Now Playing
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

38 12 Rounds
48 17 Again
76 Adventureland
48 Angels & Demons
54 Battle for Terra
xx Bruno
80 Coraline
40 Dance Flick
83 Drag Me to Hell
72 Earth
45 Fast & Furious
61 Fighting
34 Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
72 Gran Torino
73 Hangover, The
47 Hannah Montana: The Movie
51 Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
54 Imagine That
41 Knowing
32 Land of the Lost
56 Monsters vs. Aliens
34 My Life in Ruins
51 My Sister's Keeper
46 Next Day Air
42 Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
54 Observe and Report
25 Obsessed
48 Proposal, The
70 Public Enemies
61 Soloist, The
83 Star Trek
64 State of Play
55 Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, The
52 Terminator Salvation
35 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
77 Under the Sea 3D
88 Up
43 X-Men Origins: Wolverine
34 Year One

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

sort by name

sort by score

67 $9.99
75 24 City
66 Adoration
74 Afghan Star
48 Alien Trespass
56 American Violet
82 Anvil! The Story of Anvil
57 Away We Go
81 Beaches of Agnes, The
62 Big Man Japan
28 Big Shot-Caller, The
78 Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
55 Brothers Bloom, The
82 Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
xx Call of the Wild
63 Cheri
62 Cherry Blossoms
63 Dead Snow
65 Departures
18 Downloading Nancy
58 Easy Virtue
70 End of the Line, The
77 Every Little Step
64 Examined Life
80 Food, Inc.
38 Gigantic
56 Girl from Monaco, The
67 Girlfriend Experience, The
87 Gomorrah
89 Goodbye Solo
63 Great Buck Howard, The
79 Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
xx Home
82 Hunger
91 Hurt Locker, The
16 I Hate Valentine's Day
81 Il Divo
54 Is Anybody There?
71 Jerichow
58 Julia
74 Lemon Tree
36 Life is Hot in Cracktown
40 Limits of Control, The
42 Little Ashes
64 Lymelife
50 Management
57 Merry Gentleman, The
66 Moon
35 New York
62 Not Forgotten
xx Offshore
78 O'Horten
64 Outrage
40 Paris 36
54 Pontypool
71 Pressure Cooker
52 Quiet Chaos
83 Revanche
67 Rudo y Cursi
86 Seraphine
65 Sex Positive
70 Shall We Kiss?
77 Sin Nombre
59 Sleep Dealer
74 Song of Sparrows, The
54 Stoning of Soraya M., The
82 Sugar
84 Summer Hours
61 Sunshine Cleaning
28 Surveillance
42 Tennessee
63 Tetro
64 Throw Down Your Heart
80 Tokyo Sonata
63 Tokyo!
70 Tony Manero
74 Treeless Mountain
88 Tulpan
74 Two Lovers
83 Tyson
83 U2 3D
60 Under Our Skin
69 Unmistaken Child
69 Valentino: The Last Emperor
22 What Goes Up
45 Whatever Works
57 Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Malena
Miramax Films


9.3

based on 22 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 31 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for sexuality, nudity, language and some violence

Starring Monica Bellucci, Daniele Arena, Giovanni Litrico, and Giuseppe Sulfaro

Malena (Bellacci), a beautiful young war widow, inspires the sensual awakenings of a group of adolescent boys in 1941 Sicily.

GENRE(S):	Romance
WRITTEN BY:	Giuseppe Tornatore Luciano Vincenzoni (story)
DIRECTED BY:	Giuseppe Tornatore
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: July 10, 2001 Video: July 10, 2001 Theatrical: December 25, 2000
RUNNING TIME:	105 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA / Italy
LANGUAGE(S):	Italian (with English subtitles)

Received two 2001 Oscar nominations, including Best Cinematography. Also received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Film.

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Qualifies as director Giuseppe Tornatore's second full-fledged masterpiece. His first: "Cinema Paradiso."

