Solaris (Russian: Солярис, Solyaris) is a 1972 Russian film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. It is based on the novel Solaris by Polish science fiction author Stanisław Lem. The film features Natalya Bondarchuk, Donatas Banionis, Jüri Järvet, Nikolai Grinko and Anatoly Solonitsyn and has a soundtrack by Eduard Artemyev.
Solaris is a meditative psychodrama that is set mostly on a space station in orbit around the planet-like object called "Solaris". The scientific mission on the space station has fallen into a crisis. Psychologist Kris Kelvin travels to the station to evaluate and explore the situation, but soon experiences the same kind of hallucinations that have befallen the other crew members. The film concentrates on the thoughts and the conscience of its characters and is a "drama of grief and partial recovery". Solaris and its complex and slow storytelling has sometimes been compared to Western science fiction films, which rely on special effects and an imagined version of the future.[1]
Solaris was a critical success and is widely regarded as one of Tarkovsky's best works. The film was presented at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury and the FIPRESCI prize and was nominated for the Palme d'Or. Another film adaption of the novel by Stanisław Lem was released in 2002 under the name Solaris, directed by Steven Soderbergh.
The Namesake is a
2007 film which received a limited release in the United States on
March 9,
2007. It has been screened at film festivals in Toronto and New York.
It is directed by Mira Nair and is based upon the novel The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri who appeared in the movie. Sooni Taraporevala adapted the novel to a screenplay.
The Namesake describes the struggles between two first generation Indian immigrants, from West Bengal, to the United States, Ashima Ganguli (Tabu) and Ashoke Ganguli (Irfan Khan), and their children, Gogol (Kal Penn) and Sonali (Sonia) (Sahira Nair). The featured locales are Kolkata, India, New York City, Yonkers, and the New York City suburbs of Nyack, Rockland County, Scarsdale, Westchester County and Oyster Bay, Long Island.
The Darjeeling Limited is a
drama-
comedy film directed by
Wes Anderson, and starring
Owen Wilson,
Adrien Brody, and
Jason Schwartzman. It was written by Anderson, Schwartzmann, and
Roman Coppola. The film also stars
Waris Ahluwalia,
Amara Karan,
Barbet Schroeder and
Anjelica Huston, with
Natalie Portman,
Irfan Khan and
Bill Murray in
cameo roles.
Chris Cabin of Filmcritic.com gave the film 4 stars out of 5 and described Anderson's film as "the auteur's best work to date."
[9] Entertainment Weekly film critic Lisa Schwarzbaum gave the film a "B+" and said "This is psychological as well as stylistic familiar territory for Anderson after
Rushmore and
The Royal Tenenbaums. But there's a startling new maturity in
Darjeeling, a compassion for the larger world that busts the confines of the filmmaker's miniaturist instincts."
[10] Armond White of the
New York Press said that the film "is so reflective of personal experience (within the context of rarefied pop antecedents) that it returns common emotional power to today’s fragmented, disingenuous popular culture.."
[11] A.O. Scott of
The New York Times said that the film "is unstintingly fussy, vain and self-regarding. But it is also a treasure: an odd, flawed, but nonetheless beautifully handmade object as apt to win affection as to provoke annoyance. You might say that it has sentimental value."
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (aka Dr. Strangelove) (1964) is a black comedy film directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Peter Sellers and George C. Scott. Loosely based by screenwriter Terry Southern on Peter George's Cold War thriller novel Red Alert (aka Two Hours to Doom), Dr. Strangelove satirizes the Cold War and the doctrine of mutual assured destruction.
The story concerns a mentally unstable US Air Force general who orders a first strike nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, and follows the President of the United States, his advisors, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a Royal Air Force (RAF) officer as they try to recall the bombers to prevent a nuclear apocalypse, as well as the crew of one B-52 as they attempt to deliver their payload.
In 1989, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. Additionally, it was listed as #3 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs.
Once is a 2007 Irish musical film written and directed by John Carney. Set in Dublin, this naturalistic drama stars musicians Glen Hansard (of popular Irish rock band The Frames) and Markéta Irglová as struggling musicians. Collaborators prior to making the film, Hansard and/or Irglová composed and performed all but one of the original songs in the movie.[1]
Shot for only €130,000 ($160,000),[2] the film was very successful,[3] earning substantial per-screen box office averages in the United States.[4] It received extremely enthusiastic reviews[5][6] and awards such as the 2008 Independent Spirit Award for best foreign film. Hansard and Irglová's song "Falling Slowly" received a 2008 Academy Award and a 2008 Grammy nomination, and the soundtrack as a whole also received a Grammy nomination.
The Savages is a 2007 American
comedy-
drama film, written and directed by
Tamara Jenkins. It stars
Philip Seymour Hoffman and
Laura Linney and premiered at the
Sundance Film Festival.
