Rating: 
Summary: Cinema Paradiso
Review: This movie was absolutely wonderful. As an Sicilian, I can truly say that the events and people are realistic. The scenic beauty of the small town and the character of Toto hit my heart strings. Not only was the story touching, but the music score was beautiful. I recommend this film wholeheartedly and urge everyone to buy it.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Images..so so sound...perfect movie!
Review: The director's cut is a whole other movie taking the drama to a whole new level in the modern times portion of the film.
It would have been better though for MIRAMAX to have used 2:0 and not 5:1 sound for a film that has no5:1 content.
The image quality is a revelation over all previous editions but the sound is only just acceptable and should have been far better in a straight two channel form.
Rating:
Summary: Cinema in Sicily
Review: This movie is not like every other on the market, and it certainly differs from the staple American diet of special effects, violence, and sex. But I was not as moved by it, as most other reviewers. Perhaps you have to have kids to fully appreciate this movie. I just did not feel connected with the characters. Toto is a little boy in a Sicilian town who lives with his mother and sister, and whose father... well, watch the movie to establish his paternity. Toto is mesmerized by movies, an experience that defines his personality and much of his adult life. I won't give away the plot, except by saying that the plot is contained in various subtelties of this film. This is not your average entertainment, but it is a well made and thoughtful film, and if you are tuned in to it emotionally, perhaps you will be moved.
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Summary: Cinema Purgatorio
Review: Truly exquisit! Good acting, excellent plot. A true movie about a true life. And not a sweet life. Dramatical, and at the same time, existentially positive, as it explores the life of the lower class society in a post-war rural Sicily. Their struggles and concerns make it look more like Cinema Purgatorio not Paradiso, as the movie carefully knits together themes of Prodical Son, broken love, hope and death...
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Summary: Probably the best movie about loving the movies
Review: Rightfully known as a movie for people who love the movies, "Cinema Paradiso" ("Nuovo cinema Paradiso") is Giuseppe Tornatore's 1988 memoir of growing up in a small Sicilian town. A famous film director returns home for the first time in years to attend the funeral of an old man, but this bit of foreshadowing hardly prepares us for the depth of the tale. For the young Salvatore who is called Toto (Salvatore Cascio), the center of the universe is the local cinema and its projectionist Alfredo (Philippe Noiret). When we first see them together in the projection booth, Alfredo is editing out the kissing and other inappropriate scenes from a new film under the supervision of the local priest, Father Adelfio (Leopoldo Trieste) who rings a bell every time he finds something objectionable. The good father rings the bell a lot, to the dismay of the local citizens who bemoan the fact they have never seen a kiss on screen. Unlike most films featuring the cute kid and the grumpy old man, "Cinema Paradiso" presents the odd couple as kindred spirits from the very start. They both love the same thing: the movies. Even when the adolescent Salvatore (Marco Leonardi) discovers something else to love besides the movies in the form of a young woman named Elena (Agnese Nano), he is equally devote in his new obsession, standing outside her window for days in the pouring rain to impress her. Of course Salvatore loves not only the Cinema house but Alfredo as well, and when tragedy befalls them both he has to take his place in a new world while hanging on to the old. Finally, Alfredo has to kick Salvatore out of the nest and send him off into the world with the warning never to come back, because Salvatore's dreams will never be realized in the town of his birth. "Cinema Paradiso" is a film that captures both the pain as well as the joy of remembering the past. When the grown Salvatore (Jacques Perrin) opens up the gift left to him by the man who was much more than his father figure, we know immediately exactly what he has received. But that knowledge does not attract from the emotional impact of that glorious final montage.
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Summary: A beautiful masterpiece that grabs your heart
Review: Once in a while, a film comes along and dazzles audiences with its smooth viewability, if that is a word, brilliant acting, and well crafted plotline. In the case of Cinema Paradiso, we see these elements combined with a stunningly soothing musical score, excellent cinematography, and a combination of comedic, romantic, and dramatic moments. This film starts in the present, presenting us with the main character, Toto, as an old man, well into his fifties, returning to his hometown to hear his lifetime friend and mentor Alfredo has died. What follows for the duration of the film allows us to see his childhood, his adolescence, and the way he fights through tumultuous times of love, disaster, and peril. Along the way, we are able to see his constant love for the movies and slowly evolving romance with the beautiful Elena. The romantic moments in this movie are especially touching, as are the scenes in which we see Toto struggle to win Elena's love. What makes this film a truly brilliant one is the way everything wraps itself up in the end. We are able to see the people from his youth aged into the present, and the film ends on a perfect close. There are no loose ends to be tied up, and I admit that I became a little teary eyed throughout the last 20 minutes. The scenes of Alfredo's funeral and the destruction of the Paradiso are very sad, and will make you think of good times long forgotten, save but in your heart. I recommend this movie to anyone. I am a college student, and I have loved this movie since the first time I saw it on an airplane when I was 8...admittedly, I can understand and appreciate it much more with age. It is a perfect date movie, and also makes for a nice way to spend an evening with a friend or even by yourself. Buy it today. I guarantee you'll love the story and music.
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Summary: the best
Review: cinema paradiso is a sentimental masterpiece. quite simply the finest film ever made, it is an unabashedly emotional work of art. the film is alternately a celebration of life and the power of movies, and a bittersweet, somewhat sad tale of a man who is betrayed by a girl and who subsequently builds up walls and never finds love and can only get his joy through the films he watches and, then, makes. this movie will make you laugh and cry almost at the same time. and alfredo is, to me, one of the most memorable, lovable characters in film history. the ending - alfredo's gift to toto - will make you sit in teary-awed awe, just as the character in the movie is as he watches what unfolds on the screen. if you have a heart, you will love this movie. if you don't love this movie, sorry, but you're pretty much a loser...
Rating:
Summary: A perfect movie
Review: I have watched this movie probably a hundred times and everytime it moved me to tears by the end. It's one of the best movies of all times -- and not just foreign films. It's nostalgic, sentimental (but not pretentious), warm... I can't find a single word that would describe this movie. The first time I saw it, the ending simply surprised me and made me cry. And ever since, everytime I saw it, tears would come without warning. A truly magical movie -- about love, loss, passion, dreams, memories, kindness, and just being human. I would have voted it Best Picture.
Rating:
Summary: So close
Review: This movie, just to hear it described, should have been one of my favorites -- a small town, a love of movies, comical villagers, a kindly projectionist, an adolescent crush -- and yet it's not. The reason is because it's sentimental. I'm all for sentiment. I cry at "Big," for gosh sakes. But this movie goes over the top (or under the bottom) in its blurring of what the storyteller feels and how much the storyteller wants us to feel for ourselves. The end -- which I won't divulge although I must warn you that if this is the first post you're reading, there are some spoilers in other posts -- is a lovely surprise that broke my heart because it didn't belong to a stronger movie. (And I'd like to meet the guy behind me in the theater who blurted out what the surprise was a moment before I would have realized it for myself.)
Rating:
Summary: Cinema Paradiso
Review: Perfection in filmaking. Poignant and nostalgic, at times as hilarious as it is bittersweet without being overly sentimental. Bellissimo!.
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