzia Gandolfi examines the  nuova onda di attori, the emergence of Alessandro Borghi, Luca Marinelli, Riccardo Scamarcio, Serena Rossi, Claudia Gerini and Micaela Ramazzotti as the new faces of the Italian star system. However, it is the actor Toni Servillo who, according to Gandolfi, has inaugurated a new star genre: the ‘“Servillo-film” in cui tutte le sue maschere e le sue metamorfosi rimandano a un'unica funzione: il potere. Potere che declina in tutti i film, in tutti i generi, e in tutte le sue apparizioni’ (p. 33: ‘“Servillo-film”, in which every character undergoes a metamorphosis that has only one function: power. In all films, Servillo personifies power in all kind of shapes and in all kind of nuances’). The section ‘I cavalli di Troia’ (‘The Trojan Horses’) highlights the contribution of some of the most recent and productive directors. Sergio Castellitto, Matteo Garrone, Luca Guadagnino, Paolo Sorrentino and Michele Placido were able to forge a kind of filmmaking within the tradition of Italian cinematic genres and themes, without identifying with any specific genre. In ‘Caro Matteo ti scrivo’, for instance, Enrico Magrelli discusses Garrone's production, showing how the director experiments with different genres (noir, gangster-movie, fantasy) from L'Imbalsamatore (2003) to Gomorra (2009) and Il racconto dei racconti (2015), in the attempt to narrate Italian society today. ‘Per una storia del genere italiano’ focuses on some of the genres that have dominated the Italian cinema since its inception. In the chapters ‘Appunti sulla commedia all'Italiana’ (pp. 85–96) and ‘Il nostro è sempre stato un cinema di genere’ (pp. 97–104) Bruno Torri and Simone Starace, respectively, see in the commedia all'italiana and the cinema civile the main genres of Italian cinema. Sollazzo encourages readers to consider as well the ‘Western e il poliziottesco’ (Westerns and crime thrillers) since they continue to be present today. According to Sollazzo, Stefano Sollima's ACAB (2012) and the television series Romanzo Criminale (2006–2008) and Gomorra (2014–the present), are provocative examples of the contemporary poliziottesco (p. 110), while Gabriele Mainetti's Lo chiamavano Jeeg Robot (2015) can be discussed as a contemporary western metropolitano (p. 108). All these concepts are reinforced by the authors of the sections ‘I Buoni, i Brutti e i Cattivi’ (‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’) in which directors such as Claudio Caligari (Non essere cattivo, 2015), Gabriele Salvatores, and Daniele Vicari are thoroughly discussed. Among all the genres analysed here, Franco Gattarola offers a special tribute to ‘Il genere pornografico in piedi tra le rovine del cinema italiano’ (‘The pornography genre, still standing amid the ruins of Italian cinema’, pp. 139–145), which contributed to the resurrection of Italian cinema between 1982 and 1984.

While Giona A. Nazzaro argues whether a film genre has ever existed in Italy, in the chapter ‘Schemi delle nostre brame. L'insostenibile singolarità del cinema di genere (che forse non è mai esistito)’, Marco Giusti in ‘Cinema di genere e cinema Italiano tra il 1980 ed il 2000’ (pp. 225–231) sees the years 2004–2005 as the turning-point moments of the reawakening of the film genre in Italy, thanks to films like Romanzo Criminale (2005) by Placido and Gomorra by Garrone, with its subsequent TV series. The same can be said about the independent films of the ‘underground’ section (‘Raffaele Meale. Apocalissi a basso costo. Un archipelago visionario’), a very productive low-budget industry, which is slowly surfacing. The section ‘Casi Studio’ offers interviews with well-known actors such as Stefano Accorsi, producers Francesca Cima and Nicola Giuliano of the Indigo Film Company, and Gabriele Mainetti. Lo chiamavano Jeeg Robot is considered the film that probably paved the way for a new genre, in the interview with Mainetti by Franco Dassisti. It is not accidental that the editors selected a still from the film for the book's front cover. ‘Testimonianze critiche’ serves as the volume's conclusion and illustrates the conflicting relationship between production, filmmakers, actors and audiences in today's cinema, mirroring Francesca Cantore's middle chapter ‘Il cinema di genere e la critica cinematografica italiana’ (pp. 146–176).