Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Walter Sloane Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Claudio Carvalho 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")

Dol Maani This is my third Tornatore movie, Watching "La sconosciuta" made me want to check out this director's other works, as I quite enjoyed that movie even though it didn't bring anything new to the table and the ending is kind of forced,but the over all flow of the story and how he reveals the protagonist's motives in a kind of chaotic way which demanded some effort from the viewer to grasp the plot. I had high hopes for Tornatore as "La sconosciuta" was miles better than any recent Italian movie I've seen,but the second one I watched, "Legend of 1900", quickly rendered my hopes to major disappointments, that movie made me vomit a little in my mouth, from the first moments of the movie I could tell that this was aimed for fat American overly emotional housewives, Oprah's drones for short, it was nauseatingly commercial, drowned in cheesy Hollywood clichés, boring camera work and over the top emotional scenes with sappy music playing in every second of the movie.The moment I saw that boy fly at the beginning with the cheap score playing on the background, I instantly knew "Baaria" is no different from "Legend of 1900", it has no soul at all, it is so irksome and unengaging I can picture the director and his stuff sitting around with their material on all these scenes, it is that bland. The characters are so hyperactive and over the top it's like all the actors had vibrating dildos up their bungholes, shouting and hoping around like gay little bunnies during the whole time.This is another fecal matter in audio visual form, this kind of lazy film-making abominations seems to be loved by movie fests audiences and organizers, another outrageous trend that plagues the modern Cinema as seen with the Spanish turd "Tres Dias" and the German diarrhea "NimmerMeer".Avoid like AIDS.

kosmasp My summary line is actually a title of German movie, re-quoted to get the title of this one in (original title "Maria, He ..."). Both play in Italy, but that's it with the comparisons. Tornatore has the upper hand, not that you could really compare those movies. The one is an easy comedy fare (in the vein of the big fat Greek wedding output) and the other one is a mysterious look at a family and the 20th century as a whole if you will! Many unknown actors have been cast here, and if a somewhat famous face does appear it is only for a small role. Something that the director did deliberately. Although the real star might again be the music. As with almost all the films Morricone has scored, he has done a phenomenal job yet again.The movie as it is, is high standard drama, that as most of those movies who try to go through many years of a life, lack substance at moments. And while the female lead has quite a few scenes, there are still many question marks left at the end, where her motivations came from. Speaking of the end: It might baffle a few people, but it certainly won't be something you'd expect to happen. Well I didn't at least.

johno-21 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.