Malena [Blu-ray]

A wonderful movie. Great acting. Beautiful woman Malena.

I first saw this film via Netflix streaming last year and loved it. I often suggest it to others, and came to the conclusion I should own it. After searching online, I discovered some issues. One being that there are two separate versions, cut (for American audiences) and uncut / special edition (apparently for the rest of the world...who have eyes and minds that can tolerate a visual portrayal of the nude human form). Of course I wanted the latter, not only because Monica Bellucci is easily one of the most beautiful women in the history of forever and ever...but also because I despise an artist's creation being hacked and slashed due to a vocal minority of insecure 'potential' viewers. Censorship of artistic expression is shameful, unless it breaks the law in some way. The second issue I found was that as an American the only Blu-ray option I had was the cut / censored version. Because of this I opted to search for the uncensored 2-Disc DVD set from Korea, which I'd found through research was supposedly Region zero and would play on Region 1 (United States, Canada, Bermuda, U.S. territories) players. I contacted the Amazon merchant "Import CD's" out of California concerning the region issue and they provided me with all they had, which was not much more than Amazon had.I went ahead with the order through Import CD's as I've dealt with them in the past. Shipping was very prompt and the merchandise was in fine quality when received. The back of the case stated region 3, so I used Wikipedia to find any more information and noticed that region 3 should NOT play in region 1 players. I took a chance anyway, noting both the information from Import CD's and Amazon's website, as well as user reviews acknowledging the Korean version as the one to buy. I was pleased to find that it indeed does work on a US Playstation 3, however the 2nd disc (special features) would not load. Just a continuous clicking as the system continued the attempt. I tried the disc in my PC. GOM Player would not load it, but VLC did load the menu and managed to play through roughly 5 minutes of the first "making of" before stalling and not allowing any more playback, even after multiple attempts at different menu selections. This is not a huge deal for me as I got the movie at a reasonable price and the actual movie was all I really wanted anyway. I'll check YouTube, etc. to see if I can find special feature items at some later time.Overall the movie quality is great (other than the first minute or two, in which video quality does suffer from lack of clarity a bit) for a DVD being up-converted on a PS3. The picture is 2.35:1 Anamorphic widescreen and the disc is single layer, NTSC. Audio was fine (the movie includes a great soundtrack!), with both Dolby Digital 2.0/DTS and Dolby 5.1 surround as options. If you're new to this movie, do understand that it is a foreign film (Italian) without English dialogue, so you'll have to opt for English or Korean subtitles with the Italian spoken dialogue. I found that the subtitles did not really detract from my enjoyment of the film at all...and once you've seen the film you'll be watching it again anyway, so you'll have plenty of time to see it all. The packaging reads mainly in English on the cover and binding, however the film description on the back is only Korean.In summary, if you love this film buy this Korean 2-Disc version (Barcode # 8 809154 130234)...unless a Blu-ray uncut special edition for your region is announced, in which case that is a must buy over this!. If you're on the fence and a Netflix subscriber, I suggest streaming it now, or rent it wherever you can find it...either version. You won't regret it. This is a fantastic coming of age film with wonderful acting and great atmosphere. Highly recommended!

BEAUTIFUL.!!!

Direction is uninvasively clever; challenges Belucci to embody Beauty and Love, albeit euphemistic and blunt. She is an important star, Classic & Immediate. Italian town is not disingenuously anachronistic to a novice eye like mine. Chapter weighing is empathetic and appetizing. Not an Italian speaker here, and the dialogue translation and/or script may have felt gruff. Read others for a plot analysis. Painted an artistically vintage feminist illustration upon hindsight.

Monica Bellucci is spectacular in this film. Great movie showing the effect of war on those left behind. Can't say enough about her showing.

Such a beautiful movie. I watched it 3 times.

an amazing story would definitely recommend this

The main actress is very beautiful..obviously the advertisements hinted at that being a running theme but had I known the rest, I would not have rented this. 15 minutes into this movie I wondered how long this boys puberty and how many terrible the inappropriate scenes regarding this would be. I did not realize the perspective would be from adolescent male coming of age and the whole" sex sells" would be including such gross imagery and concepts. Yeah males going through puberty is real no need to encourage age inappropriate scenes.. you can tell the story with out that...and yeah, he told a story of the times which those parts were ok but there were SEVERAL inappropriate scenes where an adult woman is kissing and luring this 13teen something boy and nude..encouraging thoughts of its normalcy when there are may different ways this movie could have been directed and told the same story without pedophilic scenes. Its its past the 2000's.. not cool anymore- let's all show that we have evolved from the unconscious tree of life shall we. *barf sounds*