Excellent, a Must See

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Absolutely brilliant

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

In the 20's, in the backward Sicialian town of Bagheria (a.k.a. Baaria), the boy Giuseppe "Peppino" Torrenuova (Francesco Scianna) works as a shepherd to financially help his poor family. Along the years, he grows up and joins the Communist Party. He marries the local Mannina (Margareth Madè); they have children; and he follows a political career. ... "Baaria" is as boring film where the writer and director Giuseppe Tornatore unsuccessfully uses the same formula of his masterpiece "Nuovo Cinema Paradiso" but that never works. The screenplay excessively uses ellipsis making difficult to follow secondary characters. The story is very uninteresting and too personal and does not have emotion. My vote is five.Title (Brazil): "Baaria – A Porta do Vento" ("Baaria – The Door of the Wind")

I saw this last month at the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival. From famed writer/director Giuseppe Tornatore this was Italy's official submission to the 82nd Academy Awards for Best foreign Language Film and was nominated for a Golden Globe in the same category so despite its rather lengthy 150 minute run time I was looking forward to seeing this. Also it is set in beautiful Scicily and features 40 of Italy's top actors in lead and cameo roles and a music score from the great Ennio Morricone so on paper this looks like a sure-fire hit. It certainly has an epic quality about it and it's nice to look at but there are just too many acting roles with very little for them to do. The time frame of it's setting covering three generations is too ambitious. The story line is too weak. the story takes place across the first half of the 20th century. Peppino (Francesco Scianna) is the son of a Shepperd who grows up to be a local rep of the Communist Party and has a forbidden romance and marriage to the beautiful Mannina (Margareth Madè). Beautiful photography from cinematographer Enrico Lucidi complementing the lovely art direction and production design of Maurizo Sabatini and Cosimo Gomez with some nice special effects this is a great looking film but it's wandering story line and fairly weak dialog drags it down. There is a lot to like in this film but despite the expense that must have gone into making it it falls way short of being an excellent film. I would give it a 7.0 out of 10.

This was such a disappointment: I had been looking forward to seeing this movie, but I've seldom been so let down. I've never reviewed a movie on here before, but I just felt I had to tell you all: There is only one way to put this: save your money, go see something else.... Also, the actors sometimes seem to be reading directly from the script like paper dolls, what's up with that? It's no wonder the Italian film industry is going down the drain, with the budget provided ( by the Italian taxpayer) the movie should have been much better. Good things in the movie: photography is great, the scenery is fantastic, but unfortunately that does not make up for the Director's shortcomings.

This is Tornatore's biggest effort in trying to produce a great epic movie the way Sergio Leone could have done. But Tornatore's epic is mixed with his own personal memories and feelings rather than being a more detached study and portrait of an age and a specific place, circumstance that has made some people compare this movie with Fellini's Amarcord. Given the generous parallels, I believe this is a really good movie, I enjoyed every frame of it, but the sensation is that it could have been even better! This may be due to the fact he tries to say too many things at once and such things are not necessarily all that well linked together, resulting in a weak plot. Morricone does as usual a good work, but not a great one, as no theme was in my head at the end of the movie (while watching it I completely forgot he was the composer).Anyway I really hope this movie will win some deserved awards as it is a great effort from a great master of cinema and, as Once Upon a Time in America, they both end with a laughter and leave the impression the whole story may be just a dream... this is ultimately what cinema is all about. 8/10