Art Vandelay I've been a fan of this website since the days when most movies had 2-3 reviews, and those were from people who could discern good from bad. It's been sad to see how things have deteriorated to the point where if a reviewer doesn't enjoy an objectively decent movie it gets a 1-star rating, and fanboys give all sorts of dreck 10 stars. It's to the point where I no longer trust the ratings on this site. With that preamble, or apology, if you will, out of the way I wholeheartedly and without reservation gives this movie 1 star. There are so many interesting, lyrical, involving Italian movies, from Two Women to 8-1/2 to Rome:Open City to The Bicycle Thieves, among many others. And I've seen plenty of self-involved Italian crapola over the years, esp M Antonioni's mostly unwatchable output. But this takes the proverbial cake. It starts with a guy in an industrial setting being read to by a co- worker. In the first five minutes, before the credits even roll, I bet half the audience was already regretting going to the theatre to watch this. Then the guy goes home and cooks dinner for about an hour. It's as though Ferreri was daring viewers to walk out. I never thought I would see a movie that rivals the worst of Canadian Film Board-subsidized garbage, but I was wrong.

Gerald A. DeLuca "Dillinger è morto" is a bizarre Italian film by Italian director Marco Ferreri, made in 1969, and never shown in the U.S. until now, 2009, in its scattered special engagements. I had the good fortune to catch it in Rome in 1970, on my last night in the city, at the neighborhood Cinema Farnese in Campo de' Fiori.It deals pretty much with an evening in the life of a character named Glauco, played by Michel Piccoli, who comes home from work in a gas-mask factory, is disgusted with the cold supper left for him by his always sleeping wife, prepares a gourmet meal of his own as he cleans (with virgin olive oil) a revolver found in a closet and wrapped in old newspapers. The papers contains the story of the death of American gangster John Dillinger. The revolver, of uncertain origin, obsesses him. When done, he paints it red with white polka dots. This is an interesting man but hardly a sane one. And then...well, and then...what Glauco does with that revolver and how it becomes an invigorating turning point in his unwell life, gives the film a measure of its eerily fascinating allure. This lost cult movie is certainly an interesting counterpoint to Johnny Depp's current "Public Enemies," about the gangster himself.I never thought I would see it again, since it has never been available on video or DVD. Yesterday I caught it at the Brattle in Cambridge. You may like it; you may not. But, as with me four decades later, it will never leave your mind.

writers_reign This is one for the Accatone set, those pseuds petrified in the Nouvelle Vague who haunt the movie theatre just off Boul' Mich sharing eternal spliffs and wondering why no one does Jump Cuts anymore. Michel Piccoli - alone on screen for over half the running time - does nothing all at once. Piccoli, who once starred in a REAL movie called The Things Of Life, contemplates the things of life on a conveyor belt that has been looped so we get the same things over and over but probably a centimetre away from where they were first second and third time around. For no apparent reason other than to make some sort of left-handed sense of the title, whilst rummaging in a closet he stumbles across a package that when untied turns out to be a gun wrapped in a newspaper that carries an account of John Herbert Dillinger, famously arrested in a movie theatre in Chicago. Piccoli strips the gun, oils and cleans it, reassembles it and shoots his sleeping wife. Why? Why not. It's THAT kind of movie. Having done so he goes for a swim, as you do, climbs on board a private yacht where they are just burying the cook at sea. Spotting a vacancy he puts himself forward for the job, is given a trial, no questions asked and sails away. Arrested development Godard fans will LOVE this one whilst those who like REAL movies will give it a wide berth.

Mario Pio with the "Grande abbuffata" title this is the best ferreri movie. Incredible tour de force real time movie is a study in alienation like no other one in cinema. Piccoli display a portfolio of frustrate-tipe tics with excellent performance. the same for annie girardot, the waitress in love with the Italian singer dino. Ferreri use no dialogues, the figure of dillinger as a mythical phantom over the alienated life of the protagonist. The final is incredibly surreal but all the film is terribly realistic and punctual, in line with the analysis of the contemporary man in the west society. I think that in today cinema this movie is something of irripetible