Peacock in the Snow

I like to pretend I am a movie buff, and if we're talking about "Empire Records," I'm golden. But I am woefully uneducated about serious cinema (even if I can fake my way through the French Nouvelle Vague) and even more so on the movies I'm Supposed to Have Seen -- like "Top Gun" and "Caddyshack." My friend Matt refers to it as the time I was in my time capsule. A time capsule forged by very strict Catholic parents.

I saw "Amarcord," last weekend at Landmark, my first Fellini! It's one of his more accessible films, the Internet tells me. That may be due to all the fart jokes -- and all the sex.

The cast of characters is made up of the inabitants of an Italian village. We follow their lives through a year, beginning with puff balls that announce the end of winter. Horny schoolboys, prostitutes, women looking for love, men looking for sex, dwarf nuns, lazy relatives, ridiculous teachers, warring spouses, lunatics. It's the whole shebang, really. We watch their lives unfold, but without ever fully focusing on one person to learn the whole story. We get slices of their lives, pieces of their desires and despair.

It's not a pretentious artsy film, either. It feels like you're waltzing through the village, picking up a visual here (a peacock in the snow, a dwarf nun in a tree) and a sound there (the hallooing schoolmarm, the blind man with the accordion), a joke (pee in the classroom) and a tragedy (death of a beloved mother) in the same breath.

How's that for a summer blockbuster?