Amarcord made my third Fellini film, following 8 1/2 and La strada. It took me two viewings to really take to 8 1/2, but I fell for La strada instantly. Amarcord is more like 8 1/2, where I recognize the artistry and relevance of it all but I can't quite say after one viewing that it's a favorite.

I awakened around 4:30 in the morning and realized I was not going to successfully fall back asleep. It seemed like the perfect time of day to stream a Fellini film, as I've found I favor his particular storytelling style in the wee hours. There's a dreamlike nature, even outside the obviously surreal segments, that somehow benefits from the rest of the world being asleep.

It took me about twenty minutes or so to cotton on that each segment was a self-contained vignette, with the through story being the structure of the year from Spring to Spring. The first three vignettes really don't have much to do with one another: the bonfire, the school kids misbehaving, and Aurelio coming home for lunch and quarreling with his family. It's also odd to have so many characters break the fourth wall and address us directly, in addition to Titta's voiceover narration.

For whatever reason, it wasn't until the scene of the Emir arriving at the Grand Hotel that I became conscious of the fact that this was my first viewing of a Fellini film shot in color. I don't know why it took me that long, or even what the relevance is, but I was taken out of the movie for most of that scene by the delayed realization.

I intend to go back later and watch the pair of bonus feature clips available to stream on Hulu and to read whatever essays are shared on the Criterion website, so I'll have more to say about Amarcord later.

Amarcord entered my Flickchart at #77/1481

After learning that a friend of mine whom I know loves this movie as much as I do only had it on VHS(!), I decided she needed to own the extended version on DVD. Because, Alan Rickman. I surprised her with the DVD a few weeks ago and we finally got together to watch it. She'd never seen the extended cut, and what was interesting to me was how even though she said it had been several years since she last saw it, she was able to very quickly spot the added footage.

All eleven minutes of the restored content fleshes out the Sheriff of Nottingham's storyline which means more Alan Rickman, for one thing. Normally, deleted scenes - even interesting ones - really don't add to the narrative. Here, though, the deleted scenes not only greatly expand the Sheriff's character arc and his relationship with the witch, Moriana, but there are on-screen explanations for some story elements that aren't in the final cut. They're not necessarily glaring issues, though, and it's only once you've seen the extra scenes that they become more conspicuous. As my friend put it, "It fills in plot holes you didn't even think to notice were there."

One thing I caught more of this time than I've consciously noted in previous viewings is specifically how Rickman moves. He has a seemingly different gait and posture in each scene, whether bored, frustrated, furious, cautious or darkly playful. His Sheriff is extremely kinetic, certainly more than most screen villains in previous Robin Hood adaptations.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was re-ranked to #35 on my Flickchart

I wanted to see this during its original release, but missed it. When I began tonight to play the DVD I've had for an embarrassingly long time, I was given the choice to watch an introduction by director Steven Spielberg. I elected to view it. He emphasizes that this film "is not meant to be a documentary", citing in part the lack of access to classified documents pertinent to the events portrayed. I couldn't help but to think of the recent flap over screenwriter Tony Kushner's needless revisionism of minor details in Lincoln, and I confess that to hear Spielberg so ardently distance the film from historical veracity tainted my enthusiasm from the outset. Maybe it shouldn't, but it did.

Of course, Munich has one key advantage in the "historically accurate" realm with me: At its heart, it's a spy story and I cut those quite a lot of leeway. Spy stories and Westerns - they're the two kinds of storytelling where as long as everything checks out as plausible, I'll go along with most anything as long as the narrative is interesting and engaging. It's the romantic in me.

Regarding Munich strictly as a spy movie, I have to say it's one of the better ones I've seen. Part-Untouchables, part-Mission: Impossible with a dash of The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, it hits the highlights of spy story intrigue. Suspense, tedious legwork, mistrust, cynicism, anxiety, more tedious legwork, isolation, disillusionment and then some more tedious legwork...Good stuff.

Spielberg is first and foremost a teller of stories about human beings and he sees the world of these not-Mossad agents through that lens. There's not a lot here in the way of logistics, for instance. We never see the team go through customs or have to explain themselves or present cover stories, not even to check into hotel rooms, which they seem to be able to do quite easily. I know it was the early 70s and all, but that seems like basic Spy Storytelling 101 to me. It's not relevant in the context of the story Spielberg is telling, though, which is instead about putting a human face on the people who operate in the cloak and dagger world.

We don't need to know how the team actually gets in and out of places, or to see them ever interact with their bank account more than once to accept that these things are resolved off-camera. This isn't a how-to tutorial on espionage. It's a reductive take on that kind of work meant to ask questions - and to get us asking them, too. There are passages that bear Spielberg's trademark lack of subtlety that feel incongruous with the more nuanced shades of gray he's exploring here, but on the whole it's still a solid place to start a conversation.

Munich entered my Flickchart at #470/1482