Black Beauty

A horse tells his own life. It starts in the meadow where he was born, he is trained in a good house, and then he changes hands: harnessed to a gentleman's carriage, then working as a London cab horse, then hauling stone. Every owner defines what he is differently, and the horse relays this without interpreting it. At the end he meets Joe, his first groom, again. The clearest choice is the narrator: the story is given entirely in the horse's voice, and the narration is built not as an animal that talks like a person but as a witness who does not understand what is happening. That choice shows the owners' cruelty without underlining it, and the most painful passages are the ones where nobody means any harm. Caroline Thompson wrote and directed, her first film as director. She had previously written Edward Scissorhands and The Nightmare Before Christmas. Alan Cumming voices the horse, and Sean Bean, David Thewlis and Peter Cook are in the cast. The source is Anna Sewell's novel of 1877, one of the first popular texts written directly at the treatment of animals, and the cab sections keep that purpose. Who it is for: anyone who likes classic children's literature adapted and films about horses. Who it is not for: anyone looking for something comfortable to watch with small children. Cruelty to animals is shown directly, several passages are upsetting, and the story never lets him keep an owner for long.