December 22, 2009

Cinema Paradiso



Data
Title: Nuovo cinema Paradiso
Year: 1988 (Italy), 1990 (US)
Length: c. 170 minutes (director's cut)
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Writer: Giuseppe Tornatore, with Vanna Paoli
Starring: Marco Leonardi, Agnese Nano, Leopoldo Trieste, Salvatore Cascio, Jacques Perrin, Philippe Noiret
Music: Ennio Morricone
Distinctions: Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film (1990); currently #90 on IMDb's Top 250

My reaction
Synopsis: Honestly, I don't know. Netflix mistakenly gave us disc 2, which is the Director's Cut, instead of the film. It's a full hour longer, and I just noticed on the IMDb that an actress who plays a character essential to the central story of the director's cut is not even in the original version. So what's the original version about? Probably the cinema Paradiso, I'd guess. That would be a pretty good movie...
How I saw it: on video (rented from Netflix), yesterday
Whatever: Sigh. I was about to go through my rating process, but thinking about it made me upset.  I haven't seen Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, I've seen the director's cut, and it's not the same movie. This one will have to wait for later.
Subjective rating: 5/10 (Indifferent). The first hour is wonderful (and is the only part of the movie I saw that sounds like the descriptions I've read of Nuovo cinema Paradiso), and I can only assume that if the second two hours were half their length, they would have been equally wonderful. If you haven't noticed, I'm kind of upset about this whole spending-three-hours-of-my-life-ruining-a-probably-good-movie thing.

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