Reviews

This will be for sure one of the top ten of 2004! I loved Big Fish! Burton's back with his traditional symbolic tale, so full of poetry, so delicate in it's metaphores. It makes you smile, it makes you feel good... and it makes you think. Ewan McGregor is very good, and so are the other actors, with an exception maybe for Cudrup, who's a bit too fake and makes a bit too much the "serious son". Dialogs are excellent (I love Senior Ed Bloom, who ALWAYS has a story ready, an answer ready!), scenes are excellent and the whole movie is drowned in Burton's poetry. Excellent movie! Definitely a "must" of the year, and not only for Burton's fans.

What can I say about "Finding Nemo"? it's almost perfect! Animation is astonishing, looking at times even more than real when rendering landscapes and movements. Characters are very well developed, escaping even the stereotypes of classic cartoons (like the sharks or the sea-turtles). The story is sweet but not cheesy, in the perfect "old Disney" style, with a bit of sadness in the beginning and a nice happy ending. The animation on its whole was (of course) made for children and "toon lovers", but it's also full of small details which can entertain the "common daddy" who's taking his child to the movies. This is a masterwork. Absolutely.

Spectacular truly it is. And magnificent and epic. And another long list of nice adjectives. But it distorts heavily the character of the original novel. Most who voted did it thinking of Tolkien's work, I believe, and not of this production. I mean Jackson is an excellent director and I am a great fan of his, and even the first chapter was quite ok (although not astronomically great), but THIS chapter is quite bad. Battles are changed (for example no elves appear at Helm's Deep in the book, especially not high elves!), Gimli becomes a parody of himself, parts are added to the events (poor Faramir!), epic parts like the Ents are resized and reduced... the best actor is definitely the only non-human: Gollum. Or at least he's the one who respects the most the original script, in words and thoughts. As usual, those few who haven't read the book will love this movie. The others will probably just tolerate it. I hardly did.

Yesterday I went to see "Anything else... WOW!!!! To those who know and love Woody, those who DON'T love Woody and those (few) who don't even know him, GO WATCH IT!!! This is definitely his best movie among the latest! It's a bit like "Annie Hall" (a lot of citations from that, too), but with more sarcasm, more acidity. The movie is also quite aggressive, contrary to his old style: he's not a victim anymore he exploits a splitting of his usual character for even more aggressive cinism! it's ABSOLUTELY GREAT!!!!! I don't know how somebody could define it "dull" or "empty": this movie is a cannonball for human relations and it gathers all the acidity and sarcasm he couldn't throw in in the past. He did it. YEAH!!!!!!

I cannot say whether I liked it or not. Or actually I cannot say whether it is a good film or not. I personally liked it, although I cannot say I enjoyed it. It is surely one of the most weird, bizarre, "screwed-up" films I have ever seen in my life. Nothing follows a logical flow, there is basically no plot and no actors, but you inevitably end up laughing about something... and you do not even understand exactly WHY you are laughing, sometimes. but you laugh. Completely absurd, nonsense and pointless, but so strange you will end up feeling strange as well.

This is one of the best cartoons I've ever seen. It's rich in poetry and romanticism, but at the same time funny and amusing like anime can be! Realisation is excellent, and the plot is intriguing and extremely well developed. Well, ok maybe it's a bit too sweet in the end, but it's a fairy tale after all: the typical Japanese ghost tale. It's really great!

Great movie! oh yeah! Full of energy, full of fun, presenting our generation, our alienation: a hymn to positive thinking despite this world we live in, a tale of a great party, a tale of a bunch of friends who desperately must do something in a week end and the only thing to do is The Club. But fun and extasy keep boredom away! Very funny, nicely grotesque in a few points, nicely shot... and great soundtrack!

This simply the best horror ever made. More than horror: grotesque horror, making fun of all the horror knowledge and schools in history. Not one zombie, but thousands of them, not some blood, but litres of blood, not some splatter, but the king of splatter. This is a TOTAL movie, extremely amusing and so damn perfect it almost makes you cry while watching it!

