Reviews for this film from our members:
- Marco Albanese @ Stanze di Cinema [Italian]
- Excerpt: Il nuovo film di Paolo Sorrentino e’ il racconto travolgente, generoso, feroce di una citta’ e di un Paese, devastati dalla superficialita’, dallo spreco, da un continuo stillicidio del proprio talento.
- Chris Barsanti @ PopMatters
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Sorrentino is an exceptional visual stylist and the imagery within this film is startling…
- Carlos del Río @ El rincón de Carlos del Río [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Un Fellini sin Fellini: una cosa es homenajear y otra imitar.
- Marilyn Ferdinand @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: This sprawling film’s story seems fairly confined, but its real character is epic in scope, a Lawrence of Arabia focused on the whole of Italian culture from the Roman Empire to the 1960s heydays of Italian cinema.
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: An elegant, existentially enigmatic meditation on opulence and decadence.
- Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: You’re meant to hang on Jep’s every word, but he’s a bit self involved. Occasionally he says something great.
- Carson Lund @ In Review Online
- Excerpt: The film’s timeline is ostensibly linear, but there is little logical connective tissue bridging scenes; Jep simply wanders around the city, parties, chats with his dwarfish editor, shares argumentative cocktail nights with colleagues, parties, attends bizarre performance art, parties, and catches up with old friends. A considerable portion of the film takes place at night, intensifying a feeling of dream-induced ellipses already aroused by Sorrentino’s seemingly weightless, constantly floating camera.
- Marty Mapes @ Movie Habit
- Excerpt: Frenetic portrait of Rome’s elite recalls La Dolce Vita and Ulysses
- Matthew McKernan @ FilmWhinge
- Excerpt: If Il divo is Sorrentino’s Goodfellas, then The Great Beauty is very obviously – too obviously – Sorrentino’s La dolce vita. Quirky and cinematic but empty.
- [New – 2/27/14] | Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: Is ‘The Great Beauty’ the best Fellini film that Fellini never made?
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: Paolo Sorrentino’s (Il Divo) breathtaking excursion through Roman high life is a sad, funny, sexy, heartbreaking, and exquisite look at a society dancing as fast as it can to keep up with a past that can’t be caught or even quite remembered.
- Don Simpson @ Smells Like Screen Spirit
- Excerpt: The epically sprawling narrative seems just as self-absorbed as the social elite that it follows; the seemingly random transitions from scene to scene and the exquisitely drifting camera movements give the allusion of a surrealist fantasy absorbed via a third person omnipotent perspective, and a near-Proustian mastery of the narrative form repeatedly renews our confidence that Sorrentino knows precisely what he is doing.
- Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: A virtuosic cinematic achievement of epic proportions, Paolo Sorrentino’s formalized comment on modern-day Rome is a visual and satirical feast.
- Ron Wilkinson @ ItsJustMovies.com
- Excerpt: Leave your iPhone at home for this one or you will buy a plane ticket to Rome before you can escape the theatre.
