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Could have been much worse; yet, the film is too long by and hour and fifty-nine minutes.

First: slow down. Second: turn of the phone. Third: relax. Now you're ready for a treat. Manoel de Oliveira's Belle Toujours (2006) is a sequel in homage to Belle de Jour (1967), the classic film from Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière. Certainly Belle Toujours is diverting and can stand alone; but, when it follows on the heels of Belle de Jour, so that the two films are taken together, then it finds its full stride. Something magical happens. Michel Piccoli returns as "Mr. Husson" (un drôle de type), as Bulle Ogier replaces - who else could? - the otherwise irreplaceable Catherine Deneuve as "Séverine" (la putain-penitent, forty years on). It works very well. Alone, Oliveira's little gem comes in around 60 minutes. If watched immediately after Buñuel's film, the two taken together require 2 hours and 40 minutes. Enjoy. 8/10 plays it safe.

Sorrentino's La Grande Bellezza is often compared with Fellini's La Dolce Vita. This is easy enough to see, both films being set in the Eternal City and peopled with an assortment of odd and/or striking characters; yet, the comparison to Fellini applies to the first 30 minutes only, during the first of three parties. After, in the early morning light, the mood changes as we begin to learn about the previous night's Birthday Boy who has turned sixty-five. From this point, unhurriedly, the film diverges from Fellini. Why, because Sorrentino's subject is different. In a way, Le Grande Bellezza becomes a polemic that makes use of satire, irony, gut feelings, touches of magic realism, and one rather good inside joke (not a spoiler: the 'aging' 42-year old stripper – an object of parental concern - was played by someone ten years older; but, for the punchline, you must see the movie.) La Grande Bellezza is about memory, loss, self-assessment, regret, and renewal; the flashes of beauty too often missed; everything that is buried beneath quotidian existence and "the incessant blah, blah, blah" (end quote). Finally, some viewers say there is too much water under the bridge in the final five minutes – but it is a matter of sensibility and the balance between frenzy and tranquility