Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good concept, poorly executed.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

***SPOILERS*** Uneven and confusing slasher movie taking place in Milan Italy involving this deformed, from a severe case of hepatitis, and mentally challenged taxi driver, no not Travis Bickel, Midori played by Stato Oi. It's Midori who has a habit of kidnapping his pretty women costumers and then mutating and murdering them. It's when Midori kidnaps his latest victim Amercan fashion model Celine, Eisa Patsky, who for some strange reason has an Italian accent that her concerned sister who's also beautiful Linda, Emmanulla Seigner, gets into the act in trying to find her before she ends up as dead meat.So far so good and it's gets even better or worse in how you look at it. That's with transplanted New york homicide detective Italian American Inspector Enzo Audifi, Adrin Brody, getting on the case. He's been involved in tracking down serial & slasher killers since he was a little boy, in Italy, and saw his mom murdered by one of them. Working as a team both Audifi & Linda track down the killer kidnapper but for some strange reason he seems to slip away from them despite his being denied, by being on the run, the medication that he so desperately needs to keep him normal. Still he's able to kidnap Linda and hold her hostage even though she has many chance's to escape from him. That's by Midori claiming that he knows where her sister is being hidden and she'll never find her alive if she doesn't go along with his wishes. Which God only knows what they are since he keeps changing them at every twist and turn in the movie.****SPOILERS**** It's Audifi who finally gets an important lead on the killer, his doctor & hospital appointments, only to have Linda screw everything up by trying to have him get away from him and the perusing police! That's in Linda feeling that he's the only person, by knowing where she is, who save her sister Celine's life. The ending sequence has the killer meet his end by falling through a sky window and crashing to the ground ending up in a bloody mess: Just like the movie! But wait there's a big big surprise at the very end that has to do with Celine's whereabouts. But we never really get to see it in that the movie ends before she's found if she's found at all! Director Dairo Argento's least effective Giallo movie that ironically is entitled "Giallo". Despite the blood and gore in it that's so common in Argento movies there's no suspense or sudden horror jump shots to make it effective. It just plods along to its eventual and somewhat confusing ending. As for Inspector Audifi the hero in the movie he seems to check out before the movie, and it's surprise ending, came to its conclusion. Maybe he knew that the film was a turkey and wanted out of it as soon as possible!

In Turin, Italy, beautiful young model Celine (Elsa Pataky) is kidnapped by a taxi driver, who takes her to his torture chamber where a previous victim still lies half-dead. Celine was on her way to meet her sister Linda (Emmanuelle Seigner), who eventually suspects foul play. With the police unwilling to help, she turns to Italian-American detective Enzo (Adrien Brody), who is deep into an investigation that stretches way back, involving many missing girls who turn up tortured and murdered at seemingly random spots.Former master of horror Dario Argento has been in deep decline since his 1970's heyday. Even his own fanboys admit that the visionary has lost his touch, and his films no longer have the gliding beauty he injected into the likes of Deep Red (1975), Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980). Thankfully (or should I say hopefully?), it would seem that Argento must be on the ascension, as Giallo, his homage to the sub-genre that prevailed in the 60's and 70's, must surely signal rock-bottom. He surely cannot produce anything so confusingly dire, or he should simply pack his bags and stop making movies. It beggars belief how the man that created some of the most elegant horror movies ever made can fail to raise even a moment of inspiration, and at times seems to parody the genre rather than showing any real love for it.After being promoted as being something of a return to form for the auteur and a return to director's roots, Giallo was given a very limited release (I believe it went straight-to-DVD here in the UK) after a verbal slamming from audiences and critics alike. The most famous thing to come out of it was Adrien Brody's law-suit against the producers, claiming he had yet to be paid, and tried to halt any releases of the film until he was given what he was owed. Well, judging from his performance here, the Oscar-winner doesn't deserve a dime, sleep-walking through his role and bringing no life to his thinly-written, cliché- ridden character. Any attempts to blur the lines between his miserable detective and the sadistic killer comes across as laughable, and the 'big reveal' that explains his back-story is just plain silly.For a film marketing itself as a giallo, the film lacks anything resembling the visual class or the sleazy atmosphere of the best of the genre, with Argento's camera glides feeling more like the director's futile attempts to polish a turd. It instead has more in common with that popular, ugly sub-genre of the modern age - torture porn. We see a girl's lips cut off with scissors, and a particularly nasty hammer-to- the-skull moment, cheap tricks that are more akin to the likes of Eli Roth's Hostel (2005) and its countless imitators. The killer looks like he's wandered in from the set of Joe D'Amato's Anthropophagus (1980), and is one of many plot devices that confuse and defy logic. Depressing then, seeing a once-great director stoop so low, but maybe his ambitious Dracula 3D (2012) will see a return to form.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

Worst movie I've seen in years. When I die i will ask God for forgiveness for the time I spent watching this piece of crap. Maybe I will ask God to delete my memory of ever sitting & watching the entire Giallo movie so I do not carry this with me in Heaven.A small advice to the ones still interested in watching this "movie". Do not ever tell your girlfriend that you have watched this or that you want to watch this or ever suggesting this to watch together on a movie night.Maybe there could be a good sequel to this with a serial killer strapping his victims on a chair and make them watch this film twice and then let them go....it could not get any worse than that.

This is a quirky Horror/Serial Killer film but a below average Argento. It seems doubtful that the Director will ever capture that "lightning in a bottle" that defined his influential earlier work.The stylistic touches are present here but the characteristics and chops that were singularly Argento have been borrowed, ripped-off and emulated so prolifically that his representative repertoire remains noticeable but seems today's moviegoers are anesthetized to the charm.This one has an amount of offbeat offerings, but has the feel of the familiar, indicative of and diminished by, the over indulgent Horror films of late that have taken this ground-breakers work to a new, if not artistic level, that is more juvenile and nothing more than exercises in excess.