Change Your Image
bbrunerjd
Reviews
Io non ho paura (2003)
An otherworldly, intimate, altogether marvelous film
I also saw this film at the 2003 Berlin Film Festival, and I had no idea what to expect. Going into it blind was properly the perfect way to experience "I'm Not Afraid." This film swept me away like few have done in recent years.
Set in 1970s Italy, this film is at its heart the intimate story of a young rural boy's quest to grow up moral in the face of scary, even evil truths around him. All of the beautiful point-of-reference shots of life among the marvelous rolling countryside of Italy don't even begin to prepare us for the involving drama-- even the scary thriller-- that unfolds. Don't think that this film will be boring or overly wistful as so much movies about childhood are. Rather, it's that rare film that combines the thrill of a good, suspenseful narrative with true insight into the soul and the emotions of a group of people forced to do something they didn't want to do. Going into more details would only ruin the thrill of this true cinematic experience.
Insomma, assai ben fatto (incredibly well-done). See this movie when it arrives in a cinema near you!
Karmen Geï (2001)
Smoldering, But This "Karmen" Never Ignites
This very loose retelling of Carmen begins on a high note with a smoldering, sexually-frank dance between Senaglese prisoner "Karmen" and her female prison warden, but the vibrant opening minutes never ignite into any coherent film. One minute Karmen is all sexual predator, the next she is dancing in protest to her unfair government, and then suddenly she is a smuggler on the high seas... Although the film deserves kudos for postulating the first carnivorously bisexual "Karmen," the broad strokes it paints are so vignette-like and unsupported by any narrative coherence that the film comes off as a schizophrenic, undisciplined melange of "Basic-Instinct" meets "Bound" meets an African version of a Bollywood musical.