Okay so basically... Zocchi is really bad and I would not recommend taking his class, even coming from someone who received an A for the work this quarter.

Personal grudge first, then the technical stuff later:
Zocchi quickly fell behind in the material early in the quarter, and instead of cutting the irrelevant content (of which there was a fair amount), he held a class twice the length of a regular one, ON A HOLIDAY!
There was no class allowed by UCLA on Presidents' Day, and instead, Zocchi assigned twice the classwork because he failed to cover the relevant content in a timely manner.

Zocchi is a very unclear lecturer who will just run through practice problems for the entirety of the class, without stopping/slowing down to explain why or how things work with physics. The first week made sense and saw about 180 people attending each lecture. Fast forward through the quarter, and you'll see that 39 students, of the total 188 enrolled, dropped the class. Even though 149 people were still technically enrolled, I never saw more than 40 people in the Zoom call by the second half of the quarter. This is because of a class plan that I would also recommend:

If you HAVE to take Zocchi, don't waste your time attending his lectures, but use the time instead to read the textbook equivalent of whatever the lecture's title is (he lists their titles on the syllabus) or work through the content he has listed for each exam.

Zocchi is also just a bit rude and inconsiderate. His frustration with questions grew throughout the quarter, and his reactions were less like a teacher answering questions and more like a Twitch streamer yelling at his chat for not understanding things that take time to learn.

The structure of the class is very simple and reasonable, which was the saving grace of this class (and the only thing that made Zocchi still preferable to Corbin):

20% is completion-based homework assigned on Mastering Physics (he gives a week to do about 2 hours)
20% is the first midterm which was very easy and straightforward in my section
20% is the second midterm which was pretty scary but still manageable for most students
40% is a god-awful final that will bring up things you've never even thought about
- and luckily anything over 80% in the class counts as an A

So the best advice I can offer is: Read the textbook, try to ace the midterms, and do all the homework so that you can cry less while pretending to understand why a square hockey puck and a salad bowl are on the final.

So the reviews for this class are super outdated, but during Spring 2020 Zocchi's class was unorganized to say the least. He gave us barely any time for the midterms, even after NUMEROUS emails asking him to accommodate people during a tough time. The worst part was he wouldn't even respond to the emails which left much of the class in confusion (it also lead to 25% of the class dropping by week 10)

Midterm averages were also super low, midterm 1 was like a 68% and midterm 2 was about a 58%. He doesn't curve the tests but uses his own wack grading scale (I think??) where >80 is an A, 65-80 is a B, and so on. I'm not entirely sure if that's accurate because when I emailed him to confirm he ghosted me :/ I think the final average may have been higher cause most people I know scored much higher than previous midterms. But he also gave us 48 hours (finally!) for this test.

His lectures were reaaaaally hard to learn from, he has a very thick accent and just covers a bunch of examples like a machine. He definitely knows his material, but I couldn't really get anything from the lectures and stopped attending by like Week 2. I just grinded the material from the textbook and worked through the homework and prayed I'd get lucky on the midterms/finals.

Overall, if this is your first physics class since high school (like me), I would NOT recommend as I definitely feel like I have a half-ass command of the knowledge compared to my friends who took 1A with other professors. If you do have a strong physics foundation, I would still hesitantly recommend cause you're probably gonna have to rely on previous knowledge and do a bit of reading to do well in the class.

Physics 1A is an extremely important physics class and Giovanni Zocchi teaches it in the most convoluted and difficult to understand way possible. He is a terrible lecturer and does not get the concepts across. I took the equivalent of this class before in high school and if I hadn't had that background this class would have felt impossibly difficult. Even if the other professor is Corbin, take him, Corbin curves like crazy and you will actually learn something. I personally was fine in that class but I truly only had an easy time because of my previous exposure. I learned NOTHING from Zocchi. Please for your own sake don't take him.

Prof Zocchi was good. His final was a little tough, but it was mostly application to test if you knew the material, so it wasn't really that bad if you had paid attention and understood the material in his class. I feel that I have a good grasp on 1A after his class. A nice, funny man.

I attended lecture for maybe the first two weeks, but stopped going as Zocchi is frankly a pretty horrible professor/lecturer. He discusses a lot that we don't need to know, and while it's pretty impressive how smart Zocchi actually is, he does not deliver it in a way students can understand. Also his accent is super thick, which makes his already convoluted lectures even worse. He always forgot about office hours and released homework super late. I relied entirely on what I learned taking AP Physics in high school. The first midterm was easy, the second a little harder but still doable (it's very easy to tell which questions his TA's write versus him). The final however, was nearly impossible and brought up so much stuff that you never thought was even possible. His only saving grace was that an 80% was considered an A in the class. Overall, course delivery was pretty bad, but honestly his grade scheme might make him preferable over other professors.

Professor Zocchi's lectures are hard to follow and quite disorganized. After 2 weeks, I stopped attending lecture and went to discussion which was very helpful. He has his own course notes that he follows, which is quite hard to read, and he does many examples that are sometimes quite irrelevant. His midterms are challenging in that there are no numbers! It is all variables and because all the hw involved numbers, that was hard to get used to. HW is given every week on Mastering Physics and it is great practice and revision of the material done in class. The final was 48hours and the questions were not terrible. He does not reply to emails and may not seem like a great professor, but he does have a very lenient grading scale where >80 is and A and 65-80 is a B. I did AP Physics in highschool, so the material came easy to me, but for those who have not, Professor Zocchi may not be a great choice.

He was kind of a funny guy but his lectures focused mostly on theory explanation and were pretty boring. Honestly, you don't really have to go to lecture at all; just teach yourself the equations from the book and make sure you can do the homework.

First midterm was ridiculously easy, especially if you've taken high school mechanics - it was a simple plug and chug test. A lot of people scored 100%. His first midterm is also very similar EVERY year. The second midterm is a bit more tricky and varies every year, but as long as you do the problems in the book you're fine. The final is really long, and there are a bit of little tricky things that take a bit of THINKING to do. The last two questions on the final were very conceptual - one of which required use of geometric series and reasoning with words, and the other one was about an object sliding/oscillating back and forth in a parabolic shaped trajectory.
Lectures are very tough to sit through because Zocchi's accent is hard to understand. He also teaches beyond what is required, proving other stuff OUTSIDE of the textbook. But as long you read the textbook, you're fine.
Discussions are probably not necessary unless you really don't understand the textbook, but the textbook is very clear and the problems in the book come in a wide variety of difficulties to help you understand material.
Overall, to do well in the class, do EVERY problem in the book and look at previous midterms. You don't have to stress about not being able to fully understand some of the material beyond the scope of the class/textbook that Zocchi talks about. You MAY have to recall stuff from Math 31B for the final. If you mastered mechanics at the high school level, you should be able to score 100% on both midterms and pretty high on the final. If you haven't taken high school physics, I suggest taking another teacher because a lot of people will have an advantage, so missing one question is devastating to your grade.

don't take this course if you think it's an automatic guarantee of an A, bec it isn't. if, however, physics makes no sense to you at all (that's me), take zocchi because the worse you probably will get is a B or B- (which is far better than other professors will give you). zocchi's not that bad, though he tends to go off and do crazy calculus/math problems sometimes. first midterm was easy, second midterm and final were difficult.

I took his course just because it's easy. It's too hard to understand his accent. But you don't need to go to the lecture if you have learned the material. Just be careful with the second midterm. It may be harder than the first one. But overall, it's an easy GE for north campus student.