Short Versions, Take 6

Tokyo Godfathers, Twilight Samurai, High Tension, Garden State, Sweet Sixteen, Shattered Glass, The Door In The Floor, Standing In The Shadows Of Motown, Schultze Gets The Blues, Osama, Broken Silence.

	Tokyo Godfathers Christmas in Tokyo. Three homeless friends: a young girl, a transvestite, and a middle-aged bum. While foraging through some trash, they find an abandoned newborn. Hana, the transvestite with delusions of being a mother, convinces the others to keep it overnight. The next day, using a key found with the baby, they start tracking down the parents, with many adventures along the way. Sentimental and funny, "Tokyo Godfathers" makes for the perfect holiday feature for everyone to watch.
	Twilight Samurai Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2002, this movie is about a low-ranking samurai who leads a life without glory as a bureaucrat. New prospects seem to open up when Tomoe, his long-time love, divorces a brutal husband. As one reviewer put it:"Trust me if only Shakespeare had around to see great works of art like this he'd have dropped dead with great admiration."
	High Tension After "Baise-Moi" and "Irreversible" comes another french stunner that will make you squirm. Two friends, an empty house in the middle of nowhere and the stranger who comes through the door with bad intentions. It might only sound familiar but the execution (forgive the pun) is anything but.
	Garden State Enough with the violence! Zach Braff's brilliant first step as a movie director is a sweet, touching film about a young man who returns home for his mother's funeral after being estranged from his family for ten years. The stage is set for further tragedy, laughs and moments of sheer beauty. An important film in the realm of "Ghost World", "Lost in Translation" or "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."
	Sweet Sixteen After a temporary setback into pretentiousness, Ken Loach is back to what he does best: depicting the struggle of the lower classes, the unemployed, the poor, the alcoholics and the drug addicts. This is a movie for anyone who thinks that kids who grow up to be drug addicts and drug users have only themselves to blame. A disturbing and gritty look at the source of the problem with great acting by a fresh and unknown cast. The film sparked a censorship debate in the UK regarding the amount of bad language used.
	Shattered Glass The true story of a young journalist who was looking for a short cut to fame, so he concocted sources, quotes and even entire stories, but his deception did not go unnoticed forever, and eventually, his world came crumbling down. An enjoyable little drama with delightful performances by Hayden Christensen, Peter Sarsgaard and Chloe Sevigny.
	The Door in the Floor Adapted from John Irving's best-selling novel "A Widow for One Year" about a blocked children's book author (Jeff Bridges) and his wife (Kim Basinger) who is emotionally paralyzed from a tragic accident which killed their two sons. When a young writing assistant is hired the wife seems to come out of her emotional prison. Needless to say, this is not a comedy.
	Standing in the Shadows of Motown Brilliant documentary that gives a wonderful introduction to The Funk Brothers, the musicians behind the hits at Motown. The Funk Brothers, who played on more number 1 hits than the Beatles, Elvis, and the Rolling Stones combined are finally getting their well deserved props.
	Schultze gets the Blues Schultze is an accordion player and newly unemployed. When the local music club celebrates its 50th anniversary, his taste of music changes unexpectedly. Very similar to the movies of finnish director Aki Kaurismäki, "Schultze" is a slow-moving, seemingly bleak and depressing movie with a lot of heart underneath and great dead-pan humour.
	Osama This is the first film to be made in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban. Marina Golbhari (in her first role) superbly portrays a 12 year old girl forced to masquerade as a boy called Osama, in order to work to save her widowed mother and grandmother from starvation at a time when the Taliban totally obliterated women's rights. Only a few films deserve the term "courageous". This is one of them.
	Broken Silence In 1994 Steven Spielberg established the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, a non-profit organisation whose charter was to record on video the testimonies of 50,000 Holocaust survivors for posterity, as a teaching resource as well as an historical one. To date some 52,000 testimonies have been recorded in 57 countries around the world. To increase awareness of the Holocaust and to use the material they had collected in a positive way, the Foundation commissioned a series of five films from international film-makers. The charter for each of these directors was to produce an hour-long documentary using pre-recorded testimonies to show the impact of the Holocaust on citizen of their countries. All of these films contain graphic and confronting material. Essential viewing.