What could I say? I was disappointed. Of course it's well done, of course it's filled with hyper cool action and great battles, but nontheless it IS disappointing, if you've read the book. Too many things were uselessly changed (e.g. the elves), characters were wrongly introduced and the Ents looked like as if they had been extracted from some old 50's SF movie. Altogether it's cool, but, for those who haven't read the book, read it after you've seen this.

Really interesting movie, the "screwed-up" type where basically nothing happens, but in the end you had fun and spent a pleasant hour and half. Actors are not bad, and there are even some mythical people like local singers doing small parts. On the overall, the movie could be considered some sort of "Trainspotting alla Bolognese", quite hallucinated, funny in its way while showing students' life during the 70's, with all the political tension of the period. It respects very well the style of the comics by Andrea Pazienza from which by which it was inspired. A nice one.

Nice movie with a great soundtrack which spans through the rock landscape of the 70's and 80's. Radiofreccia describes a generation, it describes life in a small village near Correggio (hometown of Ligabue, the singer who wrote the book that inspired the movie), it describes life of young people and their problems relating to the world. It reminds of Trainspotting, with a bit of Italian touch.

First shot behind the cameras for George Clooney... and I must say it was not disappointing! The movie is interesting and well done, presenting from time to time some flashbacks which reminded me a bit of old Woody Allen movies. The idea is anyway nice, no matter whether it is a true story or not, and the movie altogether represents a nice way to spend a couple of hours. It might have been a bit more sarcastic, though, sometimes I got the feeling it was taking it too seriously.

You cannot comment this movie. It's the perfect John Woo: 100% concentrate hyper-paced action and without all the pathetic scenes of his earlier movies. Slow motion dominates and is brought to the highest levels. Chow Yun Fat is excellent: Terminator is a sissy compared to him! And wait for the final mess... wow...

I liked it, although I would not consider it one of the best movies of my life. There is ONE monologue, though, which makes the whole movie worth watching. For sure. The use of cameras with multiple shots gives a very interesting effect and that's probably the best part of the movie. Edward Norton is very good and his "bronze" face gives a good idea of the troubles going through his mind. It is also interesting to see the first pictures of New York after September 11: looks like it took more than one year for a director to find the courage and shoot scenes of Manhattan. Dialogues are quite realistic and Norton's monologue is simply wonderful and worth the whole movie! There are, though, a few bad points: first of all the movie tends to fall a bit too often in the topic of the (ex)towers, especially with small but frequent "brackets" in dialogues. Secondarily it tended to become a bit too pathetic towards the end, but I understand it was supposed to be a pathos climax. Anyway altogether it's one of the best movies I've seen this year (which has not been a very good year for American cinema, so far), and the monologue is cool!

A masterpiece!!!! I love that movie! It's weird, as all Cohen brothers' movies are, it's funny... and it's pure genious! Jeff Bridges and John Goodman are great, Bushemi and Turturro provide excellent fill-up for the support characters, and all the other characters fit perfectly into the game. And what about the general idea? that's, as usual, genious: the "rise of uselessness", the avalanche effect, the absurd events and the complete originality of the plot... all the classic elements of Cohen's movies are there, perfectly mixed into an extremely funny and crazy movie. Great.

What a movie! I have always liked the Asian style of shooting, and this movie does not disappoint at all! Photography is breath-taking, ranging from amazing landscapes to whirls of colours. The main actor is really realistic in representing the painter (whose paintings are astonishing). The ending is also very well chosen, very poetic. The only remark is that they should have maybe shown a bit more deeply the connection between his inspiration and his abuse of alcohol and women. But altogether this is an excellent film!

Ok, it's pretty cool. I was afraid it would be a complete crap like the recent super-hero movies, while instead they managed to keep it up. The plot is a bit weak, but altogether X-Men 2 represents a decent piece of entertainment. The only thing which upsets me (once more) is the fact that everybody keeps on copying the fight-shooting style of Matrix, and with the Reload coming up it simply looks ridiculous. Uh, yeah I almost forgot: Wolverine kicks arse!

