3. The Great Beauty
One of the most ephemeral films to come out in recent years, Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty (La grande bellezza) is an exquisite meditation on life and love and transience and the absurd nature of everything. Toni Servillo stars as Jep Gambardella, a once-great writer who, after a Bacchanalian blowout for his 65th birthday, looks past the lavish life he has led to instead seek out a landscape of timeless beauty. Full of rich, emotional sequences and bolstered by Servillo's touching, poetic performance as a man who realises there's more to life than grand decadence and an endless procession of parties and nightclubs, The Grand Beauty is filled with romantic melancholy. Perhaps the best-looking film on this list, The Grand Beauty is awash with lush, textured vistas and sparkling, iridescent colour, ensuring that it's just as much a treat for the eyes as it is the soul.