Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

What makes it different from others?

Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

the film is sometimes boring, sometimes beautiful, sometimes even unpleasant. I would remark the beauty of Rome in the night walks, the city always ahead of its people. What I don't like is the actor playing the leading role, he is not at all elegant, or handsome or interesting by any means. The Marcello Mastroianni from la dolce vita is here a good actor ( everybody says )but without any charm or any looks to be part of the high class society

I started to watch it without any high expectations but the film truly surprised me. Deep,sophisticated, intelligent, full of meaning, every frame on point. This film is a real piece of art, high-end product of cinema, an aesthetic pleasure. The mere watching and listening to the sheer beauty of the succession of images and conversations will bring an emotional dreamer like me to tears because of sweet, almost physical ache. The thing is that the plot doesn't matter that much, it is not the main focus. One just drowns in your own thoughts and emotions the film creates. I remained captured by it until the last minute and a long time after watching it. For those who find it boring - this is not your typical flick that will entertain you the way you are used to. It is not in any sense a crowd pleaser.

'La Grande Bellezza' is an extraordinary film. There are echoes of Michael Anontioni, Luis Bunel or even Peter Greenaway in it's styling; as well as a wonderfully shot paean to the beauty of Rome that somehow felt personal, at least to this sometime visitor of the Italian capital. An dilettante novelist and socialite playboy turns sixty-five, and continues living his life while looking back on the part that is over: in places the film feels like a stylised satire of the bourgeoisie, and the world of modern art. Yet in amongst these arid beginnings, it widens into a sympathetic portrait of a surprisingly subtle (but never unambiguously likable) man. The dialogue too, is funny and clever; and somehow although this should be exactly the sort of arty-pretentious movie that is too much for it's own good, it isn't. It was a left-field choice for an Oscar nomination; but a wholly deserved one.

Paulo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty (2013) is just such a cinematic masterpiece on so many different levels.It is so lyrical in composition that I would have to call it a cinematic poem.Visually this is an extraordinarily beautiful film. The cinematography is very innovative and creative. The editing, especially the abrupt shifting into new, different scenes is radical, but skillfully done to great artistic effect. The use of lighting is very creative. The combination and blending of diverse settings ranging between the classic architecture and art of Rome, to modernistic nightclubs is just wild. There is also just such a broad palette of intriguing imagery in this film.The story is about a bon vivant , who wasted his potential to be a serious writer by spending his adult life on the upscale party circuit in Rome. After his 65th birthday, he seems to have serious doubts about the meaning of his life, and begins drifting from one scene to another, wondering about the sense of it all, until almost magically returning to the setting of his first love as a young man, where he seems to pull it all together for himself.The dialogue has some deep philosophical overtones and, generally, the film reflects on the meaning of a life spent pursuing material pleasure, as opposed to the meaning of a life spent pursuing one's own personal values. This film squarely reflects on that aspect of the human condition where, in the face of advancing age, and the prospect of impending death, one reflects on the past seeking a meaning, a significance to one's life.The whole film seemed to exude, to radiate a distinct, but unrecognizable atmosphere for me, very close to the nostalgic, and the reflective.The Great Beauty is just a classic instance of Great Art, in my opinion.