One of the greatest Italian films, Cinema Paradiso is a special, timeless classic that will make you smile and weep in equal measure.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 11, 2024

This is both an unashamedly sentimental rite-of-passage picture and a charming reminder of the lost magic of cinema-going.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 1, 2024

The story is drawn from the director Giuseppe Tornatore's childhood memories, presented here as a series of loosely-linked episodes commemorating the importance of movies -- of art -- in the lives of people forced to manage on very little.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 9, 2023

The theatrical cut left a major sub-plot thread dangling, which didn’t seem to bother many other viewers or critics. After seeing the original cut on Blu-ray, I can say without trepidation or hesitation that it is absolutely the best version of the film.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 10, 2023

Never has the love for cinema been so clearly expressed, without tricks or artificiality, within a film. [Full review in Spanish]

| Dec 6, 2022

The skill of Cinema Paradiso happily manages to suggest that such a legacy has not entirely evaporated. At any rate, I find the experience it offers an enchanting one.

| Jul 26, 2022

...by all accounts this is one case in which Miramax's meddling appears to have actually improved a film...

| May 21, 2021

The theatrical version is a movie of extraordinary passion. In the Director's Cut, it's still an excellent film, just not a transcendent one.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 24, 2021

A celebration of cinema's communal experience, this lovingly crafted ode to the joys projected upon the silver screen is a touching celebration of moviegoing.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 23, 2020

Although charming, its substance isn't overwhelmingly deep, serving more as a lighthearted, idealized, nostalgic coming-of-age tale than a stirring emotional investment.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Aug 31, 2020

Ask me what it is about movies I love so much, and I'll tell you to see Cinema Paradiso for your answer.

| Aug 5, 2020

It's another clean, colorful community with an unreal sense of vitality, everyone playing a comfortable role in the neat storyline.

| May 20, 2020

Cinema Paradiso itself possesses enough command and self-conviction to demonstrate that movies can still manage to manifest an alternative universe.

| Jan 11, 2020

A treat.

| Original Score: B+ | May 17, 2019

Giuseppe Tornatore's film is a charming and gently humorous work of semi-autobiography, composed with an attentive painter's eye and a cinematic cross- referencing of images and motifs.

| Apr 9, 2019

Giuseppe Tornatore, writer and director of Cinema Paradiso, knows that the way to make shameless wallowing palatable is to make no great claims for what you are resurrecting.

| Dec 6, 2018

This is one of the finest films about innocence ever made, a perfect picture of a time when the cinema was the only source of laughter and joy.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 23, 2018

A cinema-lover's delight.

| Sep 6, 2017

That balance of the ideal and the tragic weaves all throughout Cinema Paradiso, which is epic in terms of the time frame it covers, but feels consistently intimate

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 1, 2017

Recent changes to cinema which have seen the projectionist's art sidelined in the digital age add a further layer of poignancy to the magical memories.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 16, 2013