In Theaters
There were two films that locked up most of the nominations at the 2009 Italian Academy’s David Di Donatello awards, and neither of them says anything good about the state of the Italian Republic. One of the films, Matteo Garrone’s Gomorrah, was released in the United States near the end of 2008, and the other, Paolo Sorrentino’s Il Divo, follows it a few months later. Sorrentino’s film is another nation-indicting portrait of unimaginable corruption and moral rot that ropes in every social entity, ranging from the hallowed halls of the Vatican and Parliament to the grimiest Mafia den. But Il Divo is as showy as Gomorrah was spare, sometimes taking your breath away with its gutsy leaps of brilliance and sometimes acting like a bratty child desperate for attention…
Il Divo is playing in limited release now. Read the full review at filmcritic.com.
Chris Barsanti 