This week we’ve got a crime thriller that’s both sexy and surprising; a Sundance Film Festival favorite that’s both witty and bawdy; a Wes Anderson exploration of brotherly love; and a tribute to one of Hollywood’s most successful directors of the past few decades, Tony Scott.
Director Satyajit Ray separated himself from mainstream Indian cinema with PATHER PANCHALI, which premiered at Cannes (at midnight, during a party for Akira Kurosawa) in 1956. Still, several influential critics made it to the screening and championed the film’s originality and vision. It was completely unlike other Indian films in that there was no melodramatic…
When Wes Anderson’s fifth film, THE DARJEELING LIMITED, came out in 2007, it was called a “precious…flawed, but nonetheless beautiful handmade object as apt to win affection as to provoke annoyance” (The New York Times). Critic A.O. Scott was talking about Anderson’s meticulously orchestrated compositions, a trademark that has steadily grown in complexity over the span of his career, just compare any shot of the train in India to the motel scenes in BOTTLE ROCKET. Every color, every piece of fabric, every accessory is exactly in its place. This obsessive attention to detail is what led many critics, like Scott, to doubt whether Anderson had a real story to tell, or whether the story was too weighed down by the trappings of an overactive art department. “Humanism lies either beyond his grasp or outside the range of his interests.”