Man, this movie is impossible to define. Good? bad? no, it's beyond. Actors aren't that good, shooting is not that good and quite often it recalls old style trash b-movies from the 70's... but it sure is COOL. It reminded me of that old Japanese cartoon about football (or soccer if you're in USA), only this is a real movie. During the final game I was crying from laughter and deeply touched by the amazing climax of overdriven coolness that seemed not to ever come to an end: "what next?" you keep on asking yourself... and the problem is that it keeps on going and going and you just stay there with your mouth open, laughing in awe.

Man, that was definitely the most original love story ever! I do not usually enjoy love affairs and such cheesy stuff, in fact this is really NOT cheesy! The two main actors are excellent and perfectly combined in this perverted game, and the ideas developed in the movie are really great. An excellent entertainment!

Great movie! Pretty much on the style of "Snatch" (its "bigger brother" which became more famous), but in my opinion much better because it's original and more subtle... nice humour, great scenes, excellent photography and an amazing plot! YEAH! it rulez!

Eventually!!!!! That was a GOOD movie! Clever, subtle, absolutely not offensive (for anybody with a minimum intelligence), somehow delicate even! Sergio Castellito is extremely good in here and carries around this very complex character who tries to be simply COHERENT. Yes, the whole movie is COHERENT. "Coherence" and "smile" could be the main words describing this movie. Grotesque and caricature dance happily around the main character, dragging him down an impredictable spiral of absurd events, started by the almost insignificant spark of a knock on the door. The only negative thing are the two main actresses, Ernesto's wife and lover, who are really lousy. But on the overall the movie is excellent, and very well directed too!

I didn't even know how to vote for this movie: 10 for the courage or 1 for the actual result? The courage would have been for producing such a crap and being even proud of it. I went to watch an action movie to relax a bit and the only cool thing I saw were the nice stunts (a bit overdone, but still cool); the rest of the movie was a little bit less than disgusting: poor acting, poor dialogues (DIALOGUES???), a plot not even good for a retard... and the usual awful habit of all american movies, since few years, to explain EVERYTHING that's going on, just to make sure that some moron could get some certainty. Deprecable. Ah the other pretty nice thing in the movie (I voted 2 instead of 1 in the end) was the extremely cool beginning with Rammstein... ;) It competes with SpiderMan for the worst movie of the millenium!

...if the tail were smarter than the dog, the tail would wag the dog. Clever, sarcastic, cinic, the movie shows how to manipulate the public opinion and how to "redirect" the feelings of masses. De Niro and Hoffman are simply great and they dominate the whole movie with their presence. That was a COOL movie!

I really don't understand all the fuss about this so-called movie, because I'm not even sure we can consider it in such way! But let's start.

Actors: what actors? The only good and cool one is Willem Dafoe, because the others are more or less parodies. Characters: pure stereotypes, which is quite normal because the movie is taken from old Marvel comics, but it really doesn't match with nowadays requirements for thicker personalities. The only attempt to awaken the human side was made on Spider Man himself, and was pretty bad and flat. The girl is an outrage to women and so also is Parker's aunt. Special effects and computer graphics: one would expect at least to have decent effects, considering that we are in the era of computer graphics, but it is not so. Effects are BAD. The animations of Spider Man flying around are as fake as they could have been in the 80's and the fights are copied (once again) from Matrix, only they didn't even manage to copy them decently. Dialogues: totally flat. Jokes are sitcom-oriented and simple-minded (with a couple of exceptions) and the effort to make Spider Man look human falls miserably into stereotype. General overview: AWFUL. The movie is soaked with bad propaganda about US strength and unity, typical of periods of crisis when a nation needs superheroes. Already the fact that it was re-edited to censor the scene with the World Trade Center (which was anyway the main scene in the old trailers) made it a miserable attempt to be politically correct. Altogether boring and pathetic.