(8.8) Let’s face it, the coolest kid in this picture is the one with the cigarette . . . in a sort of Merv Griffin-ish kind of way.
The Movies on the Block movie this Thursday will be the 1988 Italian import “Cinema Paradiso.” Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times,
When the rich, middle-aged Salvatore receives word in Rome of the death of his old friend Alfredo, his mind goes hurtling back over the years to Giancaldo, the parched Sicilian village where he grew up. Possibly because Salvatore is now a successful movie director, he remembers all in neatly chronological order.
Thus begins Giuseppe Tornatore’s ”Cinema Paradiso,” an Italian memory film about what one might call (in a soggy moment) the magic of movies.
Smoking tots notwithstanding, it is a little sentimental. The movie won the Academy Award for ‘Best Foreign Language Film’ in 1989. Running time 123 minutes.
Free, starts at dusk, Thursday, August 8, Movies on the Block, Grant’s Block, Westminster at Union Street