As good as movies get. A film for the ages. "Cinema Paradiso" is a love letter to Cinema. And one of it's greatest.

Nostalgic look at a little Italian town.

What a lovely movie! It is a love letter to films. I can't believe I had never watched it. Fantastic. The music is marvelous! Wow.

It might indulge in melodrama at times, but I can totally see why it won the hearts of the international audience. Postwar years Italy countryside, old men wearing flat hats, bittersweet nostalgia, and above anything else, a tender homage to cinema and movie theatres as a social gathering place. Things are not as compelling in the second half, but the ending is much more emotionally satisfying than you would expect (also thanks to the great soundtrack).

Nuovo Cinema Paradiso is a film that, at least in the first part, succeeds perfectly in describing the love and passion that an enthusiast has for the seventh art through the eyes of Totò, a child in love with the cinema booth. Accompanied by a memorable and incredibly beautiful soundtrack by Ennio Morricone (to be expected from an artist like him), the film comes across as perfect in the first part. It loses instead in the second part, when Elena enters the story: I found that they focused too much on the love story and not on what was initially the film, sometimes making it really too dramatic (for example when they meet again in the scene in the car). So if I had to give a grade to both parts, I'd give a solid 10 to the first part and an 8 to the second. Amazing acting by the entire cast though. 9/10