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I was fortunate enough to see all of Sorrentino's work recently at this year's Italian Film Festival here in Hollywood and by comparison I can report that this movie is one of his best. To be sure - all the usual quirky idiosyncrasies of his style are represented: The dialogue not necessarily representing the individual character's intelligence but rather his state of mind, the quick, often fleeting hints at things happening, the sometimes inconsequential progression of plot which only makes partial sense once you've seen the whole time line, etc. This time the story lends itself nicely to all of Sorrentino's traits and save for the ending which once again seems somewhat stilted, his tale is a piece of work not to be missed. Check it out!

This one, despite its cast and talents involved, is only ho-hum and rather slow moving except for a few genius lines. As I wrote before in one of my reviews for writer/director Paolo Sorrentino, his characters depend too much on a stylized way of existence and just because they may be inspired by real life persons or events, that does not make them more believable! Sean Penn is in his "I am Sam" mode, with a bit of Ozzy Osborne thrown in - not a good mixture. His rock star's motivation to go looking for the WW II humiliation source of his late dad's made no sense and escaped me completely particularly since he hadn't spoken to him in 30 years!

Paolo Sorrentino has become one of the few major writer/director talents from Italy. Whether you will like his movies will depend on your preference for Italy's culture and way of storytelling, in Sorrentino's case a rather intellectualized, stylized approach to drawing his characters, often at the expense of believability of plot or his progenitor's actions. Having said that, this holds especially true for this early work of his from '01, loosely drawn on two figures from Italian public life of the 80's - a budding soccer player and a pop star in the Adriano Celentano vein. Without giving away any of the details, suffice to say that this film is one of Sorrentino's lesser efforts, especially the ending which doesn't make much sense.

Ugh... this might not even be worth a review but since I saw this at the recent Italian Film Fest in Hollywood, here goes: This Italian production, mostly shot in England and Spain, is really not worth your time. A dumb collegiate plot in the vein of the "coming of age" US school romantic comedies form the 70's and 80's, this relies way too heavily on all the usual stereotypes which fall flat pretty quickly, including a poor and predictable ending. Who would watch this? No sense in going into details even - you know a movie is bad when the end title device of outtakes reveals funnier stuff than the entire film...a rating of '3' for that.

I saw this is in a special preview the other night and I was underwhelmed. Sure, Channing as Duke, Byung-Hun Lee as Storm Shadow, Arnie Vosloo as Zartan and Luke Bracey as Cobra Commander are back (his suit finally looks the way it is supposed to) Jonathan Pryce as wimpy US president as well, but this pic took an awfully long time to be developed and find a release date. Now we get Ray Park as Snake Eyes and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as Roadblock (where has he been all this time?) A hold-over from last summer to add 3D effects and some extra scenes with Tatum, which they did in the beginning; unfortunately that meant some other fight scenes with Rza as Blind Master and Elodie Yung as Jinx had to be shortened to not be dragged down plot wise in the middle part of the movie, a fantastic fight (and flight) sequence in and near the mountain monastery where Storm Shadow has to be abducted to be brought up to speed about what Zartan has really been up to with Cobra. Walton Goggins turns up as Chief Warden Nigel James of an extreme underground prison facility and Bruce Willis gets a few good scenes as gun nut General Joe Colton, whose house seems to be a whole arsenal of weaponry - and wth is James Carville doing in this?? - I liked Wonder Woman Adrianne Palicki as Brenda - whoops, Jaye, but you can tell that the production as a whole struggled mightily to keep this movie to no more than a 100 minutes in edit. Scenes are set up elaborately only to be over in their entirety before you know it, in a plot which resembles the "Renegades" TV story line with a little James Bond from yesteryear thrown in (think "Diamonds Are Forever" and "Moonraker"). Directed by Jon M. Chu who took over from Stephen Sommers in this sequel, the movie offers little more than some extra VFX over its predecessor. I wish I had seen a little extra of Zartan and Jinx but oh well. Somehow this franchise seems to lend itself better to TV serials and animated stuff... great live action movies don't seem to be part of it. I marked my review as containing spoilers but most of this you can glean from the trailers already.

From a preposterous premise Ben Ketai and Ryan Lewis concocted a rather ho-hum suspense thriller. Without giving away much here, this is loosely based on a Twilight Zone episode, with a little of that Michael Douglas movie "The Game" thrown in for good measure - a connect-the-numbers kind of plot which lives mostly by Milo Ventimiglia's performance and a few necessary cliff hangers since this is really a movie chopped apart into six parts...eh, rather "gangster" in its set up and not believable. As "The Twilight Zone" has taught us all, the moral transformation of the key progenitor should matter more than the quasi-suspenseful machinations of the incredulous plot. If you care for some such structure, watch "The Booth at the End" instead.

This little movie holds up quite well over 50 years - a B classic in its own right - but I wonder: Was there ever a soundtrack available of Fred Katz' jazzy, whimsical alto sax score? At times it reminds me of some of Jerry Goldsmith's later work for "Planet Of The Apes" and Sonny Rollins' "Alfie". It is quite extraordinary what Corman was able to accomplish with such a limited budget - the equivalent of about a half million $$ nowadays. All the participants certainly had their heart in this one, for little or no pay - kind of the equivalent of what the French 'nouvelle vague' was attempting at the time. In any case, let me know.