6.9
In this fantastic voyage through time and space from Terry Gilliam, a boy named Kevin (Craig Warnock) escapes his gadget-obsessed parents to join a band of time-traveling dwarfs. Armed with a map stolen from the Supreme Being (Ralph Richardson), they plunder treasure from Napoleon (Ian Holm) and Agamemnon (Sean Connery)--but the Evil Genius (David Warner) is watching their every move. Featuring a darkly playful script by Gilliam and his Monty Python cohort Michael Palin (who also appears in the film), TIME BANDITS is at once a giddy fairy tale, a revisionist history lesson, and a satire of technology gone awry.
6.8
A young boy stumbles onto a witch convention and must stop them, even after he has been turned into a mouse.
7.8
After his mother’s death, Zucchini is befriended by a kind police officer, Raymond, who accompanies him to his new foster home filled with other orphans his age. There, with the help of his newfound friends, Zucchini eventually learns to trust and love as he searches for a new family of his own.
7.6
This enchanting Czech Christmas classic has become a Central European yuletide staple thanks to its perennial presence on television each holiday season. A charming, spirited twist on the classic fairy tale, THREE WISHES FOR CINDERELLA updates the beloved story with a picturesque, woodsy wintertime setting and a refreshingly sharp-witted, assertive heroine (Libuše Šafránková), a housemaid who uses her wits and many talents—along with a bit of help from some magical hazelnuts—to win her prince and find her happily ever after.
8.1
In the last film he made during the silent era, Charlie Chaplin revels in the art of the circus, paying tribute to the acrobats and pantomimists who inspired his virtuoso pratfalls. After being mistaken for a pickpocket, Chaplin’s Tramp flees into the ring of a traveling circus and soon becomes the star of the show, falling for the troupe’s bareback rider along the way. Despite its famously troubled production, this gag-packed comedy ranks among Chaplin’s finest, thanks to some of the most audacious set pieces of the director-performer’s career, including a close brush with a lion and a climactic tightrope walk with a barrelful of monkeys. THE CIRCUS, which was rereleased in 1969 with a new score by Chaplin, is an uproarious high-wire act that showcases silent cinema’s most popular entertainer at the peak of his comic powers.
7.1
An epic fantasy adventure set in a world of ancient gods, CHILDREN WHO CHASE LOST VOICES follows Asuna, an introvert who spends her time listening to a radio that belonged to her deceased father. One day, she hears an odd song that resonates in her heart unlike anything else. It leads to a chance encounter with a mysterious boy, who transports Asuna to Agarthaa, land of legend where the dead can be brought back to life. Compelled by the song and the boy, Asuna journeys through the mythical lands, but hostile warriors and ghastly creatures will stop at nothing to prevent Asuna from uncovering the secrets of their world.
7.5
Adopted from South Korea, raised on different continents & connected through social media, Samantha & Anaïs believe that they are twin sisters separated at birth.
7
Wracked with guilt after unjustly punishing her daughter Linda, widowed mother Paulette resolves to do anything to make it up to her. What does the girl want? A meal of chicken with peppers, which reminds her of the dish her father used to make. But with a general strike closing stores all across town and pushing people into the streets, this innocent request quickly leads to an outrageous series of events that spirals out of control, as Paulette does everything she can to keep her promise and find a chicken for Linda. Directors Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach unleash a unique visual marvel of hand-painted animation with bright, color-blocked characters, and a story that blends slapstick comedy, musical, and family drama, as Paulette and Linda ultimately confront the grief of an unspoken tragedy through the meal that could finally bring them closer together.
7.3
Death is only the beginning in this fantastically phantasmagoric animated odyssey, which imagines heaven in the boldly colorful, psychedelic style of George Dunning’s Beatles classic YELLOW SUBMARINE. Having just arrived in paradise, the recently deceased Jerome finds himself adrift in a surreally blissed-out wonderland as he searches for his late wife Maryline. But is there love after death?
7.9
The lyrical, profoundly moving STILL WALKING (ARUITEMO ARUITEMO) is contemporary Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda's most personal work to date. Created as a tribute to his late mother, the film depicts one day in the life of the Yokoyamas, gathered together for a commemorative ritual whose nature only gradually becomes clear. Rather than focus on big dramatic moments, Kore-eda relies on simple gestures and domestic routines (especially cooking) to evoke a family’s entire life, its deep regrets and its daily joys. Featuring vivid, heartrending performances and a gentle naturalism that harks back to the director’s earlier, documentary work, STILL WALKING is an extraordinary portrayal of the ties that bind us.
7
Eight-year-old Hawa is reunited with her African refugee mother after six years apart—and now finds herself living with a woman in the midst of a deep mental-health crisis.
8.1
The first film in Abbas Kiarostami’s sublime, interlacing KOKER TRILOGY takes a simple premise—a boy searches for the home of his classmate, whose school notebook he has accidentally taken—and transforms it into a miraculous, child’s-eye adventure of the everyday. As our young hero zigzags determinedly across two towns, aided (and sometimes misdirected) by those he encounters, his quest becomes both a revealing portrait of rural Iranian society in all its richness and complexity and a touching parable about the meaning of personal responsibility. Sensitive and profound, WHERE IS THE FRIEND’S HOUSE? is shot through with all the beauty, tension, and wonder a single day can contain.
