ScoobyWell Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

ActuallyGlimmer The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

t_atzmueller First a word of warning to Italian readers: "Africa begins south of Rome", goes an Old Italian saying – this is filmed in the borderland. So, the proud descendants of the Roman culture that they are, they won't like everything about this review.Rome: ancient cradle of European civilization, which gave us democracy and the alphabet. Rome: modern, buzzing metropolis, city of culture, style and fashion. In Ettore Scolas film we only get to see glimpses of those Romes, which loom far, far in the distance. Scolas Rome is the rotten tooth of a city that once was the heart of an empire. A corpse, so degenerated that only sheer tenacity and stubbornness keeps it alive.This film could have been shot in any slum in this world, be it in Rio de Janeiro, the trailer-towns of the Midwestern US or one of the gypsy encampments of Eastern Europe. But such an utterly black, cynical comedy like "Brutti, Sporchi e Cattvi" could probably only have been produced in Italy.In one dilapidated hut lives the Mazzatella clan: a sheer countless number of relatives, each poor, unemployed, unemployable and rotten to the very core. "Proud" head of the family is Giacinto (Nino Manfredi) who has one worry in the world: that his relatives would steal the million lire insurance money which he "earned" by loosing his left eye in a quicklime accident (we don't know how much a million lire was worth back then, but we presume at least a few hundred bucks).When Giacinto picks up corpulent drifter Iside, bringing her home into the family-bed, his clan decides to take more drastic measures, flavoring his macaroni with rat-poison. However, the one-eyed patriarch survives (with the aid of saltwater and a bicycle-pump) and shows his relations, who's on top of the familial food-chain.Director Scola wasn't lying when he promised to show us "the dirty, the ugly and the mean"; three terms which not only define Giacinto, his family and the squalor in which they gleefully live. At the same time, he shows us humans with whom we can instinctively relate to, not mere caricatures of the poor or corrupt. Scolas film is powerful, even important: it makes us laugh and at the same time, makes us wonder what we're laughing at.In that sense, films like Emir Kusturicas "Black Cat, White Cat" or Michael Raeburns "Triompf" probably own more to Scola than the average viewer might have realized.9/10

Luciano Kurban If you ask me what is the second best movie of all time , it's difficult to say. But if you ask me which is the best movie ever , there's no doubt. Brutti, sporchi , cattivi is the ultimate masterpiece. If you're not from Italian origin , you may not agree... it's funny , and yet profound and adult. What we have today ? Spielberg ; Infantile .Lovable aliens. Capable of transform an android gigolo into a Disney character (Kubrick's AI) James Cameron: His movies are a collection of clichés. Super production hides the fact Quentin Tarantino : Comics filmed. Just Hype. Robert Zemeckis : For all audiencesThose who save the day : "Tim Burton , Scorcese ( Forget Hugo ),Polanski, Clint Eastwood. Not to mention those who passed . Kubrick, Nicholas Ray,Sam Peckinpah, and many others

Gerald A. DeLuca The great Nino Manfredi stars in this side-splitting and brutal black comedy about a bacteria-like family of degenerates occupying the slums on the outskirts of Rome. Manfredi is the misanthropic and miserly aging patriarch who has a secret hoard of money he guards zealously. He despises his wife and cretinous children who try to rob his stash and try to kill him by poisoning his maccaroni. You really won't believe this marvelous quintessence of gross until you see it with your own eyes. It is "commedia all'italiana" in full force.

erubies This is an extraordinary film. A pitiless portrait of human race. Scola describes the life of poor and marginal people with no compassion, showing all their miseries and perfidies. In this sense, the film is very close to another masterpiece, Viridiana from Bunuel. Everything in this movie is so disconcerting (beginning with the slum which has a magnificent vista to St. Peter's Cathedral) that it also remembers me of David Lynch's works. Besides all that, the film is absolutely hilarious.