Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom

1975 garbage

Rating: 8/20

Plot: Eighteen kids are kidnapped by fascists in Nazi-controlled Italy and treated meanly. There's lots of what can only be described as grotesque sex.

Unless the point is as simple as "People are mean," I'm missing some context here. This is not a good movie. It's not really even an interesting movie. Director Pasolini was murdered after the release of Salo, and although it's not likely that this movie was the reason why he was murdered, it really couldn't have helped. I just had a tough time trying to figure out exactly what this film is--smut, blacker-than-black comedy, dark allegory, perverse crap? Painstaking and dismal and seemingly empty.

Mamma Roma

1962 Italian Drama

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A middle-aged prostitute retires after she saves enough money to buy a fruit stand and a house in order to give her son a better life. It doesn't work.

This was bleak and dull. Anna Magnani was at times very powerful in the role as the title character and at other times a little too melodramatic and distracting. The black and white cinematography added to the bleakness--a run-down Rome and long stretches of dialogue while the characters walked perpetually toward the camera. The movie lacked style and the characters lacked depth needed to make me really care about them all that much. Maybe I'm just callous.

Here are Lucy and I making out during a particularly boring scene: