The Great Beauty

One of my recent favorites (if not from all of 2013), The Great Beauty glides through Rome, exploring the magical, the melancholy, and the hysterically absurd. A must-see for fans of Fellini and Italian cinema. You might say it's a where-are-they-now La Dolce Vita.

The film starts with a quote from Céline's Journey to the End of Night (1932). I'll include it here because it quickly disappears from the screen:

Travel is useful, it exercises the imagination. All the rest is disappointment and fatigue. Our journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength. It goes from life to death. People, animals, cities, things, all are imagined. It's a novel, just a fictitious narrative. Littré says so, and he's never wrong. And besides, in the first place, anyone can do as much. You just have to close your eyes. It's on the other side of life.

The Great Beauty won best foreign film at the Globes this year and is in the running for the same category at the Oscars.

Here's a short interview with director Paolo Sorrentino.

And here's a longer one on Indewire.

Hopefully you'll be able to see it big starting February 7.

"I've been waiting to see this forever."