No Reservations, by Scott Hicks

For story & plot see "Mostly Martha" [English title for "Bella Martha"], a delightful 2001 German film set in Hamburg about an accomplished female [single] chef who suddenly, tragically finds herself the guardian of her dead sister's young daughter... The original film is excellent and most charming.

Elephant, by Gus Van Sant

The movie starts as a car has a hard time driving straight down the road in a residential area. We think some kid has stolen this car. Nah. It's the dad driving his son to school, and he's drunk. The teenage son must take over. So, adults give up all responsibility towards their children and mayhem can take place. The film shows one day in the life of several teenage students as they go in and out of classes. They live their student lives and we follow their steps through the corridors and doors, taking them as guides one by one, like avatars in a giant video game.

Amazing Grace, by Michael Apted

Behind the song you love is a story you will never forget.

Amazing Grace is about the campaign against the slave trade in 18th century Britain, led by famous abolitionist William Wilberforce, who was responsible for steering anti-slave trade legislation through the British parliament. The title is a reference to the hymn "Amazing Grace" and the film also recounts John Newton's writing of the hymn.

And Now… Ladies and Gentlemen, by Claude Lelouch

A jazz singer and a British jewel thief are brought together by their mutual desire to forget the past.

Valentin is a criminal mastermind, but his exploits don't prove much in the way of satisfaction. Thus, he sets out on a one-man sailing trip around the world in a last attempt at finding meaning in his life. Meanwhile, in Morocco, a burned-out jazz singer named Jane is trying to forget a fizzled love affair. And so begins the journey of these two lost souls who are destined to cross paths.

Pink Flamingos, by John Waters

One of the most vile, stupid and repulsive films ever made.

Sleaze queen Divine lives in a caravan with her mad hippie son Crackers and her 250-pound mother Mama Edie, trying to rest quietly on their laurels as 'the filthiest people alive'. But competition is brewing in the form of Connie and Raymond Marble, who sell heroin to schoolchildren and kidnap and impregnate female hitchhikers, selling the babies to lesbian couples. Finally, they challenge Divine directly, and battle commences...

Sex and the City, by Liz Tucillo

A sensuous and ironic sitcom about four young, desirable, virtually inseparable New York bachelor girls who lead and confide in each-other their ever changing and confusing sex lives, as different as their natures. Carrie Bradshaw is a charming petite columnist, and often the narrator of the story, either writing her copy or off screen, constantly tossing up and rejecting different views on just about anything that does or might impact modern women's sex lives; she tries almost everything, is constantly disappointed, but always seems to return to a certain Mr. Big. Miranda Hobbes is a red-hair lawyer determined to score professionally and to be though in love to, yet her only faithful lover is an insecure nerd. Charlotte York is a gallery-managing wasp from a prestigious, super-rich family, with high old-fashioned moral standards for her lovable but insecure self but unfortunately almost impossible to live up to for any lover, whenever she can find a socially acceptable one. Samantha Jones is every feminist's hero, and the utterly unashamed voice of lust at their meetings: an acclaimed PR agent and unstoppable nymphomaniac man-eater who can flirt the pants off almost any man (often literally and fast) and always feels like more, without a hint of commitment, claiming this is the age for woman to do what men always did to them.

Transformers, by Michael Bay

Their war. Our world.

More than meets the eye...

High-school student Sam Witwicky buys his first car, who is actually the Autobot Bumblebee. Bumblebee defends Sam and his girlfriend Mikaela Banes from the Decepticon Barricade, before the other Autobots arrive on Earth. They are searching for the Allspark, and the war on Earth heats up as the Decepticons attack a United States military base in Qatar. Sam and Mikaela are taken by the top-secret agency Sector 7 to help stop the Decepticons, but when they learn the agency also intends to destroy the Autobots, they formulate their own plan to save the world.

