iodaniele-pinto Reviews (5)

Le ultime 56 ore (2010)

It's All About The Writing, I'm afraid...

[2/10 · 13 May 2010]

A great cast lead by an unexpected Gianfraco Tognazzi, a great Luca Lionello and a much underrated Libero Di Rienzo can't manage to survive the heavy, overwrought and ultimately, unintentionally hilarious screenplay. The close to the knuckle story needed a writer with a minimum of culture and flair. Here, Claudio Fragasso, the director, shows how competent he can be behind the camera but he's tied up to a script that doesn't allow any form of truth to emerge. The characters don't have a coherent psychological path to travel. Everything is on the nose and hammered on, again and again. I felt frustrated because here there is a strong film trying to come out and at every turn, an insane piece of dialogue will destroy the intention to a pulp. Pity.

Videocracy (2009)

Italians from Italy 2009

[3/10 · 9 September 2009]

It feels as if it was put together in five minutes. Pity because the idea is great if not particularly new. Depressing as hell to think that, somehow, this reality represent us and I'm afraid it does. It is a decease of our own making. It's in our DNA, if you don't believe me listen to Mario Monicelli in his interview at Otto e Mezzo. "We're a country of "miserabili" (miserables). As long as someone has the guts to say it, there is hope. Here, the statement comes from Sweden of all places and seems amazed at things that us in Italy know perfectly well and complain about, perhaps, but in private. I think that Berlusconi truly represents the majority of Italians even those who don't want to admit it. Lele Mora gave me the chills and Fabrizio Corona who comes from a very intelligent, prominent journalistic family comes across as an ignorant product of his day. He indulges in a long naked scene, soaping his privates under the shower. What the hell was that!? We're suppose to be the Country of culture par excellence, how funny. We're the Country of the façade instead. We love cinema but we dub it, robbing the souls of the original actors, not just their voices. We divide the projections of films, arbitrarily, in Primo Tempo e Secondo Tempo (First Part and Second Part). We really don't give a damn and some of the consequences are painfully clear in "Videocracy" I only wish this documentary could be taken a bit more seriously.

Colpo d'occhio (2008)

A Weak Battle Of Egos

[2/10 · 25 March 2008]

Sergio Rubini directed one of my favorite Italian films of the last few years "La Terra". This new venture however is a massive let down. The idea of an art critic determined to destroy an artist is, was and always will be a good idea for a dark thriller. Here the opportunities are wasted in a series of unconvincing moments promising a lot and delivering nothing.. Well photographed and with a Brian de Palmaish score by the great Pino Donaggio but at its very core a total emptiness. The script is constructed by the numbers but ignoring the most important aspect: the diabolical plan of the critic is told in snippets without ever going into it. The film falls in most of the traps that lowers the standards of the Italian cinema. A gratuitous naked scene by the beautiful Miss Puccini and a series of miscalculated moments that rob the film of any real tension or suspense. Instead it makes it a tedious uninteresting tale of two egos. Rubini has fun with his devilish monster and Riccardo Scamarcio proves that he has a lot to learn. His face becomes tiresome instead of compelling. We just don't believe any of it and as a consequence we don't care. The most interesting character is Claudio, the artist's best friend but ultimately the character is treated like a plot device without a dimension of his own. At a certain moment the critic claims that mediocre artists imitate and that great artists steal. What was doing Sergio Rubini here? Imitating or stealing?

The Passionate Thief (1960)

A Splash Of Greatness

[10/10 · 6 September 2007]

A friend had a wonderful idea. After the depressing presence of the Italian entries at this 2007 Venice Film Festival, he suggested to get together around a table with good food and wine a watch a movie, an Italian movie and not one of the usual masterpieces that we all talk about all the time. He chose Mario Monicelli's "Risate Di Gioa" with Anna Magnani, Totò and Ben Gazzara. Oh my God! All of a sudden it became one of my favorite films of all time. It all takes place during a New Year's eve in Rome and I'm at a loss for words trying to explain the brilliance of this dark "minor" Italian comedy. A blonde Anna Magnani plays a film extra at the Cinecitta studios and Totò a petty thief in white tie and tails. Funny, moving, extraordinary in some many ways. Why have we moved so far away from this? Can somebody explain it?

Il dolce e l'amaro (2007)

Same Song, Slightly Different Lyrics

[4/10 · 5 September 2007]

I was so hoping to be blown away by an Italian film taking me to places I've never been or, at least, to places I've been before but through new unexplored roads. I'll have to keep hoping and waiting. Nothing new in the Italian cinematographic landscape. Very depressing really and that's without mentioning the platitudes surrounding every Italian outing at this 64th/75th anniversary of the Venice Film Fest. Here the subject is "mafia" are we surprised? Luigi Lo Cascio plays one of them, growing convinced that he's a good guy really. Then, of course, he starts to notice. Oh please! Lo Cascio is a very good actor but his earnestness leaves me cold. Bad thing in a movie in which you're desperate to feel something other than the calculated humor and the humorless treatment of this exhausted subject matter. What's wrong with us? If we were an Industry (I use the word without really meaning to) without a past, I could understand this attempts to tell ourselves through our movies. But all that was accomplished in the 40's, 50's, 60s when everything seemed impossible. Look at Francesco Rosi's work or Elio Petri's - I'm not even going to mention Rossellini, for everybody's sake. This are not ridiculous comparisons. They were not aliens from another planet, they were Italians who grew among the same contradictions that we face now. We certainly have more money and a wider horizon, then, why the poverty of ideas? If you want to revisit the mafia, revisit the mafia, but in a way that may help us to see it from a different angle, with a different optical. Okay, forgive the rant. It was just an angry, nervous reflection.