Celluloid Heroes

Can you think of a plan that doesn’t involve your 10-year-old sister joining the army?

Stephen Spielberg’s career seems to have gone in three different directions lately. There are the serious, mature films that began with Schindler’s List and continued with Amistad, Saving Private Ryan and this year’s Munich. On the flipside are the lightweight comedies that always seem to star Tom Hanks, like Catch Me If You Can and The Terminal. Somewhere in the middle are the edgier science-fiction films like A.I., Minority Report and now his take on H. G. Wells‘ The War of the Worlds.

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Help me find her!

Lady In White in an Old-Fashioned Ghost Story in every sense of the word, probably more effective told around a camp fire than it is as film, but it’s no slouch on the screen, either. Writer, director, producer and composer Frank LaLoggia obviously saw this film as a labor of love and, despite occasionally spoon-feeding the audience a little too much, he has crafted a warmly affectionate look at small town life in 1962. In fact, the portrait of Willowpoint Falls is so vivid that the ghost story almost seems like an intrusion. On the other hand, I guess that’s what ghosts do, dramatically speaking.

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