May 8
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.
Directed by Danis Tanović, Cirkus Columbia was the Bosnian entry for the 2010 Best Foreign Language Oscar. It is a picture about war and its consequences, but it approaches things from a slightly unconventional stance and winds up very nearly being a domestic soap opera set against the blossoming of the Bosnian War.
You can check out the rest of this review at Cirkus Columbia Movie Review: A Fairly Good Motion Picture at Cinema Sentries.
Russian director Mikhail Kalatozov and cinematographer Sergey Urusevsky only worked together on three films, but each has left an indelible impression in the film world. The Cranes Are Flying (1957) and I Am Cuba (1964) are the more well-known, but Letter Never Sent (1959), also known as The Unsent Letter, is well worth a look, too.
You can check out the rest of this review at Letter Never Sent Criterion Collection DVD Review: Kalatozov’s Take on Man Vs. Nature at Cinema Sentries.
An uncompromising and blood-spattered experience, Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins is a samurai epic for the ages. The film brims with violence and energy, but it also explores what duty means and what it means to be a ruler. The picture is particularly perceptive within the context of social and political unrest around the world, as many “servants” are asking some serious questions about the quality of their rulers.
Presented in the “found footage” style, André Øvredal’s TrollHunter is an interesting movie. I can’t say that it brings much by way of freshness to the table, although there’s something to be said about sticking fairly closely to troll mythology. Trolls are found in Norse and Scandinavian folklore, apparently living in caves or isolated rocks and representing significant danger to human beings, especially Christians.
