Average Rating: 7.9/10
Reviews Counted: 57
Fresh: 51 | Rotten: 6
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 7.8/10
Critic Reviews: 15
Fresh: 13 | Rotten: 2
No consensus yet.
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Average Rating: 4.4/5
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Cinema Paradiso offers a nostalgic look at films and the effect they have on a young boy who grows up in and around the title village movie theater in this Italian comedy drama that is based on the life and times of screenwriter/director Giuseppe Tornatore. The story begins in the present as a Sicilian mother pines for her estranged son, Salvatore, who left many years ago and has since become a prominent Roman film director who has taken the advice of his mentor too literally. He finally returns
R, 2 hr. 3 min.
Oct 17, 1988 Wide
Feb 18, 2003
$0.2M
Miramax Films
All Critics (60) | Top Critics (16) | Fresh (55) | Rotten (6) | DVD (9)
In the director's cut, the film is not only a love song to the movies but it also is more fully an example of the kind of lush, all-enveloping movie experience it rhapsodizes.
The film's final hour, where nearly all the previous unseen material resides, is unconvincing soap opera that Tornatore was right to cut.
Still rapturous after all these years, Cinema Paradiso stands as one of the great films about movie love.
This director's cut -- which adds 51 minutes -- takes a great film and turns it into a mundane soap opera.
Where the original release was an essay in childish delight and adolescent longing, topped off by a muted coda implying that you really can go home again, the reissue is a fully realized epic of the heart.
I'm happy to have seen it -- not as an alternate version, but as the ultimate exercise in viewing deleted scenes.
Charming Italian film about friendship, movies.
Cinema Paradiso is for anyone who loves the movies. And Tornatore's final montage of glorious movie images reaffirms the power and magic of cinema.
Sublime.
A movie lovers' delight
Walking a fine line between genuinely emotional and overly sentimental, it evokes the magic of moviegoing in post-WWII Italy through the intimate bond between a young boy and his mentor-projectionist, splendidly played by Philippe Noiret.
The special 2006 DVD features the shorter domestic version as well as the three-hour international director's cut, the CD soundtrack, lobby card reproductions, commentary, and a docu on the making of the Oscar-winning picture.
Some very interesting and important differences, but as a work on its own -- too long, tedius. See the original, nicely-edited version first.
If too much charm can kill, this emotionally manipulative nostalgic love letter to cinema directed and written by the 32-year-old Giuseppe Tornatore is a killer.
Tuvieron que pasar 5 años para que pudiéramos apreciar la historia original como la concibiera su creador; no obstante, prácticamente se trata de dos películas distintas.
an enchanting, sweeping look at post-WWII life, real and reel. It's set mostly in a small Italian village, but the characters, situations and changes it depicts are universal.
Schmaltzy and soft, but still hard to resist, especially if you can't imagine your life without the movies.
Cinema Paradiso is laden with wonderful moments and ideas. It's quite simply one of the most beautifully romantic films ever made.
Even better than the original.
The increasing abundance of films about films, such as The Artist, Hugo and Super 8, gives us a chance to reflect on similarly self-reflexive efforts which have come before. The best effort by far remains Peeping Tom, Michael Powell's misunderstood masterpiece which compares the art of film directing to the macabre
January 26, 2012
Super Reviewer
A sentimental gem. No one makes an emotional film better than the Italians do, and among the Italians, I'm wondering if Tornatore's the best. This story - a memory of a small-town childhood and its movie theatre experienced by a now successful man who lives in Rome - is a beautiful one, and the only criticism I can
June 18, 2007Super Reviewer
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