It seems you’re not allowed to review The Great Beauty without mentioning Fellini at least once, so here goes: Fellini. Now that is out of the way I can actually attempt to discuss Paolo Sorrentino’s latest film, a work that captures both the great beauty and great ugliness of modern life. It is a film that will probably take several days to digest fully as it seems to be a film of great contradictions managing to simultaneously grasp for the profound whilst wallowing in its own superficiality.

Without mentioning that filmmaker again, The Great Beauty, is undoubtedly indebted to the greats of Italian cinema. It’s a film steeped in the magic of cinema and the lure of Rome that has…

Film #167 of Make me watch your favourite.
Recommended by Alberto.

Without a doubt one of the most beautiful looking films of 2013. And one that proves that beauty does not only go skin deep, it goes a lot further if you allow it to.

Watching The Great Beauty was an overwhelming experience. It comes at you full force, bombarding you with sensory overloads, only to become silent and contemplative the next minute. It is whimsical, much like the city it so adores seems to be.

Amidst all this is our seemingly hautein tour guide, who is looking for something he cannot find. Pure, unfiltered beauty and a sense purpose. With misanthropic glee he dismantles fake people around him, all…

The Great Beauty is a gorgeous ode to the towering city of Rome, a love letter straight from the heart of Paolo Sorrentino, written through tears of joy that garnish the wet ink. The director composes a symphony of pure affection, full of memories that make and break a life lived in a city that continues to thrive on such gracious charm and illustrious history.

Life in Rome is seen through the eyes of writer Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo) a one-off successful novelist who never fulfilled his potential, choosing instead to live a decadent lifestyle amongst the rich and famous, giving himself to a life of partying. Now at 65 he begins to see a different view from inside his…

I'll write fuller thoughts elsewhere, but honestly, screw this indulgent, high-and-mighty POS, with its utterly empty style undone at every turn by how above it all Sorrentino wants everyone to know he is. Comparisons to Rossellini, Antonioni and Fellini seem to have the most superficial understanding of what those directors brought to their movies, as well as how invested they were in their work (even Antonioni), how willing they were to either implicate themselves in moral failure (Fellini) or to try and show, in vastly differing ways, how to find a new morality and existential position (Rossellini and Antonioni). Even Antonioni's ostensible remove serves to illustrate not the emptiness of the modern world but the inability of characters to recognize…

Viajar é útil, exercita a imaginação.

O resto é desilusão e fadiga.

A viagem é inteiramente imaginária.

Eis a sua força.

Vai da vida para a morte. Pessoas, animais, cidades, coisas, é tudo inventado.

É um romance, apenas uma história fictícia.

Disse Littre, e ele não erra.

Porém, qualquer um pode fazer o mesmo.

Basta fechar os olhos.

E estará do outro lado da vida.”

- Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Viagem ao fim da noite.

"Para esta pergunta, quando eu era jovem: meus amigos davam sempre a mesma resposta: 'vagina'. Já eu respondia: 'o cheiro das casas dos velhos'. A pergunta era: 'Do que você realmente gosta mais nesta vida? Eu estava destinado à sensibilidade. Estava destinado a ser escritor. Estava destinado…

Albeit slightly pretentious, (something you simply cannot avoid with something that can only be called cinema), La Grande Bellezza is an absolute masterpiece from a cinematography perspective. Every shot at any moment could be taken out of context and still tell a story of its own, worthy of any gallery, anywhere.

It begins and ends with death, leading the viewer through the concept of the fragility and fleetingness of life through the eyes of an aging author/socialist, a man who at one point simply decides that life is too short to do things you don’t care to do anymore. Despite this, he continues his melancholy jaunt through party after party with people who are also aging out of Rome’s exuberant…