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Reviews
The Irishman (2019)
Wake me up when it's finished.
Slow, boring, stereotyped, unimaginative. A senile mafia yawn by Scorsese. At all costs you need Pesci, De Niro, Pacino, etc. to be your usual mobsters, so there is a bunch of old guys who need a ton of makeup plus some cringing CGI to try to look thirty years younger. And the story? Hoffa, Kennedy, unions, Castro, Cuba... it's déjà-vu central. Not a twist, not an idea. After 100 minutes I was comatose, like the protagonists and their seventh art. If something finally happened afterward, I will never know. Amen to that.
Paterson (2016)
Some really good acting
I really enjoyed the performance of the main characters, the dog and the bus. The rest of the movie is really not that interesting. I am not sure if the objective was to display that ordinary life can be poetry. Perhaps the unfortunate result is that ordinary poetry sometimes is life.
Elysium (2013)
Somebody please rescue Hollywood sci-fi
OK, first there are all the clichés. The frenetic last-second run for salvation (to keep viewers busy). The little girl who also is terminally ill (inspires compassion). French-speaking Cruella who would do anything to protect her freedom (she is clearly the daughter of Christine Lagarde). The inconclusive president who only minds popularity (fill in the name here
). The hero who conveniently dies at last (so they do not say Hollywood ends everything in joy). And the poor Latina who evolves from dust to surgical room (Evo Morales rejoices).
Then there is some moderate quality, like Sharlto Copley playing the psycho villain and, of course, the visual stuff, which is fantastic, awesome, etc.
After that, comes the rubbish. Robots who can do everything and even detect sarcasm, but still need to be produced by humans in pre- industrial revolution plants. Outlaw chief who understands in about fifteen seconds the entire protocol to run Elysium, can change it in less time (while under fire), and save billions of lives. Faces that fly off the skull, but leave brains perfectly working. And, finally, the salvation of the overpopulated and polluted world via medical shuttles. One wonders, if deliverance was so easy, couldn't Elysium mollified president send all of his super ambulances before, and fetch even more popularity on the earth?
Well, this movie is the demonstration that Hollywood budget plus the talent of the director who made District 9 can end up in the production of a story that could at best fit the needs of a TV episode of Star Trek. With Prometheus and Oblivion it makes the perfect case for a rescue mission of the UN in Los Angeles.
Il più bel giorno della mia vita (2002)
Not a masterpiece, but enjoyable.
I just finished watching this movie on TV and I must say I enjoyed it. Unlike some commentators here, I found it well acted, filmed and decently written. I am Italian and I liked the dialogues and the way in which they draw the identity and psychology of each character. They are dry and realistic. Silence and inability to fully talk are presented as important as they are in real life and, it seems to me, in many family dynamics. And for being a movie produced by RAI, of course it has some obvious auto-limitations in the way in which certain themes are represented – like homosexuality and the absence of a scene of sexual intercourse or even a kiss between two males – but still it does a decent job in rendering passions, emotions and the way in which sexuality shapes human relationship and understanding. So, not a masterpiece, but a good product.
The problem with some other reviews here has to do with the conception of cinema that some have and the ramifications that this has on the way they judge a movie. For many it seems that a film should necessarily be a piece of militant advocacy for the cause they see as fundamental. So any creation should stand for something: war criticism, homosexuality, fight against segregation, etc. And if the cause happens to be a centerpiece of today's political correctness, then the movie should scream that for one hundred minutes in the ears of the viewers. Well, this movie is not of that kind and does not want to say much about homosexuality. It tries to see human relations with eyes of a ten year old girl, not with the over-pouring judgment of, say, Almodovar. It takes some ability to be light, and Ms. Comencini has it.