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

Malena the film is as beautiful and seductive as its heroine, with its ravishing Lajos Koltai cinematography and sweepingly romantic Ennio Morricone score.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Gives audiences something more than just a heart-stopping beauty to contemplate.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Nothing new here except model-turned-actress Bellucci. To call her noteworthy would be an understatement.

Village Voice Dennis Lim

A nostalgic coming-of-age sex comedy tastefully lecherous enough to indicate that its intended demographic is several decades past puberty.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

What begins as a blushing, priapic opera buffa about coming of age turns into a verismo shocker, before softening into something mellower.

TV Guide Frank Lovece

It differs from American films about the period in its evocation of day-to-day passion. The power of beauty is often dealt with in films, but not so often its powerful curse.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

You wish that Malena's inner life had been given as much accent as her outer charms.

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

Intriguing, containing a truthful kernel of sweetness, rot and brutality that will shock many.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Striking photography, period detail, screen-filling crowd scenes, and veteran composer Morricone's score make this one worth seeing, but the sheer nastiness of the town's people drags it down.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

Too often seems like a slightly silly film.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

No period of Italian history has produced more great movies than the WWII years . But, Malena romanticizes and even sentimentalizes those years.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

If Mussolini had a Monica Bellucci to inspire his troops, we might still be trying to take Palermo.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

There is noting quite so awkward as a film that is one thing while it pretends to be another.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

When the film changes gears from light coming-of-age comedy to ex-post-facto war parable midway through, it loses its focus and suddenly becomes a much darker beast.

Variety David Rooney

Combining a coming-of-age story with the sad odyssey of a woman punished for her beauty, the film ultimately has too little depth, subtlety, thematic consequence or contemporary relevance.

USA Today Mike Clark

There's definitely some paradiso in watching Malena walking, but not enough to sustain almost two hours of cinema.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Somewhere in writer-director Giuseppe Tornatore's overstyled movie, about a 12-year-old boy (Sulfaro) during the Italian fascist period who has the hots for a mistreated war widow (Belluci), is a pretty good short story about the fickleness of community and the cruelty of gossip struggling to get out.

Time Richard Schickel

Things finally work out all right--except for audiences, who will find this thin movie bereft of the more richly textured sentiments of Tornatore's "Cinema Paradiso."

Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard

Giuseppe Tornatore has long been a master of cheap sentiment ("Cinema Paradiso," " The Legend of 1900"), but his latest film is his most shallow, reprehensible exercise in nostalgia to date.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

Feels more like "Porky's" with marinara sauce than "Summer of '42."

Film.com Henry Cabot Beck

In the end, Malena is an unlikable and foul farce, unworthy of Tornatore's previously gentle touch.

The average user rating for this movie is 9.3 (out of 10) based on 31 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

R. L. gave it a10:
A truly extraordinary film! I loved every minute of it.

sathya v. gave it a10:
I love this movie. we must view this film in an auto-analystic way of admiring the characters. this movie has some magic that we keep on thinking about it even after weeks or months...oops! i must say this is a movie of a life time. i'm glad to have it in my collections of dvd. tornatore is way ahead of mankind.

Chris S. gave it a9:
What a great movie. Excellent performances with a spectacular score and striking images. You won't forget this one.

W. Christopher H. gave it a4:
In the past I have greatly admired Tornatore movies, but this one is just not worth the time. It's almost as if he watched Fellini's "Amarcord," decided to focus entirely on the character "La Gradisca" from that movie, also included the obsessive attention to pre-teen auto-eroticism, and then turned it all into some sort of cruel neo-realist "critique." It's got all the cruel intensity of a Giovanni Verga novel near the end, which is very Sicilian, but completely misplaced. It's rather disgusting, in fact. Tornatore was already going downhill at "The Star Maker," but this takes the cake.

Halla A. gave it a 10:
I loved it. very beautifully portrayed at how sometimes beauty isn't exactly always a blessing.

Willy Billy gave it a 10:
The Best Lovley Musical Beauty File that i saw yet ... What a greate object ;)

Christophe C. gave it a 10:
The most beautiful story I've ever seen.

Malena Miramax Films

Malena
Miramax Films