8½ (1963)

IMDb plot summary: A harried movie director retreats into his memories and fantasies.
Directed by Federico Fellini. Starring Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimée, and Sandra Milo.

I have tried to watch this movie I don't even know how many times, but something always gets in my way. I finally made it through the entire thing... and it was absolutely not worth it. Guido is a despicable character, and I have zero interest in spending two and a half hours in his narcissistic fantasies about the women around him. I have both liked and disliked Fellini before, but when I liked him it was because he took a simple story about interesting people and let it play out. This uses artsy dream sequences and unnecessarily philosophical conversations and is basically everything you would make fun of if you were going to parody a foreign classic film. I do not understand the love for this movie, as I found it far, far inferior to La Strada or Nights of Calibria or even La Dolce Vita, which I didn't like much but which at least seemed to mean something.

1 star.

How it entered my Flickchart:
8 1/2 < Days of Heaven
8 1/2 < Mickey Blue Eyes
8 1/2 > Aquamarine
8 1/2 < Courageous
8 1/2 > Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
8 1/2 < Breach
8 1/2 < Soylent Green
8 1/2 > To Kill a King
8 1/2 < A Decade Under the Influence
8 1/2 > Ali
8 1/2 < Mamma Mia!

Final spot: #2083 out of 2484.