Judging by that thread title, I guess you come to realize I came out of a recent screening of this Italian movie feeling somewhat empty and unimpressed. It's not that it's badly made -it isn't- it's the fact that director Matteo Garrone has too much to handle for his own likelihood. He has 5 stories to focus his energy and time on and he doesn't do all of them justice- there are some interesting ones, like the 'scarface' loving teenagers that try to play the mob with their own rules, but even there and then the story gets muddled and reduced to a half baked delivery. My beef with the movie isn't all bad, I do realize that I went into this Italian movie with high expectations and came out completely dissapointed but Garrone does show promise for the future and there are some flashes of brilliance but what brings it down is its own ambitions. It tries to reach the same heights past films such as Traffic, Magnolia and Goodfellas attained by trying to become a mosaic for the crime scene. that is almost an impossible task to achieve since those films have been copied and tried numerous times over the past decade. Critics have been pissing their pants off over this film, I don't really see why.