Okay, I must say that I find it fairly difficult to review this one honestly as I watched the entire movie as one in about 2.5 hours and now I see there are basically two parts, two acts for this film we got here, but I will try my best. Lets start with the first half. I would say the biggest difference is that I thought the first half was better and more interesting than the second. I will go into detail later on, but lets say first of all that here we have the newest work by Italian director and writer Paolo Sorrentino, who won his country a Foreign Language Oscar not too long ago and while I liked that movie, I was not too big on it, certainly not best of the year material. But quality-wise, it is about the same as the first half we got here. I read until which point it goes and I will refer to everything that follows afterwards on the other title page. It is a bit strange I prefer this first half as I really like Sorrentino's muse Toni Servillo and it takes a really long time until he finally enters the picture because there is at least half an hour in here, probably more, early on that belongs to Scamarcio/Morra and that probably also won him the Italian Film Award. But afterwards, Sorrentino takes over and he is a force of nature the way he always is. Of course it helps also that he can go comfortably over the top with his performance and character here without hurting the film because the sleaze and rotten state of character of his character makes it all possible. There are also less references early on that he is indeed playing Berlusconi here. Oh well, he isn't really actually. There is probably hardly a single scene in this film that happened the way it is shown in here in reality. That needs to be said, but yeah the references are obvious, even if we only hear "Silvio" all the time and not "Berlusconi". Like with Sorrentino's previous work, it should not be surprising that this is a very long film, a very opulent movie from start to finish, but that's a given of course with the subject and main character depicted in here. It is not a particularly violent movie, but full of nudity and some may be offended by that. Well, there is anti-sheep violence very early on that was a bit hard to watch for me. Another thing that can be said about this first half is that despite how despicable the main character is depicted here, he also has his charm like how he shows his wife at the end when he has their song prepared for her. Overall, you can say this first half is more about the introduction to the wealthy and powerful and beautiful other than really a character study of Berlusconi or anybody else. It does not go too much into detail in terms of economy or political etc. but maybe that was a good thing there because like I said I liked this one more than the other. Now lets move on with the final statement that this was not picked as Italy's Oscar submission this year. I don't know if the fact that it is a duology is a problem or the nudity or that Americans just don#t care about Berlusconi, but I found Dogman infinitely better, so a wise choice by the Italian Film Board, still this one here is not a bad watch by any means and I think you can give this first half a go and then decide for yourself halfway into the film if it is good enough for you to continue. But you should not expect an improvement in the second 100 minutes. That much is safe.
Review of Loro 1