Single White Female, by Barbet Schroeder

An attractive, successful woman living in New York City breaks up with her boyfriend and decides to ease her recovery by getting a new roommate. The young woman who moves in changes slowly from normal and supportive to psychotic and dangerous, while also physically transforming herself to appear more and more like her roommate.

Beaches, by Garry Marshall

When the New York child performer CC Bloom and San Fransisco rich kid Hillary meet in a holiday resort in Atlantic City, it marks the start of a lifetime friendship between them. The two keep in touch through letters for a number of years until Hillary, now a successful lawyer moves to New York to stay with struggling singer CC. The movie shows the various stages of their friendship and their romances including their love for the same man.

Soul, by Tobsha Learner

In 1860, seventeen–year–old Lavinia Huntington is transported from her Irish village to start a new life in Mayfair, London, as the wife of a gentleman anthropologist, thirty years her senior. A year later she is standing trial for his murder.
In modern–day Los Angeles, forty–year–old Professor Julia Huntington, geneticist, returns from a field trip to Afghanistan. She has received a prestigious commission from the US Defence Department to research a genetic propensity to kill without remorse. At the same time, she discovers that her husband has betrayed her terribly.
This is a story that crosses generations, a story of two women and their struggle with obsessive love and revenge. Part murder mystery, part psychological thriller, part commentary on genetics and human behaviour, sexual jealousy and betrayal, Soul is both provocative and unputdownable.

The Stepford Wives, by Frank Oz

Joanna Eberhart, a wildly succesful president of a TV Network, after a series of shocking events suffers a nervous breakdown and is moved by her milquetoast of a husband, Walter, from Manhattan to the chic, upper-class and very modern planned community of Stepford, Connecticut. Once there, she makes good friends with the ascerbic Bobbie Markowitz, a jewish writer who's also a recovering alcoholic. Together they find out, much to their growing stupor and-then horror, that all the housewives in town are strangely blissful, and somehow... doomed. What is going on behind the closed doors of the Stepford Men's Association and the Stepford Day Spa? Why is everything perfect here? Will it be too late for Joanna and Bobbie when they finally find out?

Panic, by Jeff Abbott

What if everything in your life was a lie?

Things are going well for 24 year-old Evan Casher: his career as a documentary filmmaker is booming and his relationship with his new girlfriend, Carrie, couldn't be better. After an urgent phone call from his mother, he makes an unexpected trip home to Austin. Then the unthinkable happens. He arrives to find his mother brutally murdered, and narrowly escapes an attempt on his own life. Spirited away from the scene by an enigmatic mercenary with an agenda of his own, Evan is confronted with a shocking fact: his entire life has been little more than a carefully constructed lie.

Evan's only hope for survival is to uncover the truth about his family's past... and to confront a powerful, ruthless organization of killers who will stop at nothing to keep old secrets buried. With his mother's attackers fast on his heels and with no one to trust—not the authorities, his father, nor the woman he loves—it's a perilous search that takes him from the Texas Hill Country to New Orleans, to London, and to Miami. Full of unforgettable characters and jolting plot twists, Panic is an emotionally charged, heart-stopping thriller about one man's determination to take back his stolen life.

28 Weeks Later, by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

Seven months after the rage virus has annihilated the British Isles, the US army declares that the war against infection has been won, and that the reconstruction of the country can begin. In the first wave of returning refugees, a family is reunited--but one of them unwillingly carries a terrible secret. The virus is not yet dead, and this time, it is more dangerous than ever.

The Witch of Cologne, by Tobsha Learner

From the author of the sensational and erotic bestseller Quiver… An epic love story of the 17th century.

This is the story of Ruth Elazar ben Saul, a Jewish midwife who returns to her home of Deutz outside Cologne. Imbued with the radical ideas of Spinoza and with ancient Hebrew Kabbalism, her revolutionary methods of dealing with illness lead to accusations of witchcraft and imprisonment.
Her love affair with Detleff von Tennen, a local Catholic bishop, may save her in the short term, but at a time of brutal repression and religious persecution there are few options for those who break taboos.