7.9
The second film Satyajit Ray made about the Sherlock Holmes-like detective Feluda—a character the filmmaker originated in a popular series of novels—is a cleverly entertaining mystery set in the holy city of Varanasi. It’s there that the celebrated sleuth (Soumitra Chatterjee) and his assistant Topshe (Siddhartha Chatterjee) find their vacation interrupted by the disappearance of a priceless statue—leading to a twisty investigation involving a host of colorful characters and surprising reveals.
7.4
An elderly painter whose son visits with his family on the weekends, is also surprised by a visit from his still-single daughter.
6.1
Before the beloved sitcom that shaped a generation, there was this bewitching Sabrina movie, based on the Archie comic book series of the same name. Melissa Joan Hart stepped into her best-known role as a not-so-normal new girl in town who discovers on her sixteenth birthday that she possesses magical powers. But with a family of witches and a sarcastic talking black cat, Sabrina’s biggest challenge isn’t just fitting in, it’s surviving high school.
8.1
Rarely has the spirit of childhood been evoked as exquisitely as in this Academy Award–winning cinematic fable, a fantasy with the texture of reality. On the streets of 1950s Paris, a young boy (played by director Albert Lamorisse’s son, Pascal) is launched on a miraculous adventure when he’s playfully pursued by a shiny red balloon that seems to have a mind of its own—until the harsh realities of the world interfere, setting the stage for a deeply moving finale. Shot in beautifully muted Technicolor, this beguiling allegory of innocence and transcendence has inspired generations of viewers to let their imaginations take flight.
7.8
Children fight against the strict rules and regulations they face during their time in a Communist Young Pioneer camp.
7.3
In this charming Czechoslovak fantasy, irrepressible teenage witch Saxana (Petra Černocká)—facing three hundred years of detention at her sorcery academy—casts a spell that transports her to the human world where she joins up with a band of delinquents and uses her magic to spread mischief at their school—including turning the teachers to rabbits! One of a string of beloved fairy-tale comedies directed by Václav Vorlíček (WHO WANTS TO KILL JESSIE?), THE GIRL ON THE BROOMSTICK bursts with whimsical special effects and a sense of pure play.
7.8
A lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu’s perennial theme of the challenges of intergenerational relationships, GOOD MORNING tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking in protest after their parents refuse to buy a television set. Ozu weaves a wealth of subtle gags through a family portrait as rich as those of his dramatic films, mocking the foibles of the adult world through the eyes of his child protagonists. Shot in stunning color and set in a suburb of Tokyo where housewives gossip about the neighbors’ new washing machine and unemployed husbands look for work as door-to-door salesmen, this charming comedy refashions Ozu’s own silent classic I WAS BORN, BUT . . . to gently satirize consumerism in postwar Japan.
7.2
Restored in 2010 by the Cineteca di Bologna /L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in association with the Ritwik Memorial Trust, the National Film Archive of India, and The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project. Additional film elements provided by the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv. Restoration funded by Doha Film Institute.
7.2
Possessed of the timeless perfection of a fable, this tale about the unique bond between children and animals is Albert Lamorisse’s ode to the awe-inspiring majesty of nature. Amid the vast flatlands of the Camargue in the South of France lives White Mane, a magnificent wild stallion who refuses to be broken by men and instead forms a connection with a young boy, with whom he embarks on a daring quest for freedom. Fully capturing the rugged beauty of its marsh setting, this extraordinarily photographed treasure of children’s cinema—which won the Grand Prix for Best Short Film at the Cannes Film Festival—speaks to the hearts of all creatures yearning to live untamed.
6.6
Two little girls explore their views on marriage, death, babies, and love in this gently poignant, Academy Award–nominated idyll suffused with the offhanded wisdom of childhood.
7.1
Clumsy Harold Hall (Harold Lloyd) is a young movie fan with a burning desire to be in pictures—but no real acting experience or ability. A mix-up in the casting office, however, brings him one step closer to his dream of stardom when he’s invited to make a screen test in Hollywood—where he proceeds to wreak hilarious havoc all across the studio backlot. Lloyd’s third talkie became his most commercially successful thanks to the clever use of sound and ingenious gags conceived in part by “Nancy” cartoonist Ernie Bushmiller.
6.7
This Korda brothers film is the definitive version of Rudyard Kipling's classic collection of fables. Sabu stars as Mowgli, a boy raised by wolves, who can communicate with all the beasts of the jungle, friend or foe, and who gradually reacclimatizes to civilization with the help of his long lost mother and a beautiful village girl. Deftly integrating real animals into its fanciful narrative, Jungle Book is a shimmering Technicolor feast, and was nominated for four Oscars, including best cinematography, art direction, special effects, and music.
