The first two thirds of this film are excruciating torture. The dialogue was just a series of non sequiturs and banal small talk, and the direction was often choppy and amateurish. Take for example, the legendary opening dream sequence. Kubrick could have done it a hundred times better. I'd confess to being an Al Qaeda operative if I was forced to sit through this stinkbomb again. But sit through it once I did. I endured the whole miserable time thinking: it has to get good at some point, there has to be a payoff somewhere, surely my patience will be rewarded eventually. Because after all, this is one of the most worshiped and praise-lavished "masterpieces" in the history of cinema, right? Well, it never did justify it's classic status, but it at least got somewhat bearable in it's final third, where we finally start to get some mildly clever dialogue and watchable scenes. Take, for example, the harem dream sequence. This scene is modestly amusing. But it's hardly any better than what any modern-day hack could have come up with. For instance, imagine if the exact same scene (same direction, same dialogue) were from an Adam Sandler film instead of a Fellini one. Would anyone accuse it of "genius'? Of course not. Sandler fans would get a mild chuckle and the rest of us would yawn. So why are we to believe that it's so great here? In fact, what is the point of this film at all, other than pure masturbation for a narcissistic director? (no wonder film students and amateur directors love it) Fellini lets the cat out of the bag when he has Mastroianni utter this nugget of truth: "I've really got nothing to say. But I want to say it anyway." And that is this film in a nutshell. Which would be forgivable if Fellini could "say nothing" in an interesting or entertaining way. But he fails miserably even at that. note: For those of us who don't speak Italian, the film is doubly excrutiating because most of the scenes are so dense with dialogue (99% of it worthless) that you end up spending so much time reading the inane sub-titles you miss most of the visuals.

This isn't awful. It's just completely, utterly, offensively pointless. That Linklater thought this was worth investing 12 years in baffles me. Even more baffling is that so many people think it's the best movie of the year. Yeah, these are the normal, mundane, cliche'd, run-of-the-mill experiences and conversations most of us have growing up. So why do we need a movie to reflect them? (particularly one that goes out of it's way to be plotless?) Because it's "insightful"? Tell me, what f***ing insights did you gain watching this movie that you didn't already know? It appears that most of the fawning praise heaped on this 3-hour pile is due to the over-hyped gimmick of using the same child actors over the whole 12 years. Because that's the first thing everyone mentions when describing the film. But is it really that impressive? How does the filming-for-12-years gimmick say anything about the quality of the actual finished product? It's just a silly gimmick used to disguise the fact that this is just another mind-numbingly useless coming-of-age film. And it appears the whole world fell for it. Yep, Linklater played you for suckers.

A little-known masterpiece of hazy hippie burnout music kinda like David Crosby's 'If I Could Only Remember My Name' but even better. Unlike Crosby's album, it transcends it's era and achieves a timeless quality. There are songs here that sound like Elliott Smith. Others sound like they could have come off Nirvana's "Unplugged". And this is 1973! Amazing stuff.

Ever find yourself thinking, "May the unholy curse of fiery damnation devour this wretched world for not giving me enough Joni Mitchell music."? We've all been there, right? Well, my friend, have I got good news for you!: For the low, low price of free (cuz the internet), you can get your hungry ears on this long lost forgotten Joni Mitchell album from 1972! For some weird reason the streaming services misidentify the artist as "Ronee Blakley". Wha? Must be some kind of glitch. Eh, whatevs. The point is that we have another classic-era Joni album to listen to! Is it as good as Blue or Court and Spark? Well, no. But beggars can't be choosers so quit your bitching and have some appreciation for the fact that an extra Joni album even exists. The world can be spared for now.

Mix about two parts stadium-era Simple Minds with one part Big Chair-era Tears for Fears and you'll have a pretty good idea what to expect here. Singer and main songwriter Gustavo Cerati even sounds like the perfect cross between Jim Kerr and Roland Orzabal. It doesn't get much more '1986' than this. And I mean all of that in a good way. "Prófugos" and the title track are highlights, but the whole album is excellent. Fans of the above-mentioned bands will not be disappointed.