darkside2003's Reviews

Gomorrah (2008)

8/10

18 May 2009

I will not add anything to the plot as it has been told many times over here; i saw Gomorra for the first time yesterday; i was waiting for it to be aired on Sky Cinema because i liked the book and i must say i have been impressed how close to the real thing this movie feels. I don't live down there nor i have anything to do with people involved in similar crime organizations, but living in Italy since birth i perfectly know the backgrounds of the story, not only because the camorra (which is the name of the crime syndicate, not gomorra) is in the news often, but also because i know people that actually lived there and moved out. In my opinion this movie should have deserved more in terms of awards won, but i also see it must not be easy to understand for international critics and audiences. This is not the kind of movie you watch while chewing pop corns; to appreciate it i really suggest you read the book first, otherwise you won't get much out of it and will think of it as just another foreign movie with subtitles about gangsters shooting.

My vote: 85 %

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Gran Torino (2008)

6/10

Overrated

18 March 2009

Warning: Spoilers

I went to the cinema to watch this flick after i saw it was so highly rated on IMDb, mymovies.it and other movie sites. I have always been a fan of Clint as an actor as well as a director so i chose to watch Gran Torino while my other options were The Wrestler and Slumdog Millionaire. I left the theater very disappointed; the movie, as many others have said, is boring, predictable and the racism theme is trite. It isn't a terrible movie but some scenes are really dumb like the one in the barber shop where he tries to teach Tao how to be a man. Also, Clint making fun of foreign names...well, only a 8 year old could laugh at it. The movie is not an action movie, just a mix of comedy and drama. If you want to see a great movie about racism go get Crash. Vote 6 out of 10 just because i respect Clint Eastwood, but this definitely does not deserve to be in the top 250.

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Yeti: Curse of the Snow Demon (2008 TV Movie)

2/10

Please don't call this rubbish a movie

2 February 2009

I had the misfortune to watch this rubbish on Sky Cinema Max in a cold winter night. I am not a big fan of horror movies, because most of them are just trash. This one is even worse: it is one of the dumbest pieces of crap i've ever seen in my whole life. Horror movie? Yes, there are horrible things in this: the acting, the script and the special effects - Gosh, i laughed at this ludicrous attempt to make a flick for 90 minutes. Actually, had it been a comic movie i would've given it a 5. Don't you even think about renting this unless you want to mock at the producers.

Vote: 2 out of 10 - didn't vote one because it made me laugh all the time ;-)

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The Dark Knight (2008)

8/10

Overrated

23 July 2008

Let's be real - this is a GREAT action movie, i'd surely put it in the top 10 action movies of all time, the acting is superb, photography is outstanding and it has a great story - but honestly i think this title has received too much hype after Ledger's death. I'll say it again:great action movie, great movie overall, but IMHO it does not deserve to be the nr.1 movie in all cinema history. It lacks the depth of a movie like the Godfather or the Shawshank Redemption; Batman is a great fictional character but i still rank it behind a story like the Lord of the rings; nor it puts you on an emotional roller-coaster like Schindler's List or New Cinema Paradiso; as a police movie i still prefer The Departed or The Usual Suspects; also i didn't get the overall feeling i got from movies like The Sixth Sense or Crash.

8.5 out of 10

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Mayday (2005 TV Movie)

2/10

This is an insult to the watcher's intelligence

24 November 2007

Warning: Spoilers

This is one of the most ludicrous movies i've ever seen. The plot has been probably written by a 12 year old, and there are so many evident absurdities that i wonder who it was that deemed reasonable to throw away money to produce this excrement. The acting is so poor that even my butcher could have done better. The fact that an amateur pilot can bring back from the middle of the ocean and then safely land in the middle of a storm at dusk a damaged jetliner, short on fuel and with all the instrument panels off..., well, draw your own conclusions Oh, i forgot - our hero, as said, is a weekend pilot, but somehow he gets tricked into switching off the fuel pumps: even an idiot with absolutely no knowledge of airplanes would guess that maybe closing the fuel pumps leads to an engine cut off, which isn't quite an advisable thing to do in the middle of a flight, let alone doing it on a damaged aircraft. Adding more insult, he manages to restart the engines and recover the plane from a free-fall leveling it off at 1000 feet just seconds before crashing into the ocean. This trash should rank in the bottom 250 of all time.

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The Da Vinci Code (2006)

8/10

Should have been longer

1 June 2006

I just came out of the theater. The first impression i got is that they succeeded in adhering closely to the book, there were no twists in the story or some other kind of adaptation.

I've read so many disappointing comments here and the overall average score is below what i expected (8).

I read the book and i think they did a good job in transposing it to the screen.

I think that at 150 minutes it still falls short, had they made a longer movie like Titanic they would have had more space to 'maneuver' and could obtain a better result and i imagine that's what the critics were expecting, a colossal.

Moreover, Tom Hanks underperformed and i would have preferred Sean Connery in the role of Leigh; In the end, i felt like i had a good dinner in the restaurant but i would have preferred more spice in my main course.

8 out of 10

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War of the Worlds (2005)

4/10

Silly movie

12 April 2006

Warning: Spoilers

Probably the director wanted to stick to the original script, but the result nowadays is just an absurd mix of booms and bangs and a wannabe-moving family story.

I'm very disappointed; in my opinion, had they stuck less to the original script the result would have been much more credible and entertaining.

One minute the aliens are taking hold of the entire planet, mastering superior technology, the next they are stalking their preys with an arm that resembles an anaconda in the basement that can't see beyond a mirror...and in the end they die because they get a cold and the movie abruptly ends there.

I'd better not comment the supposed-to-be-moving scenes lest i throw up.

4/10 for the CGI and the effort of adhering to the original story

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Donnie Darko (2001)

1/10

A new kind of torture

6 March 2005

My new plasma display was longing for new material, so i went out with my gf to rent some movies for the weekend. I took this from blockbuster, a sign read: listed in IMDb's top 100. So i fed my DVD player and started watching. Utterly boring since the beginning, i chose to resist a little longer, hoping for a twist; no way. I thought that maybe i should reconsider my approach toward the new school of directors and writers, that maybe the time for 'The 6th sense', 'LOTR', and 'The Shawshank redemption' is over, yet I wonder what kind of weed they were smoking when they wrote this 'masterpiece'. Nonsense replaced boredom, then after 45 minutes my DVD player farted this pos out and i decided that cleaning my cat's litter was a much more rewarding experience; imho you should save your time and money on this garbage; I give this 2 out of 10 just because i've seen worse.

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Cinema Paradiso (1988)

10/10

A Masterpiece

30 January 2005

I seldom watch Italian movies, (i saw it today for the first time) being Italian maybe i'm biased, but this one really stands out. A real masterpiece; i can't remember another movie so moving like this one, maybe Schindler's list; it makes you laugh and it makes you cry, yet it is so simple and straightforward. Maybe there lies its magic: no Hollywood superstars, no special effects, just pure emotions and feelings, love, fear, grief and regret, nostalgia for childhood and youth, memories of places and times that will not come back, memories of the loved ones. Some movies are there to entertain, some to scare, some to question. This movie is there to affect your feelings. Definitely to be seen.

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