6.6
Following the international triumph of THE RED BALLOON, Albert Lamorisse turned to feature filmmaking with another delightful tale of a boy and a balloon. Making spectacular use of Hélivision—an innovative aerial photography technique he developed—Lamorisse takes us on the breathtaking odyssey of a young boy (played by his son, Pascal) who sneaks aboard his inventor grandfather’s experimental new hot-air balloon for a voyage across France. Soaring above cathedrals and castles, the Mediterranean and the Alps, STOWAWAY IN THE SKY celebrates the natural world and ponders, with surprising existential insight, the place of human beings within it.
6.6
Featuring narration by celebrated poetic-realist writer Jacques Prévert, Albert Lamorisse’s first fiction film established his stylistic and thematic signatures: elegant simplicity, storybook-like voice-over, and empathetic concern for children and animals. Filmed on the Tunisian island of Djerba, this spirited adventure follows two boys—one poor and good-hearted, the other wealthy and spoiled—who go from rivals to friends as they set out to save a donkey from thieves. From the start, Lamorisse’s gift for bringing forth the inner lives of his nonhuman characters suffuses his art with an otherworldly magic.
6.4
Robert Flaherty and Zoltán Korda shared best director honors at the Venice Film Festival for collaborating on this charming translation of Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Book” story “Toomai of the Elephants.” A harmonious mix of the two filmmakers’ styles, Flaherty's adeptness at ethnographic documentary meeting Korda's taste for grand adventure, ELEPHANT BOY also served as the breakthrough showcase for the thirteen-year-old Sabu, whose beaming performance as a young mahout leading the British on an expedition made him a major international star.
6.3
Disciplined at school for breaking a window, a boy joins throngs of his schoolmates as they make a cacophonous exit into Tehran’s streets. He then briefly joins an impromptu soccer game but disrupts it by stealing the ball and running away, and ends up drifting aimlessly along a busy highway. Free of dialogue but using nonsynchronous concrete sound throughout, this moody film shows Abbas Kiarostami expanding his visual vocabulary with zooms and crane and helicopter shots.
5.9
The first of Abbas Kiarostami’s films made for, rather than about, children was an experiment in combining live action and animation, done in collaboration with animator Nafiseh Riahi. As two schoolboys watch animated views of animals’ actions—kangaroos jumping, fish swimming, etc.—one boy (played by Riahi’s son Kamal) says, “I can, too,” and imitates the actions. The music is sprightly, the mood fun. The second boy is Kiarostami’s son Ahmad.
5.8
Keatonesque slapstick meets woman-on-the-edge psychodrama in this singular, tonally audacious exploration of modern motherhood, performance, and identity. Displaying a brilliance for both physical comedy and Cindy Sherman–esque transformation, Shannon Plumb writes, directs, and stars as Penelope, a Brooklyn mother of two who struggles to traverse the daily obstacle course that is motherhood with little help from her filmmaker husband (played by Plumb’s real-life filmmaker husband Derek Cianfrance). In a desperate quest to assert her own artistic voice, Penelope begins inhabiting a series of outlandish characters and alternate identities in an existential journey that’s by turns antically funny and unsettling.
5.4
Robert Altman brought his exuberantly chaotic experimental sensibility to this live-action version of the classic comic strip, featuring spot-on performances by Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall as the titular brawny sailorman and his lithe lady love, Olive Oyl, as well as seamlessly integrated songs by Harry Nilsson. Though its kooky brilliance went largely unappreciated upon its release, time has revealed this wonderfully weird, charmingly imaginative comic fantasy to be quintessential Altman.
5.2
In director Jun Fukuda’s second Godzilla outing, secret weather-control experiments create a radioactive storm and Godzilla must rescue monster hatchling Minilla from the giant mutant insects that result. Featuring a buoyant score by Masaru Sato and impressive wirework by special-effects director Sadamasa Arikawa, Son of Godzilla is lively, comic, and timely in its addressing of contemporary anxiety about worldwide food shortages.
3.9
Director Ishiro Honda returned again for the first Godzilla movie expressly for children. Economizing by reusing effects shots from other films in the series, All Monster Attack tells the story of Ichiro, a lonely latchkey kid who finds solace in his dreams of befriending Minilla, the titular progeny of Son of Godzilla, whose parent is also often absent. In this thoughtful, human-scale story, boy and monster learn together what it means to grow up.
