Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Konterr Brilliant and touching

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Prismark10 Amarcord is an episodic coming of age film from Federico Fellini. The film might have some autobiographical elements but it is a fee flowing almost anecdotal film of eccentric characters including some buxom women in the village of Borgo San Giuliano in 1930s Italy where Fascism is on the rise.There is buxom Gradisca who runs a beauty parlour and arouses men's passions. Volpina the thin blond good time girl, the rotund and even more buxom tobacconist, the tiger like blond schoolteacher. In amongst this is adolescent Titta who plays pranks including on his father who gets extremely irate and his mother who always has to come to his son's defence.The other boys in the town regularly touch themselves and the local priest is obsessed with whether the boys touch themselves and accuses them of masturbating as soon as he looks at them.The film has fantasy sequences such as when a Sultan checks in the Grand Hotel with his harem. It has dark sequences as when Titta's socialist father is brought in for questioning by fascists and abused.The film consists of little vignettes, it opens with a sequence of puffballs signifying that the winter is gone. There is a sequence where fog is so heavy a man cannot find his house even though he is standing outside it.The film in some ways accompanies Fellini's 81/2 and lacks the tight narrative structure of La Strada. It does feel bloated and also strangely empty. This is signified by the ending because it just ends.

kenjha Fellini explores the lives of the residents of a coastal Italian town. Although it looks at lives of numerous people in the small town, the focus is on a family that presumably is based on Fellini's own family. Apparently Fellini grew up in a family of Italian stereotypes. The mother fusses. The father screams. It's like a sitcom except that there are hardly any laughs. This is not high art. The humor is on the level of "Porky's" and "American Pie," with lots of emphasis on flatulence, bodily fluids, and the female anatomy. The cinematography is colorful, but there is no plot here to sustain interest; it's a series of disconnected episodes that soon become tiresome.

Terrell Howell (KnightsofNi11) Amarcord, Italian for "I Remember," is a colorful and artistic film from famed Italian director Federico Fellini. It tells the story of a small Italian coastal town under a fascist regime before World War II. The film paints a grand imaginative portrait of this town as recalled by its spry director who possesses a keen knack for creative and spirited storytelling. We grow to love the characters in the film and we watch their larger-than-life stories unfold before our eyes in a beautiful and enticing way. This film makes its own rules and paints itself up as an incredibly spirited tale of joy, love, and even bittersweet remorse for a town that only could have existed the way it did in the time period it did.It isn't difficult to see the personal level of this film that Fellini includes. It is apparent how much of the story was taken from his own childhood and then injected with a wistful and almost make-believe quality of storytelling. The town in the film is based on Rimini, the town where Fellini grew up, so it is a given that this is a personal film, but you don't even have to know that to see the personal connection coursing through this film's veins. Fellini has created a nostalgic story for himself that others can also enjoy to great extents. Amarcord isn't self indulgent and it doesn't lose track of its heart and soul which makes it such a pleasurable experience.Fellini takes some liberties with the narrative style of this film as it is told in a very free-form way. It is almost a collection of short stories thrown together in a playful and creative way. The town and its strong heritage, affecting each enjoyable character, is the thread which ties the scattered pieces of the narrative together and keeps it from being uncohesive or confusing. Amarcord is the study of a town, as well as the study of people and family. It weaves all of its stories and characters in and out of each other, never losing its loving and colorful mood. The film boasts a lot of fun style throughout with plenty of humor thrown in. The film is very funny at times, but it displays a smarter and more sophisticated humor without being pompous or self important. The film's humor is an excellent display of sarcasm, irony, and cleverness all rolled into a bundle of entertainment.For everything Amarcord does, it does right and it does well. It is simplistic in its motives and care free in its narrative. It isn't anything complex or serious. It only seeks to entertain, while also provide a glorious, imaginative, and often times nostalgic look at the simpler times of life and what joys they bring us. While Amarcord isn't a film I would watch over and over again, there is absolutely no denying that it is an excellent film well worth the watch.

moonspinner55 A jolly man in his golden years recounts colorful episodes of the past which took place in his seaside Italian town filled with farmers, families, students, and 30 visiting concubines. Director and co-writer Federico Fellini based the incidents on memories of his own hometown of Rimini in the 1930s, and the occasionally raucous journey is both a beguiling and amusing one, beautifully filmed by the estimable Giuseppe Rotunno. Fellini's fixation on big bottoms (and on breasts that look like big bottoms) isn't sequestered away for fear of making "Amarcord" look less prestigious. Hardly...the movie is full of low-ball, bathroom humor and sex-jokes, and is at its best when following a group of randy hooligan youths around town, weakest when it mixes political satire with fantasy (while the concubine episode seems to belong to a different picture altogether). An early dinner-table sequence--which, one presumes, features a typical Italian family--is staged for maximum impact (lots of gesturing, shouting and eye-rolling), yet the characters around that table, particularly the natty and unruffled uncle, become quite dear to us. The opening celebration of the coming of Spring is a bit flat, but the classroom montage which follows is hilarious and full of recognizable hijinks; another highlight is the visit with the insane uncle, who refuses to come down out of a tree. Fellini doesn't goose the story with grotesqueness, nor does he make big introductions; he allows the pages to turn and the audience to become absorbed by the vignettes in a lively, funny way. This Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film is one of the filmmaker's finest achievements. *** from ****