Start with Gadjo Dilo, the Tony Gatlif-directed French film about a young traveler in Romania whose search for an elusive musician brings him from an anthropological voyeurism to a profound understanding. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, where rebellious children pull all the skeletons from the family closet when gathering to celebrate their father's 60th birthday. Fernanda Montenegro is unforgettable. Italian director Roberto Benigni achieves the impossible here by producing a poignant comedy about the Holocaust. A giggle-fest, to boot.
Creature Features Once upon a time, movies about critters meant movies about monsters.
Gamera the flying sea-turtle, King Kong, Mothra the enraged giant caterpillar. Babe, the Dickensian pig. My video critter dollar went to A Bug's Life, a Pixar computer-animated thing of beauty. With a lyric combination of pomp and circumstance, director John Lasseter and company energize this tale of a heroic young ant who enlists circus bugs in a fight against tyrannical grasshoppers. Nothing cuts ice and chill better than the peppery aftermath of a 1996 Robert Mondavi or Kenwood 1996 Pinot Noir.