WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

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

Murphy Howard I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Antonius Block 'I Vitelloni' has that post-war existential feel to it, and effectively transports us to a small town in Italy where five young men dream of escaping someday, but have no clear plans. There are some wonderful scenes that are easy to identify with - carousing in the street at night, walking along the beach, and dancing the night away at a party. The friends all feel a sense of bleak malaise, facing a future in a small town with nothing much to look forward to. While the older characters are hard-working models of virtue who have lives that really don't seem all that bad, the scene when Fausto (Franco Fabrizi) is put to work is priceless. His face beautifully expresses that moment when one has to face the realities of the world. The character of Fausto dominates the story, at first as he's forced by his father into marrying the girl he's gotten pregnant (Leonora Ruffo), and then as he can't keep himself from hitting on other women. He's incorrigible and a hard guy to like; we cheer when his father (Jean Brochard) breaks out a can of whoop-ass and he's the recipient. There is something missing to the movie though. The characters are developed unevenly, most of all Riccardo the singer (played by Fellini's own brother), and sometimes the events feel a little disconnected. Perhaps that's the point though. And we really feel something for Leopoldo (Leopoldo Trieste) as he reads an aging actor (Achille Majeroni) his screenplay, only to be horrified by the latter's response. How sad that Vittorio De Sica turned down the role because he was afraid of being identified as actually gay. Lastly, we also identify with Moraldo (Franco Interlenghi), who wanders the streets at night alone, befriends a young boy, and eventually makes it out; a feeling which is amplified knowing he represents Fellini himself. Not a perfect film, but it works.

TheLittleSongbird An early Fellini and a wonderful one at that. While it is not my favourite Fellini(my top 5 being Nights of Cabiria, La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, Amarcord and La Strada), it is one of his best and sadly one of his more neglected works. The film does look gorgeous, with rapid yet fluid cinematography and beautiful scenery. Nino Rota's score brings great pathos to every scene it appears in, the script is funny, tense and moving and while familiar in a way the story is engaging. The character studies are just as impressive, these are distinct characters that you do care for. You don't perhaps quite identify with them in the way you do with the titular characters of La Strada and especially Nights of Cabiria, but they are not as detached as some of Fellini's later films like Casanova or Satyricon(my least favourite Fellini but still has its interest points). Fellini's direction is restrained yet quirky and charming, the complete opposite of self-indulgent or dull like him and some of his later films have been criticised for being. The acting is very good indeed, Franco Fabrizi as Fausto especially is superb. All in all, a wonderful film and one of Fellini's better films while not quite among my absolute favourites from him. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Rindiana Fellini's first masterpiece may not be as well-known as later classics, but it's just as wonderful, fortunately lacking the maestro's later (sometimes overbearing) tendencies to turn to caricature and the grotesque.The director's humanity and the resulting poetic images in beautiful black-and-white photography enrich a basically neo-realist plot and turn it into something magical. We not only care for these five young men, we become them, parts of them, at least.This is deeply emotive film-making.9 out of 10 sad days at the seaside

christopher-underwood A marvellous, involving and moving, swirling, humane and believable look at life an Italian seaside town. At first when we are introduced to the bunch of 'young' men, I thought that, as with US and UK films of the period, we were having to accept 30 year olds as 20 year olds. But no! These layabouts, loafing about, picking up girls and older women, are 30 year olds still living with their mamas and expecting everything to fall into their laps (and their lips!). Getting pregnant still a big deal, of course, and if the 'youngsters' think little of the consequences the older generation certainly seem to get together to get some sort of result. There are many wonderful sequences in this, ever beautiful tapestry of life in the 50s and the director even manages to get in plenty of carnival in this early film.