After drifting apart emotionally over the years, two single siblings — Wendy (Linney) and Jon (Hoffman) — must band together to care for an elderly parent, Lenny (Philip Bosco), who is rapidly slipping into dementia and who has been estranged from them for many years. Wendy and Jon first travel to Sun City, Arizona, to get Lenny once his common-law wife dies. They move him to a nursing home in Buffalo, New York, where Jon is a theater professor working on a book about Bertolt Brecht. Wendy, who is an aspiring, but unsuccessful, playwright, moves from New York City to help establish their father in Buffalo.
Neither is close with Lenny, who is said to have been a difficult man to live with. (It is implied that he was a psychically and emotionally abusive father.) Their dysfunctional family life appears to have left Wendy and Jon emotionally crippled and unable to sustain a relationship. She is sleeping with an unattainable married man 13 years her senior and he cannot commit to a Polish woman who must return to Krakow after her visa expires.
Their visits to the nursing home and their father's eventual death allow them to reevaluate their lives and to grow emotionally. In the end, Wendy is seen working on the production of her play about their terrible childhood and Jon is off to a conference in Poland where it's suggested he may reconnect with the woman he'd let go.
8½ (
Italian:
Otto e mezzo) is a
1963 film written and directed by
Italian director Federico Fellini. It is regularly acclaimed by
film critics as one of the finest films ever made; it consistently ranks in the "top ten best movies ever" lists by cinema institutes and academies; in a recent poll of film directors conducted by the
British Film Institute,
8½ was ranked 3rd best film of all time.
[1] The film was shot in
black-and-white by influential and innovative
cinematographer Gianni di Venanzo, and features a soundtrack by
Nino Rota.
The plot revolves around an Italian film director, Guido Anselmi (
Marcello Mastroianni), who is suffering from "
director's block." He is supposed to be directing an ill-defined
science fiction film but has lost interest amid artistic and marital difficulties. As Guido struggles half-heartedly to work on the film, a series of flashbacks and dreams delve into his memories and fantasies; they are frequently interwoven with reality.
2001: A Space Odyssey is a
1968 science fiction film directed by
Stanley Kubrick, written by Kubrick and
Arthur C. Clarke. The film deals with thematic elements of
human evolution,
technology,
artificial intelligence, and
extraterrestrial life, and is notable for its scientific realism, pioneering
special effects, ambiguous and often surreal imagery, sound in place of traditional narrative techniques, and minimal use of
dialogue.
Despite receiving mixed reviews upon release, 2001: A Space Odyssey is today recognized by critics and audiences as one of the greatest films ever made; the 2002 Sight & Sound poll of critics ranked it among the top ten films of all time.[1] It was nominated for four Academy Awards, and received one for visual effects. In 1991, it was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in their National Film Registry.
The Color of Pomegranates (originally released in the
Armenian SSR as Սայաթ-Նովա,
Sayat Nova) is a
1968 motion picture by the
Soviet-
Armenian director
Sergei Parajanov, considered a masterpiece by
Federico Fellini,
Jean-Luc Godard and
Michelangelo Antonioni.
[citation needed] It was censored and banned in the Soviet Union but made the top 10 list in Cahier Du Cinema in 1982 and Top 100 in
Time Out.
Sergei Parajanov's "Color of the Pomegranate", a biography of the Armenian ashug Sayat Nova (King of Song), reveals the poet's life more through his poetry than a conventional narration of important events in Sayat Nova's life. The movie shows the poet growing up, discovering the female forms, falling in love, entering a monastery and dying. But these incidents are depicted in the context of what are images from Sergei Parajanov's imagination and Sayat Nova's poems, poems that are seen and rarely heard. Sofiko Chiaureli plays 6 roles, both male and female, and Sergei Parajanov, works on virtually every aspect of this film, void of any dialog or camera movement.[citation needed]
His inspiration, he said, was "the Armenian illuminated miniatures. I wanted to create that inner dynamic that comes from inside the picture, the forms and the dramaturgy of colour."
Barry Lyndon (1975) is an award-winning period film by Stanley Kubrick based on the novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844) by William Makepeace Thackeray. It recounts the exploits of an unscrupulous 18th century Irish adventurer (Barry Lyndon né Redmond Barry), particularly his rise and fall within English society. Ryan O'Neal stars as the title character.
In recent years, it has come to be regarded not only as one of Kubrick's finest films, but indeed as a classic of world cinema. It was part of
Time magazine's poll of the 100 best films as well as the
Village Voice poll conducted in 1999 and was ranked #27 in 2002 in a poll of
film critics conducted by
Sight and Sound. Director
Martin Scorsese has cited
Barry Lyndon as his favorite Kubrick movie.
