Popular reviews

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  Review by Rida ★★★★½ 20

  Slight spoilers in the last paragraph.

  Our modern malaise is all-encompassing self-pity. I went through it last year: what was the point of wanting things if you were never going to get them anyway? In the throes of my self-absorbed sorrow, I didn’t notice that I had no ambition to begin with. Finding something to care about got me out of that horrible dark place, but every day, I come across more people my age – kids who haven’t even hit twenty yet – diagnosed with depression, although nothing monumental has happened to them, to us. Why are you so unhappy? I don’t know.

  Watching La Dolce Vita was like coming across yet another one of those depressed kids, or…

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★★★ 18

  "Don't be like me. Salvation doesn't lie within four walls. I'm too serious to be a dilettante and too much a dabbler to be a professional. Even the most miserable life is better than a sheltered existence in an organized society where everything is calculated and perfected."

  It's always intimidating to try and write about something considered to be one of the best films ever made. Regardless of how great it might be, sometimes it can be hard to have fun without a personal access point. It's like staring at the Mona Lisa: sure it's a nice painting and it's easy to appreciate on that level, but what does it have to say about my own subjective reality?

  So it…

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  Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★★★★ 20

  Jesus flies above a Rome that is elegant but decadent. There is no strict character development in La Dolce Vita, just a slither of a story about a hedonistic reporter getting lost amidst an amoral landscape. The film embraces the shallowest of lifestyles to reveal the emptiness of it all. Fellini's Italy is an enchanting place where the nights are alive, but everything in La Dolce Vita is fake. News and reality is all constructed, as characters seek new adventures in a city deemed tranquil and bland. La Dolce Vita contains so many characters, essentially it is cavalcade of the people who wander through a certain social class. These people are disconnected from the world. Their lives are shallow and…

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  Review by Dan Gaertner ★★★★★

  A film I never understood as a teen. A film I understand too well as an adult.

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  Review by sarah squirm ★★★★ 1

  gonna wear a glamorous scarf on my head like all the hot italian women in this movie

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  Review by Marcissus ★★★★★ 7

  She watches him leave with a faint nostalgic smile, turning her gaze towards the camera with two frames to go and I am completely done

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  Review by Edgar Cochran ✝️ ★★★★★ 16

  ***One of the best 150 films I have ever seen.***

  Reportedly, after being asked about the main inspiration of La Dolce Vita, Federico Fellini replied that "one year the fashions made the women in Rome look like big flowers". With this idea in mind, Fellini constructs one of his biggest and most celebrative and daring masterpieces of his entire filmography. Would it be enough to say that the film contributed the term "paparazzi" to the language? Such term was derived from the protagonist's photographer friend named Paparazzo. To what extent can a masterpiece that introduced a new era and represented the exact moment when Fellini suffered a filmmaking style transition influence the actuality culture? Condemned by the Italian Catholic party…

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  Review by nick ★★★★

  La Dolce Vita is a masterfully elaborated vignette that opens the portal to the facile glamor of the 1960s Rome. Federico Fellini held back nothing with his scathing, morally enticing portrait of a society suffering from faith crisis, commitment issues, and incurable human conditions. Despite its demanding three-hour runtime, it rarely feels tedious, as the oddity of the adventure as well as its provocative moral revelations is more than enough to keep one entertained throughout.

  La Dolce Vita details a journalist's multiple romantic encounters, and a string of events that push him gradually to his limits. Marcello Mastroianni was the perfect candidate to pull off the emotional range and personal charm of such a mesmerizing character, especially in those more…

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  Review by Paul Elliott ★★★★★ 1

  Denounced by the Vatican, prohibited in Spain and recipient of the Palme d'Or at the 13th Cannes Film Festival, La Dolce Vita managed to incense as well as delight. It concerns the episodic saga of Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni), a columnist in Rome who investigates society and entertainment gossip for a major tabloid newspaper. Federico Fellini commandeers the schizophrenic disposition of the journalist's existence and his futile quest for love and prosperity extraordinarily, boosted considerably by Mastroianni's inspirational performance.

  The film is genuinely graceful and stylish in appearance, which commences with the terrific lighting; the cinematography of Otello Martelli, the costume design and Nino Rota’s enchanting musical score are all tremendous too. Played out in the surroundings of a changing post-war Rome, the film operates its substantial mysticism beyond the exterior elements and delivers awe-inspiring entertainment that investigates the endless divide between the sexes. La Dolce Vita is one of Fellini's masterpieces and is both symbolic and memorable.

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  Review by Jonathan White ★★★ 19

  After adoring Nights of Cabiria, and loving 8 ½ , it seemed like the appropriate time to take another dip into Fellini’s pool with a film that many consider their favourite.

  I had no foreknowledge going in that this is what influenced The Great Beauty, a film I detested so much that I walked out after about 15 minutes ( actually walked out twice, first after 10 minutes, and then, after deciding to give it another try and continued, walked out again after another 5 ).

  I was positively giddy watching the opening scene of ‘Flying Jesus’, there was a big smirk across my face. It wasn’t just the symbolic imagery, but also the wonderfully creative cinematography. Of course seeing…

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  Review by ˗ˏˋ suspirliam ˊˎ˗ ★★★½

  that was a lot of cinema for my tired brain to handle on a tuesday evening but it sure was rather stunning to behold i know that much is true

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  Review by anto 1

  I wish Anita Ekberg would tell me:
  "Antonio, come heeere! Hurry up!"