Movies
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Best / Worst of the Decade
Wide Releases
Now In Theaters
49
2012
41
Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
84
Avatar![]()
69
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
53
Blind Side
53
Book of Eli, The
55
Christmas Carol, A
57
Daybreakers
43
Dear John
27
Did You Hear About the Morgans?
55
Edge of Darkness
45
Extraordinary Measures
83
Fantastic Mr. Fox![]()
42
From Paris with Love
65
Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, The
74
Invictus
57
It's Complicated
34
Law Abiding Citizen
33
Leap Year
33
Legion
42
Lovely Bones, The
54
Men Who Stare At Goats, The
34
Ninja Assassin
19
Old Dogs
xx
Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief
39
Planet 51
79
Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
73
Princess & the Frog, The
64
Road, The
57
Sherlock Holmes
27
Spy Next Door, The
36
Tooth Fairy
44
Twilight Saga: New Moon, The
83
Up in the Air![]()
43
Valentine's Day
25
When in Rome
71
Where the Wild Things Are
xx
WolfMan, The
63
Youth in Revolt
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Limited Releases
Now In Theaters
46
44 Inch Chest
83
Ajami![]()
73
Amreeka
xx
Barefoot to Timbuktu
19
Bitch Slap
24
Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
76
Broken Embraces
64
Cloud 9
65
Coco Before Chanel
84
Cove, The![]()
84
Crazy Heart![]()
21
Crazy on the Outside
48
Creation
xx
Daddy Long Legs
81
Damned United, The![]()
68
Departures
62
District 13: Ultimatum
85
Education, An![]()
71
Eyes Wide Open
24
Falling Awake
81
Fish Tank![]()
56
For My Father
xx
From Mexico with Love
43
Frozen
68
Girl on the Train, The
52
Killing Kasztner
74
Last Station, The
43
Little Traitor, The
51
Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, The
73
Me and Orson Welles
76
Messenger, The
57
Missing Person, The
67
Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, The
xx
My Name is Khan
49
Nine
63
North Face
59
October Country
67
Off and Running
52
Paranoids, The
49
Pop Star on Ice
49
Private Lives of Pippa Lee, The
xx
Promised Lands (Re-release)
69
Red Riding Trilogy, The
29
Saint John of Las Vegas
69
September Issue, The
36
Serious Moonlight
63
Shinjuku Incident, The
77
Single Man, A
xx
Still Bill
76
Terribly Happy
74
That Evening Sun
19
To Save a Life
68
Town Called Panic, A
59
Until the Light Takes Us
57
Videocracy
65
Waiting for Armageddon
82
White Ribbon![]()
43
Women in Trouble
xx
Word is Out
64
Young Victoria, The
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Malena

Mixed or average reviews
Based on 22 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 31 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Romance
Written by:
Giuseppe Tornatore
Luciano Vincenzoni (story)
Directed by: Giuseppe Tornatore
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 25, 2000
DVD: July 10, 2001
Running Time: 105 minutes, Color
Origin: USA / Italy
Language(s): Italian (with English subtitles)
Summary
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.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Cinema Paradiso Cinema Paradiso: The Director's Cut Malena The Legend of 1900
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
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...
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Qualifies as director Giuseppe Tornatore's second full-fledged masterpiece. His first: "Cinema Paradiso."
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Gives audiences something more than just a heart-stopping beauty to contemplate.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Nothing new here except model-turned-actress Bellucci. To call her noteworthy would be an understatement.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
You wish that Malena's inner life had been given as much accent as her outer charms.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan
Intriguing, containing a truthful kernel of sweetness, rot and brutality that will shock many.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
There is noting quite so awkward as a film that is one thing while it pretends to be another.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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."
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
Feels more like "Porky's" with marinara sauce than "Summer of '42."
Read Full Review >Film.com Henry Cabot Beck
In the end, Malena is an unlikable and foul farce, unworthy of Tornatore's previously gentle touch.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
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.
