The Phantom of Ligerty. Bourgeois convention is demolished in this surrealist gem. Featuring an elegant soiree with guests seated at toilet bowls, poker-playing monks using religious medals as chips, and police officers looking for a missing girl who is right under their noses, this perverse, playfully absurd comedy of non sequiturs deftly compiles many of the themes that preoccupied Buñuel throughout his career—from the hypocrisy of conventional morality to the arbitrariness of social arrangements.

Glory to the Filmmaker! is the latest work from the mind of Takeshi Kitano. Featuring a slightly fictionalized version of himself, the film follows Kitano in a search for his next big hit, following his public declaration that he would stop doing Yakuza movies. In a wild and funny journey, Kitano takes us through his failed, aborted, and commercially unsuccessful attempts, featuring a number of co-stars from his past movies. The journey spans every genre imaginable, from a quiet, introspective story of a just-retired salaryman (reminiscent of the works of Ozu), to a ninja action film, to multiple relationship stories, to a film set in the 50's recalling the hardship and depression of post-war Japan, before finally settling on an offbeat sci-fi flick.

The idea is simple - two businessmen, one American, played by Cox regular Miguel Sandoval ('Get Shorty', 'Blow'), and one Englishman (Cox himself) meet in the deserted dining room of an expensive hotel in Liverpool. They chat while waiting for service, and when it looks like that isn't forthcoming, they go on a quest for food. Finding the kitchen deserted, and likewise the rest of the hotel, they venture outside to look for somewhere to eat. And so their "adventure" begins. They walk, talk, agree, disagree, irritate and bond with each other while never quite getting the meal they desire. Things never go to plan, they get sidetracked, misled, confused, and go up various dead ends and strange situations. While still thinking they remain in Liverpool they end up traveling around the world. A plot description doesn't do this movie justice, the real story is in the telling.

Jacobo Köller, a terribly lonely middled-aged man, owns a falling-apart sock factory in Montevideo (Uruguay), which now is reduced to barely 3 workers: 2 girls and Marta, Jacobo's supervisor/ secretary, a terribly lonely middle-aged unmarried woman. Both Jacobo's and Marta's lives are plagued by the most painful routine, mirroring the moribund sewing machines at the factory and Jacobo's agonizing old car. When Jacobo's elderly mother dies, his younger, successful brother Herman, who lives in Brazil, comes to Uruguay to attend the Matzeivah. Jacobo, who has a distant and resentful relationship with his brother, asks Marta if she will pretend to be his wife for a few days so he won't have to cope with his brother all by himself. Marta agrees and this experience will be life changing for her.

During World War II, German soldier Ernst Graeber leaves the ferocious fighting on the Russian front to return home on furlough but upon arrival finds his house decimated and his parents gone. He and a childhood acquaintance, Elizabeth Kruse, find one another amid the ruins of the town and fall in love, though Graeber knows he must eventually leave Elizabeth and return to combat.

In Tokyo in 1885, Kikunosuke Onoue, the adoptive son of an important actor, discovers that he is praised for his acting only because he is his father's heir, and that the troupe complains how bad he is behind his back. The only person to talk to him honestly about his acting is Otoku, the wet-nurse of his adoptive father's child. She is fired by the family, and Kikunosuke is forbidden to see her, because of the gossip a relationship with a servant would cause. Kikunosuke falls in love with Otoku, and leaves home to try to make a living on his own merits outside Tokyo. He is eventually joined by Otoku, who encourages him to become a famous actor to regain the recognition of his family.

Millie Lammoreaux, a physical therapist in a Palm Springs spa for old folks with fat incomes, finds herself the adored object of another young therapist who calls herself Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek). Pinky seems to have no past of her own, not even a Social Security number. At first, it seems that Pinky might be retarded but then it's apparent she's simply a blank, possessing nothing but her worshipful appreciation of Millie. Millie accepts Pinky's praise and affection as if she'd always been a prom queen instead of the figure of ridicule she really is, both at work and at the Purple Sage Apartments, the singles complex where she lives and that Pinky comes to share with her. Pinky doesn't notice the snubs given to Millie. She doesn't envy Millie. Because she loves Millie — idolizes her — she comes to be her, to take over her life being both herself and Millie.

