Unlimitedia Sick Product of a Sick System

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Kinley This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

georgep53 A horse driven coach beautifully adorned and accompanied by elegantly dressed coachmen makes its way to a wedding ceremony while the grubby business of daily life goes on around it. One can almost imagine the clock striking midnight and the coach reverting back into a pumpkin while the horses & coachmen become mice. Like the folks sitting in the coach we crave our escapist fantasies even though we know that when we wake up in the morning the world will still be the same old place. But what happens when a man becomes so desirous of fame & fortune that the real world seems fake and the dream world becomes reality? That forms the basis of Matteo Garrone's Cannes Film Festival 2012 Grand Prix winner--"Reality" a wonderfully entertaining comedy-drama starring Aniello Arena as Luciano a fishmonger who lives a quiet middle class life with his wife and children. His wife, Maria, played by Loredana Simioli works as a marketer for a dubious new device called the "Robot" which promises to revolutionize work in the kitchen. Arena's friend and employee Michele (Nando Paone)is devoted to religious iconography and can't seem to stop making the sign of the cross while attending church. After Luciano is persuaded one day to audition for the Italian version of "Big Brother" his determination to join the cast becomes the pivotal objective of his life so much so that his friends begin to worry that he may be losing his mind.In "Reality" Garrone masterfully satirizes a world governed by superstition, consumerism and the ultimate hallucinogen-----television. Reality television is no more real than anything else on the tube. It's like sitting in a carriage that will turn into a pumpkin when the cameras stop rolling. Aniello Arena and Loredana Simioli are perfect as Luciano and his suffering wife. "Reality" vacillates between the poignant and the absurdly funny.

Blayne Alexander Reality is a wonderfully drawn film that showcases the obsessive behavior of a guy destined (in his own mind) to take the prize on Italy's 'Big Brother.' Not a new premise by any stretch, and always difficult to watch. He basically throws his life, the life of his family, and his own sanity out the window for a stupid reality TV show, before needing the proper motivation to fight his way back.That being said it is a story of flawed characters. Of which we are all. So I tried very hard to get over my general distaste of the main character's actions and maneuvers to enjoy the story that was being told. Direction and cinematography are top notch. Simply exquisite. The non stop sweeping camera made my knees weak at times...and I simply loved the title treatment at the end of the film. Probably even gained it another star simply because it made me smile on my way out the door.But when all is said and done we find our characters, and in many ways ourselves, left exactly as we were to begin with, nothing learned, nothing lost, and definitely nothing ultimately gained.

cinematic_aficionado Reality is a fitting title about a man who totally lost it (his own sense of reality).Part satire, part a comic-tragic portrait of our world with its vanities our hero is just an everyday guy who is a fishmonger, and like many others has a souse, children with all that goes with it.His world is shaken when following a brief performance in a wedding reception he becomes acquainted with a celebrity and the desire is born in him that he can be part of this world, the world of stardom, wealth and recognition.So by making use of this brief acquaintance he enters a competition to join big brother and does so in the certainty it will be his passport to fame and fortune. The contact with fame though ludicrously brief it is enough to cause him a great deal of harm.The harm came in the form of obsessive behaviour, paranoia and hallucination causing a loss of his own self awareness and disregard for all those around him.A charmer of a movie about vanity, obsession and a surrounding culture that feeds us these kind of fake feelings and desires.

AmericanFilmTheory ** Contains Major Spoilers, including a discussion of the ending of the film** When asked about what he was trying to say with Faust, Goethe replied that what he wanted to say was what's he'd written in the play. If he'd wanted to say something else, he added, he would have written something else.Matteo Garrone, of Gomorrah fame, is going for much the same answer about his latest work, Reality. I just saw the movie and the director himself at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival, where Garrone stepped on stage after the screening to take a few questions.It was an entertaining back-and-forth between an audience gushing with praise and a visibly pleased but disarmingly unpretentious director. When asked to elaborate on the film's enigmatic ending, though, Garrone politely declined, saying that he'd rather leave it open to interpretation, and was more interested in what the audience thought.So, here's my take. At the end of the movie, the main character Luciano, a Neapolitan fishmonger who auditioned for Grande Fratello (Italy's Big Brother) but never heard back, sneaks onto the set of the show in Cinecitta. None of the Big Brother contestants, who are splashing around in the pool, seem to notice him. Luciano, seemingly mesmerized by the giggling bunch, takes a seat on a sunbed in a courtyard nearby—and suddenly he can't stop laughing. The final shot zooms out, beginning with Luciano giggling all by himself and eventually encompassing all of Rome.What does the uncontrollable giggle mean? Has Luciano lost his mind? That's a very real possibility. On the other hand, as Garrone pointed out to me when chatted briefly after the screening, he also may be laughing because he's finally won—after all, he is finally in "The House." But what kind of victory is that? I think we're supposed to compare the final scene with the first. The film opens with a panoramic shot of Naples in full daylight with Vesuvius and the Bay as a backdrop. Then the camera slowly zooms in on the odd spectacle of a gilded horse-drawn carriage. The carriage arrives at a sort of villa, where a staff dressed in what appears to be 18th century costumes opens to door for the passengers, a tacky bride and groom.Both the opening and closing scenes revolve around some kind of fantasy, but one zooms in while the other zooms out. The colors are important here. The opening shots are strikingly colorful and bright, while the final shot is almost black and white, being shot at night and starting from the minimalist courtyard with its stylized white-backlit lounge chairs. The opening is crowded with family and friends, and in the end, Luciano is alone. The opening represents fantasy within the bounds of reality, while reality TV is fantasy beyond these boundaries.By the end of the movie, Luciano has lost sight of what is most important: his family. It is true that his life as a fishmonger and scam artist is far from idyllic, but there is undoubtedly something valuable in the role he plays in his own small community. He is already a star to his relatives and friends, as we see from his comic performance at a family wedding at the beginning of the movie.see the rest of this: americanfilmtheory.com