Tale of Tales

The first breath of fresh air in cinematography in years... It's a combination between brothers Grimm (writings, not series) and Sopor Aeternus. Amazing!

This is a great little movie that is weird and odd enough to keep you engaged. The beginning is a bit slow but if you stick with it, it begins to pick up. Amazing performance from Bebe Cave.
I recommend this if you like a bit of twisted awkwardness in your movie.

Each tale is engagingly told, elevated by the luscious cinematography and the accomplished playing of the cast. A sequel with more of Basile's tales would not be unwelcome.

Matteo Garrone's revisiting of three obscure seventeenth-century fairy tales rejects the conventions of mainstream fantasy films, and instead goes for an austere, almost neorealist approach. The film is mostly shot in Italy using real locations over CGI, and the photography is mainly minimal with natural lighting and little visual effects. The supernatural elements and fantastic creatures are finely designed and meld with the semi-realistic setting beautifully.

The intention is clearly to tell "dark" fairytales to a grown-up audience, but actually there is nothing as edgy as one would think: just some mild violence and quite a lot of boobs. Each tale's outcome is also quite underwhelming despite the intriguing premises.

It's definitely better than most of your average fantasy films, but at the same time, I can't help feeling like more risks could have been taken.

Beautifully shot and acted, but [spoiler] I expected the stories to connect to a crescendo at some point. The ending was very underwhelming. [/spoiler]

It’s beautifully done and the stories are what they are but it’s a little spotty in narrative. The story doesn’t make sense until you read the plot.

This is not a Disney fairytale, but is reminiscent of that mixture of innocence and horror from the Grimm's tales. This twisted short story collection is a feast for the eyes.

I found the stories themselves to be somewhat unsatisfying. The tales are fragmented and instead of a single climax, each has a 'point of no return', where a character makes a choice and everything goes horribly wrong. The cast, however, was excellent and clearly worked hard to not let their characters become the one-dimensional caricatures seen in story books.

The real stars, however, are the Italian castles and caves. This film might be tourism propaganda, and I'm not even mad. Seriously, even if you skip the film go check out the screenshots and film posters on Imdb, they're a treat.

Wow, so I watched part of this based on the reviews below. What a steaming pile of crap! 25 minutes of my life I’ll never get back. The costumes and sets were kind of cool but the story was disjointed and stupid. Maybe I’m not sophisticated enough to get it.

Definitely a bad movie. Excellent photography but nothing else. Garrone is overrated as director.

The two stars are for the beautiful images, effects and costumes. It's bubble gum for the eyes. Nice, but it brings you nothing. Think of man walking so slow you can't tell if he's going forward or backward of standing still. If you like to watch that for three hours, this movie is definately for you. If you don't, skip it.