"A Very Long Engagement" is set in France near the end of World War I and tells the story of a young woman's relentless, moving and at times comic search for her fiance who has disappeared. He is one of five French soldiers believed to have been court-martialed under mysterious circumstances and pushed out of an allied trench into an almost-certain death in no-man's land. What follows is an investigation into the arbitrary nature of secrecy, the absurdity of war, and the enduring passion, intuition and tenacity of the human heart. The film received a Golden Globe Nomination in 2004 for Best Foreign Film. It is directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and stars Audrey Tautou of "Amelie", also directed by Jeunet.
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In "Il Postino"  Mario Ruoppolo (Massimo Troisi), the mailman on an Italian island, pines from afar for a beautiful waitress. When exiled Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (Philippe Noiret) comes to live on the island, Ruoppolo delivers Neruda's mail and picks up lessons on love, life and poetry. The movie won the Academy Award for Best Music Score and was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Director.
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In the late 1960's, after a lifetime of perfecting his classic Indian motorcycle, Burt sets off from the bottom of the World, Invercargill, New Zealand, to clock his bike at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.  With all the odds against him, Burt puts his irrepressible Kiwi spirit to the test, braving the new world on a shoestring budget.  Burt's quest culminates in an unlikely conclusion and remains legendary within the motorcycle community to this day. "The film wears its happy heart on its sleeve and a dusting of that dogged optimism is bound to rub off on you. Anthony Hopkins delivers an endearingly gruff performance."  Stephen Holden, NY Times.
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Francois is a middle-aged antique dealer.  He has a stylish apartment and a fabulous life, but a dinner with a group he considers his dearest acquaintances, he is blindsided by the revelation that none of them actually likes him.  He's arrogant, self-centered and harsh, and they don't believe he knows the meaning of friendship.  His business partner Catherine makes him a bet: if he can produce his best friend, she will let him keep the massive Greek vase he acquired that afternoon on the company tab.  If not, it's hers.  Having accepted the wager, Francois naively tears through his address book, trying to shoehorn an increasingly unlikely series of contacts into the all important role. Starring Daniel Auteuil and Dany Boon, directed by Patrice Leconte.
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Every so often, a film unexpectedly appears from a remote corner of the world to capture the imaginations of audiences everywhere. When Walter Salles' "Central Station" was unveiled for the first time at this year's Sundance Film Festival, crowds embraced the film--with tears, with applause and with joy. A month later, it took the Berlin Film Festival by storm, winning the Golden Bear for Best Film and the Silver Bear for Best Actress for Fernanda Montenegro. For "Central Station" is that rarest of achievements: a film that speaks to your head while it touches your heart.

The film centers on a young boy (Vinicius de Oliveira) whose mother is killed in front of Rio de Janeiro's Central Station. Homeless and with nowhere to turn, he is reluctantly befriended by a lonely and cynical woman (Montenegro). Resisting her initial impulse to make a quick profit off the child, she commits to returning him to his father in Brazil's remote Northeast. As buses and trucks carry the motley pair through the increasingly unfamiliar terrain, they defy their initial aversion to each other, journeying closer together and deeper inside themselves. Set against an epic backdrop of vast, majestic landscapes, the trip becomes a quest for their own identities: one boy's search for his father; and one woman's search for her heart.

Produced by five-time Academy Award-winner Arthur Cohn ("The Garden of the Finzi-Continis," "Black and White in Color"), "Central Station" introduces director Walter Salles to the ranks of the great humanist filmmakers. Using a simple and intimate structure, he has fashioned a profoundly moving tale of the triumph of the human spirit.
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Perhaps the most charming movie of all time, Amélie is certainly one of the top 10. The title character (the bashful and impish Audrey Tautou) is a single waitress who decides to help other lonely people fix their lives. Her widowed father yearns to travel but won't, so to inspire the old man she sends his garden gnome on a tour of the world; with whispered gossip, she brings together two cranky regulars at her café; she reverses the doorknobs and reprograms the speed dial of a grocer who's mean to his assistant. Gradually she realizes her own life needs fixing, and a chance meeting leads to her most elaborate stratagem of all. This is a deeply wonderful movie, an illuminating mix of magic and pragmatism. Fans of the director's previous films ("Delicatessen", "The City of Lost Children") will not be disappointed; newcomers will be delighted.
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"The Squid and the Whale" follows the divorce of Joan (Laura Linney, You Can Count on Me) and Bernard Berkman (Jeff Daniels, The Purple Rose of Cairo) as it wreaks havoc on the emotional lives of their two sons, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg, Roger Dodger) and Frank (Owen Kline, The Anniversary Party). Though there's no plot in the usual sense, the movie progresses with growing emotional force from the separation into the bitter fighting between Joan and Bernard and the hapless, floundering behavior of Walt and Frank, who act out through plagiarism, sexual acts, and drinking. Some viewers may find the ending too diffuse; others will appreciate that writer/director Noah Baumbach (Mr. Jealousy) doesn't wrap up the messiness of life in a false cinematic package. Either way, viewers will appreciate how the specificity of the personalities makes "The Squid and the Whale" so compelling, as Baumbach has drawn the characters with such detail, both engaging and off-putting, that they leap off the screen. Naturally, he's greatly helped by the cast: Linney, Eisenberg, Kline, and especially Daniels bite into these often unsympathetic portraits and give fearlessly honest performances, interlocked in both painful and funny ways--rarely have family dynamics been captured so vividly. If there was an ensemble Oscar, this cast would deserve it.
