Cinema Paradiso by Richard Natale Cinema Paradiso is defiantly old-fashioned, with nothing more on its mind than blatant nostalgia. It's basically a bus and truck version of Amarcord. A bittersweet history of the only moviehouse in a small Sicilian town, it hits all the appropriate marks, evoking laughter and tears--but we're always aware that we've seen it before. At first, the relationship between an aging dim-witted projectionist (the enduring Philippe Noiret) and the little boy who is essentially his apprentice (various actors at different ages, the best of whom is the young Salvatore Cascio), is predictable in a tolerable, movie kind of way. But then, it gets worse. The sequences devoted to the boy's adolescent awakening to love are hackneyed, and the eventual demise of both the projectionist and the movie house--within the same week no less--leaves you with that sinking "oh they're not really going to do this" feeling. Still, director Guiseppe Tornatore, whose film a clef this is, has an authentic, affectionate hand. He keeps it all afloat until the last half hour when Jacques Perrin (the little boy as a middle-aged man) returns to Sicily. How the cute Sicilian boy and his full-lipped teenage counterpart (Marco Leonardi) grew into an unmistakably French man is a question only those conversant with the intricacies of cross-cultural international film financing could answer. What did you think of this movie? Sound off in the Movie Forum.