There’s no question that Paolo Sorrentino‘s The Great Beauty (Janus, 11.15) is a mesmerizing film. Dazzling, swirly, lacquered and narrated to a fare-thee-well — a resigned and somewhat rueful examination of a 21st Century La Dolce Vita lifestyle of a journalist-novelist (the great Toni Servillo) who’s letting it all slip away. It finally feels more Roman that universal, but the diversions are quite formidable. It’s very beautiful, meditative…a big ambitious reach. I said as much last May in Cannes. But what a comedown to have seen it on the big Lumiere screen inside the Grand Palais, and know that it’s set to play on one of those cramped shoebox spaces at the Lincoln Plaza. Something unjust about that.