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The talented indie director Dan Ireland (The Whole Wide World, ) brings his deft, intimate touch to a lovely tale of family--and how to build one. Joan Plowright is Mrs. Palfrey, a genteel widow who moves to London to start her life anew, and to be less of a burden to her daughter. When she arrives at the dowdy Claremont Hotel, which is not quite the picture of loveliness it was in the brochure, Plowright delivers Mrs. P's quick assessment--"Oh, dear"--with a spot-on mix of fleeting disappointment and stiff-upper-lip-itude. As she settles in among the oddball residents of the hotel, her life appears to be heading into a slow, downward decline. But when she meets young aspiring writer Ludovic (the adorable British actor Rupert Friend), Mrs. P--and we--learns that real family ties can be chosen, not inherited. The storyline is familiar and simple, with echoes of Tuesdays with Morrie, but the intimacy portrayed by the two lead actors brings surprising layers and emotion to the film, which envelopes the viewer like a cozy shawl.
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The story takes place in a small village of Provence in Occitania, the south of France, shortly after the First World War. César Soubeyran - also known as Papet - and his nephew, Ugolin, are desperate to buy a neighbouring farm, whose owner they accidentally kill, for its water source. The farm is then inherited by Jean, a hunchbacked tax collector from the city. Learning this news,César and Ugolin block up the spring with concrete to force Jean to sell his land. Although Jean valiantly tries to reap the harvests of his land, struggling to bring water from a well many miles away and trying a modern approach to agriculture based on his book knowledge, the hunchback, his wife, and daughter are reduced to poverty and desperation by the lack of water, while Soubeyran and his nephew remain tight-lipped about the spring under Jean's land. In the end, Jean is killed in an accident as a result of an explosion while attempting to dig his own well to supply water to his land. Jean's young daughter, Manon, has always been suspicious of the Soubeyrans. César and Ugolin finally buy the farm at a deep discount and force Jean's widow and young daughter (Manon) off of the land. The film ends as Manon discovers César and Ugolin opening up the water source that could have saved her family.
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Less a sequel than a seamless continuation of its predecessor, Jean de Florette, Manon of the Spring brings with it a more epic scope as it depicts the growth to womanhood of the daughter (Emmanuelle Béart) of the doomed farmer of the first film. As she discovers the truth of what happened to her father as a result of the scheming of their neighbor (Yves Montand), who took the land for himself, she vows revenge, realizing that the neighbor's deeds have irrevocably shaped the course of her life. Her moves toward avenging her father's demise provide an ironic twist to this harsh and thought-provoking saga, and French director Claude Berri perfectly illustrates the lasting consequences of deceit, greed, and revenge. Manon of the Spring is a very special foreign film choice, destined to be revered for years to come.
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Both epic and heartbreakingly intimate, Nowhere in Africa begins with a Jewish woman named Jettel Redlich fleeing Nazi Germany with her daughter Regina, to join her husband, Walter, on a farm in Kenya. At first, Jettel refuses to adjust to her new circumstances (she brought with her a set of china dishes and an evening gown), while Regina adapts readily to this new world, forming a strong bond with her father's cook, an African named Owuor. But this is only the beginning of a series of uprootings, and as the surface of their lives is torn away, Walter and Jettel find they have little in common, and must--under tumultuous circumstances--build their marriage anew. With incredible skill and passion, Nowhere in Africa manages to bring you fully into every change in this family's life; it richly deserves the Academy Award® it received in 2002. A powerful, deeply moving film.
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Majid Majidi celebrates the immediacy and essence of childhood in this delightful tale of a brother and sister who share a pair of shoes when the boy (though no fault of his own) loses his sister's only pair. Since their parents are too poor to afford a new pair, they keep it a secret, trading them off every day in a mad rush, jumping gutters and navigating the twisting lanes to their schools and back. Then the boy hatches a plan: the third-place prize in a student footrace is a new pair of shoes, and he's determined to take it. The plot may smack of a Disney film, but the direction couldn't be more different. The family scenes are delicately observed, and Majidi captures the spirit of the children perfectly: proud, emotional, petulant, sweet, and disarmingly sincere. The film has a Western-friendly framework without losing the naturalistic eye and lolling rhythm that gives the best Iranian films their richness. Even as he builds to the climactic footrace (quite unexpectedly turned into a nail-biting contest) the film continues to reveal a wealth of discreet surprises, culminating in a conclusion all the more resonant for its sublime delicacy. His efforts earned the film the honor of becoming the first Iranian feature to earn an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film.
Showtime is 8:00 PM and admission is $5.00