Also caught most of Cinema Paradiso, which I had't seen in a long time (definitely caught it once on video after seeing it in the theaters).
Now- after living in Italy for a bit, I grew to really dislike a particular blend of schmaltz they laid onto their films, particularly in the 80s/90s. People love Life is Beautiful and for me, that film was covered in a mountain of that exact cloyingly cutesy schmaltz, and I hated everything about it and Roberto Benigni (despite loving him in Down by Law). But Cinema Paradiso came out before I spent that time in Italy and my attachment to it is born mostly because of somebody commenting that I looked like the lead and the girl that I was madly in love with but was star-crossed to never end up with looked like the girl. Just like the movie, she was the one that got away in a soul-crushing kind of way... and despite my own personal connections to that, I appreciate that the film did a nice job conveying that feeling as well. It's cutesy, yeah (I'm looking at you blind guy and little boy), but I still fell for the final scene with the blind-guy's edited movie reel.