May 24
Steven Spielberg’s War Horse is essentially a fable. It is an adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s children’s novel of the same name. The book was turned into a play in 2007 and eventually reached Spielberg’s hands. Having already done several films with a World War II foundation, the director was game to work within a World War I framework. War Horse presented that opportunity.
Directed by Heitor Dhalia and written by Allison Burnett, Gone is a satisfying psychological thriller. The film has sadly been panned by critics, but there are layers at work in this picture that make it significantly more captivating than standard thriller fare. While it may well be tempting to dismiss this as another clichéd thriller, Gone has a lot more to offer than immediately meets the eye.
Despite a slew of terrific performances, Rodrigo Garcia’s Albert Nobbs is a convoluted wreck. Based on a short story by Irish author George Moore, the picture has all the makings of something spectacular and could’ve really been something great. The tale is compelling, when it’s allowed to shine on its own, but the subplots and side characters become staggeringly unbearable.
In a funny way it makes perfect sense to watch Federico Fellini’s masterful 8 1/2 after Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin. Fellini’s vision of dreams, creative block, religion, love, and passion is iconic as a celebration of confusion and, at times, excess. The film, named such as it’s the director’s eighth-and-a-half movie, is a genius work of uncanny ego and arrogance.
It is hard to imagine that Pather Panchali is the first work of Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray, but so it is. The 1955 movie, the first of Ray’s Apu Trilogy, is a film of uncommon beauty and wondrous humanism. Ray would become well-known for his humanism, of course, and his neo-realistic style as influenced by the likes of Jean Renoir and Vittorio De Sica.
