Richard Foreman/Miramax Films
The year 2008 was very strong culturally, a big improvement on 2007. In the early months of the year, it seemed like quality films were being released every week and even the summer blockbusters were of a very high standard ("Wall-E" just misses out on my top 10). One notable omission from my list is "There Will Be Blood," which I very much expected to like but found it to be an arrogant, over-rated mess. I may well revisit it in future and learn to love it. I also didn’t think much to "Of Time and the City" and I haven’t yet managed to see "Gomorrah." Although "The Dark Knight" is the third best film of the year for me (solely as a film), in its Imax format I would elevate it to first position as the richest cinematic experience of the year.
Continue reading “Old Heroes for a Strange New World” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Waltz With Bashir (2008)
Sony Pictures Classics
In “Waltz With Bashir,” Ari Folman confronts a very specific national crisis, the ramifications of which reverberate today. To his great credit, however, he refuses to turn the film into a diatribe against the politics that permitted the crimes carried out by Christian and Israeli forces at the Sabra and Shantila massacres in Lebanon. “Waltz With Bashir” makes no attempt to connect the incidents to the recent Israeli excursion into Lebanon or, more generally, to the precarious politics of the modern Middle East. Instead, Mr. Folman’s abstractly animated, philosophical motion picture explores one of the great, unspoken casualties of all warfare: its profound lasting psychological toll.
Continue reading “Israeli Filmmaker Draws on Memory” »
