Not wanting to see any Hollywood remakes or the same movie with just a different title I went over to the video store and walked straight over to the foreign section. I am usually not disappointed by the selection here since the style of filmmaking in other countries is quite different. For example, look at the Indian film industry, more specifically “Bollywood”. In a typical Bollywood movie there is at least one song and dance scene and the stories always revolve around a complex plot of love and relationships. In Hollywood cinema you almost never see musicals.any more. I’m not saying that one is better than the other I’m just saying there’s more out there than what’s playing in your local movie theater.

For my choosing I went for the Italian films mainly because there was one movie I wanted to particularly see, 8 . It’s theme of mixing dreams with reality intrigued me since I often confuse reality with my dreams.

8 is a film about a director, Guido Anselmi, who is at the peak of his career and is trying to make another great movie. But because of all of the stress that is being put on him he starts to become delusional and confuses himself (and the audience) with reality and the dreamscape.

What I found most interesting are the dreams themselves and how they play into the storyline of the movie. At first the dreams are so bizarre that they are obviously dreams. As the movie moves along you can’t tell if he’s dreaming or not since the plot moves right with the dreams. This was a great way to feel the confusion of the main character especially when the scenes are repeated so either one could be a dream or the reality. The key to keeping the audience thinking and trying to figure out which scenes are real and which are dreams is to keep the dreams from getting to bizarre. This is quite apparent as the movie moves on.

The part of the movie, which I didn’t really like was the length. I’ve watched some long movies, but 8 could have been a little shorter. The overall length was 2hrs and 10min. To get the directors point across I defiantly think he could of cut off at least 30 min. At around 1hr 45min I was starting to think, ok is this over yet? The movie wasn’t boring because it was so long it just could have had a better momentum through out if it was shorter.

All in all this is certainly a must see movie for anyone that can stand a foreign film. The plot definitely has some twist and turns to get you encaged and the dreams are some times so bizarre that you’ll most likely go, “what was that?” If you are looking for something different and entertaining than check out 8 , it will not leave your mind for at least a couple of days.