Museo (screenplay by Manuel Alcalá and Alonso Ruizpalacios; direction by Ruizpalacios) is the most cinematically stimulating movie I have seen so far this year. The film dramatizes an actual 1985 theft at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City but then shifts to focus on the emotional impact of the theft on the two perpetrators. About ten minutes into the film I found myself thinking, "They don't make movies like this anymore." Why did I feel that way? Both the subject matter -- the anomie of the middle-class in a nation with profound social divisions -- and Ruizpalacios's wide-screen composition recall Fellini and Antonioni films of sixty years ago. So do the dramatic Saul Bass-like titles, the symphonic score and sound design. Seek this movie out!
