Edit: I have not finished this movie- probably never will now unless I find some new becut tter way to watch critically acclaimed movies that are easy- like a good streaming service. But this is what I got and it looked like a good movie. Short Criterion overall rating- all the movies are in 7-10 range. So I never found a movie I hated which is probably because of my enjoyment of cinema but it also shows that they know good movies to do. I guess I can move up my 1927 Metropolis review or do anime reviews again. Which I liked doing but movie reviews were fun to do. Guess this will be a whatever I feel like reviewing blog again.
And I found out only yesterday that Hulu lost the Criterion Collection- which I know, being a month behind is sucky but I was at school and in no way would I have been able to watch movies to the sheer focus and extent I did in some of these reviews (that two part movie? That took ten hours to watch/ write all together) and I loved doing that.
But here's a cut off and unfinished review. It was going to be probably an 8.5 since it was a great movie up to that point if a bit vague and slow and would have been funny since 8 1/2 is the title of the movie.
But yeah I love old movies or critically acclaimed ones or just them in general so its sad that Hulu lost the collection cause that was one of the best organized sections of a streaming site I had ever seen.
After the slog that was 47 Ronin, we will take a glance (thanks to how Hulu organizes "A to Z") in the realm of Italian cinema. And while I like epic drama death marches kind of slog films like huge samurai films that people would get bored of or seemingly French New Wave films full of philosophical intent- having a black and white Italian dramedy film based around a director having writers block about a sci fi film he's doing is nice and rather meta for film making.
I do have to say though that this film is the longest film so far in our quest of Criterion Cinema if we take "a film" as counting as one film itself and since on the C.C. list on Hulu, 47 Ronin was split in half they were only a little less than two hours each. 8 1/2 though is 138 minutes long (or 2 hours 18 minutes) and so almost thirty minutes longer than either part of 47 Ronin.
Actual movie length though? It'll probably take a long while til we see a contender that can fight against 47 Ronin's sheer length.
Looks like this film will be like a combo between the style of 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her and The 400 Blows since it might contain semi autobiographical elements and way more stylistic ways to tell a story with maybe dream sequences and difficulty of knowing what's real and what's not. You know what? That sounds great to hear. I always like more strange film making- thanks actually long wikipedia article going in depth and all. And hey if it won two Academy Awards for Best Costume Design and Best Foreign Language Film it can't be bad. And even the Vatican thinks its a great film, its known as being highly influential and overall critically acclaimed. Pretty much if you think of something that can give a world wide like award I bet they tried to give this film recognition.
Now I always have to look if somehow I have heard of anyone in the cast- like the French New Wave films so far- not yet.
Well remember guys this is supposed to be a comedy- supposed to- guess I'll find out if that's true but I love dark comedies so my sense of humor might be a tad more accepting if this will be weird.
Oh boy this might bug me- wikipedia says that like a lot of Italian films used after filming dubbing for everything- and the director (Federico Fellini) seems to hate me because he liked primarily scripting a lot of lines in post-production. Now how did he make a movie work if he did that? You know, just have the actors mouth gibberish or something. So I bet the mouth movements will be so off- like one of those old English dubs of Kung Fu movies or that Steve Oedekirk movie- Kung Pow: Enter The Fist- a classic movie of terribly terrible yet funny proportions and a guilty pleasure of mine. But those films are, you know, charmingly funny or referentially funny. This might just get a tad annoying if I notice it.
Okay and there was two proposed endings to this film and since the plot synopsis of the actual wikipedia page is super duper vague I have no idea what I will get either I will get a train scene hinting at suicide or a beach scene with a spaceship. Both sound super intriguing.
Well it sounds like this film was the critical darling of nearly every critic known to man- and weirdly enough even Francois Truffaut our little French The 400 Blows director commented about it. That's pretty neat to see. Yeah and pretty much since its inception its been hailed as pretty much Critic God's Gift to Mankind.
Either this film is like the a giant ball of LSD love to my movie brain or like the 47 Ronin it might be boring with a combination of being incomprehensible garbage. Now there is no in between. And it got compared to the avant garde masterpiece and like Citizen Kane which is starting to worry me because after two full watches of Citizen Kane- both times in a school environment to be sure- I think the shots in Citizen Kane and the makeup work in Citizen Kane is fantastic. But if I want to see the best parts in my opinion of Citizen Kane modernized, I'd just watch The World of Wall Street.
Cause this may be a literally critically unpopular opinion but I think Citizen Kane is garbage- cinematically groundbreaking and beautiful- but garbage. It's similar to how I see D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation.
Now if Criterion Collection holds Birth of a Nation I'll ream that thing so hard because I liked the first half of that film but then the second half happened and it died. A slow 3 hour 13 minute death. Sad that Birth of a Nation is like the only representation of what Reconstruction was with the actual added benefit of people being able to say they lived through Reconstruction.
But I'm off on a tangent it seems.
But yeah 8 1/2 has the whole writer's block and dealing with personal relationship themes and I guess modernization cause hey its the sixties and that seems to really be prominent in the fifties and sixties.
But hey it got a lot of similar seeming or heavily influenced "remakes" and influenced the music video of R.E.M's Everybody Hurts video which is a great one. So this can't be a terrible film in a way.
Guess I'll have to find out.
Okay this is actually a weird opening with there being weird imagery of the main character being trapped in a traffic jam. Well good for him getting out through the car roof- and now he's literally flying for some reason. Well the him falling to the ground from up above to wake up was fantastically shot. And so now we have the whole first opening sequence of weird being a dream sequence.
Looks like the main character wakes up in a hospital and the wait staff are all saying that they are waiting for his next great film.