The Only Son. In 1923, in the province of Shinshu, the widow and simple worker of a silk factory Tsune Nonomiya (O-Tsune) decides to send her only son to Tokyo for having a better education. Thirteen years later, she visits her son Ryosuke Nonomiya (Shinichi Himori), and finds that he is a poor and frustrated night-school teacher with a wife, Sugiko (Yoshiko Tsubouchi), and a baby boy.

Shakespeare's 17th century masterpiece about the "Melancholy Dane" was given one of its best screen treatments by Soviet director Grigori Kozintsev. Kozintsev's Elsinore was a real castle in Estonia, utilized metaphorically as the "stone prison" of the mind wherein Hamlet must confine himself in order to avenge his father's death. Hamlet himself is portrayed (by Innokenti Smoktunovsky) as the sole sensitive intellectual in a world made up of debauchers and revellers. Several of Kozintsev directorial choices seem deliberately calculated to inflame the purists: Hamlet's delivers his "To be or not to be" soliloquy with his back to the camera, allowing the audience to fill in its own interpretations.

In the autumn of 1990, renowned Spanish artist Antonio Lopez Garcia enters his Madrid studio and begins to assemble a large canvas for his new painting. The subject of his still life is a fruit laden quince tree in the courtyard. Lopez proves to be a meticulous craftsman. He drives three long poles into the ground around the perimeter of the tree and suspends a plumb line in order to determine the center of the painting. He runs a tube of white paint along a brick wall in the background to demarcate the median line. He stakes his painting stance with ground spikes.He marks the visual center of individual leaves and fruits to retain their compositional balance. For two brief hours each morning, the sun reflects from the roof and casts a majestic light against the upper portion of the quince tree, leaving the rest of the tree in shadow, and it is this phenomenon that Lopez attempts to capture in his painting. As Lopez struggles to preserve this wondrous moment, the process of life continues unhindered through changing climate, inclement weather, distracting building renovations, news of significant international events, and interruptive visits from friends and relatives.

A disaffected man seeks a sense of identity in one of the key films of Hollywood's 1970s New Wave. Once a promising pianist from a family of classical musicians, Bobby Eroica Dupea (Jack Nicholson, in his first major starring role) leads a blue-collar life as an oil rigger, living with needy waitress girlfriend Rayette (Karen Black) and bowling with their friends Elton (Billy "Green" Bush) and Stoney (Fannie Flagg). Feeling suffocated by responsibilities, Bobby seeks out his sister, Tita (Lois Smith), and, discovering that his father is gravely ill, he reluctantly heads back to the patrician family compound in Puget Sound with a pregnant Rayette in tow.

Socially inept garbage man Simon is befriended by Henry Fool, a witty roguish, but talent-less novelist. Henry opens a magical world of literature to Simon who turns his hand to writing the 'great American poem'. As Simon begins his controversial ascent to the dizzying heights of Nobel Prize winning poet, Henry sinks to a life of drinking in low-life bars. The two friends fall out and lose touch until Henry's criminal past catches up with him and he needs Simon's help to flee the country.

Pierce Mundy works at his parents' South Central dry cleaners with no prospects for the future and his childhood buddies in prison or dead. With his best friend just getting out of jail and his brother busy planning a wedding to a snooty upper-middle-class black woman, Pierce navigates his conflicting obligations while trying to figure out what he really wants in life.

Miss Oyu is the story of a tragic triangular love. A young man falls in love with the older woman who accompanies his bride-to-be to an informal introduction. On their wedding night the bride, who has noticed his infatuation and all it's implications, suggests that they maintain their union on a platonic level. This would allow his love to remain pure and stop her betraying her friend, the older woman, whom she suspects to be in love with her husband as well. In the best Mizoguchi manner this is achingly beautiful, subdued and heart felt. The criticism of society is more hinted at than in other films. The experience on a whole is just as emotionally satisfying.

The Munekata Sisters. Setsuko is unhappily married to Mimura, an engineer with no job and a bad drinking habit. She had always been in love with Hiroshi but both of them failed to propose when Hiroshi left for France a few years ago. Now he is back and Mariko (Setsuko's sister) tries to reunite them. She too is secretly in love with Hiroshi.