Shrek The third, by Chris Miller

When his new father-in-law, King Harold falls ill, Shrek is looked at as the heir to the land of Far, Far Away. Not one to give up his beloved swamp, Shrek recruits his friends Donkey and Puss in Boots to install the rebellious Artie as the new king. Princess Fiona, however, rallies a band of royal girlfriends to fend off a coup d'etat by the jilted Prince Charming.

Perfect Strangers, by Stephen Poliakoff

A large, wealthy, disparate family holds a reunion. We follow Daniel who has never met anyone there before and uncovers an array of wonderful family stories and relationships. Brilliantly acted with a constantly engaging air of mystery and discovery.

Hostel II, by Elli Roth

Three female college students take a detour from their partying, enticed by a beautiful European woman who promises seclusion, safety and maybe even romance. What they get is a living hell where they are sold to the highest bidder who's fondest wish is to kill them slowly. Hostel 2 also follows 2 American men who, on the flip side of the coin, are willing to pay to join an exclusive club where a life will end at their hands...any way they like. It's a story of human monsters and the almighty dollar as only Eli Roth could tell it.

Walkabout, by Nicolas Roeg

Amidst the vast emptiness of an unending plain, a stressed-out Australian urbanite interrupts his family's Outback picnic to kill himself and blow up their car, leaving his teenage daughter and young son... alone. Thus begins a memorable emotional and physical odyssey for a girl just old enough to take matters in her own, very proper hands -- and for her little brother, zestfully plunging into what seems to him a game. But it's no game for the third member of the eventual trio: an Aborigine boy on his coming-of-age "walkabout."

Easy Rider, by Dennis Hopper

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Two young "hippie" bikers, Wyatt and Billy sell some dope in Southern California, stash their money away in their gas-tank and set off for a trip across America, on their own personal odyssey looking for a way to lead their lives. On the journey they encounter bigotry and hatred from small-town communities who despise and fear their non-conformism. However Wyatt and Billy also discover people attempting 'alternative lifestyles' who are resisting this narrow-mindedness, there is always a question mark over the future survival of these drop-out groups. The gentle hippie community who thank God for 'a place to stand' are living their own unreal dream. The rancher they encounter and his Mexican wife are hard-pushed to make ends meet. Even LSD turns sour when the trip is a bad one. Death comes to seem the only freedom. When they arrive at a diner in a small town, they are insulted by the local rednecks as weirdo degenerates. They are arrested on some minor pretext by the local sheriff and thrown in jail where they meet George Hanson, a liberal alcoholic lawyer. He gets them out and decides to join them on their trip to New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras.

Cinema Paradiso, by Giuseppe Tornatore

Cinema Paradiso offers a nostalgic look at films and the effect they have on a young boy who grows up in and around the title village movie theater in this Italian comedy drama that is based on the life and times of screenwriter/director Giuseppe Tornatore. The story begins in the present as a Sicilian mother pines for her estranged son, Salvatore, who left many years ago and has since become a prominent Roman film director who has taken the advice of his mentor too literally. He finally returns to his home village to attend the funeral of the town's former film projectionist, Alfredo, and, in so doing, embarks upon a journey into his boyhood just after WWII when he became the man's official son. In the dark confines of the Cinema Paradiso, the boy and the other townsfolk try to escape from the grim realities of post-war Italy. The town censor is also there to insure nothing untoward appears onscreen, invariably demanding that all kissing scenes be edited out. One day, Salvatore saves Alfredo's life after a fire, and then becomes the new projectionist. A few years later, Salvatore falls in love with a beautiful girl who breaks his heart after he is inducted into the military. Thirty years later, Salvatore has come to say goodbye to his life-long friend, who has left him a little gift in a film can. In 2002, over a decade after the film's original release, Tornatore brought the original 170-minute director's cut to American screens for the first time.