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Reviews
Bordertown (2007)
not the greatest filming quality, but a must see for its story
This is a movie that is not a memorable example of cinematography (the plot is very Hollywood-ish, especially for a movie based on a real story), but the acting is quite good and it does give the viewer a fair idea of what is going on in the far away places (at times not so far after all) where our everyday gizmos are actually built in these days. And it is not a pretty picture, by any means. I think that the movie aimed at exposing the ugly truth of what has been going on right at the US border, where hundreds of women have been slaughtered for the past decade or so. But that was not all, because such nightmare did not, and does not, come out of nowhere: it comes straight out of the disastrous situation that exists in the modern-day sweat-houses (aka as 'manufacturing plants' to the big corporations) and the surrounding favelas where their workers live. And the sweat-houses are a direct consequence of, among the rest, 'trade agreements' like the NAFTA. So, even though some people might not like it, this is a political movie, and very rightly so. And now that I think of it, it does have some good cinematography in it: I find the photography extremely good. I liked the yellowish, desert-like tint that pervades the whole movie.
Shining Through (1992)
I want my time back
This has got to be one of the worst movies I have ever seen. The plot was so full of holes (both under the historical and logical points of view) that you really got to wonder if the screen writer had the faintest idea of what life was like in war time Europe... Just some examples: the chances of somebody running around in a night dress in the dead of the night in Berlin without being stopped by the police would have been zero; there were no phone boots around the city in those days; the Gestapo cars sure did not have contemporary north-American type sirens; if the blond lady friend of M Griffith was indeed a Nazi, why was the old guy working for the Americans still at large until the very end; and the list could go on and on... It is sad to see that Hollywood can do such a lousy job on such an important topic; what's more, it is frightening to see that many viewers thought this was a realistic movie!
Mio fratello è figlio unico (2007)
certain memories are worth remembering
Simply put, a very good movie. As somebody who lived through part of those years, I really appreciated the way it managed to recreate their social and political 'atmosphere'. Yes, it is not the first flick to deal with those topics, but hey, how many movies about WW2 have we seen so far? Was Flags of our Fathers less good for this reason? I particularly liked Accio's description of personal relationships between the brothers, as well as the intriguing political evolution. I thinks that Scamarcio's presence could also take a younger audience to this movie, something which would be very good as some stories are just worth remembering (I can't stand the "let's forget about it and move on towards modernity" approach; awfully dangerous for a civilized society). Back to the cinema factor, all actors fit well in their roles, although the Accio's sister was kind of lame at times. Zingaretti's performance as a hardcore fascist, on the other hand, was made even more intriguing by his close association with the ever-different character of Commissario Montalbano in the popular TV transpositions of Camilleri's novels (which by the way I strongly recommend to anyone interested in Italian written fiction).