Films

The Oscar winner for best foreign language film, The Counterfeiters is about the most talented counterfeiter in prewar Berlin, and also a bon vivant, ladies' man, cynic, and opportunist; in brief, a happy criminal. In the film, Sally, a Russian-born Jew, is arrested in 1936 and later sent to a concentration camp where he's placed at the head of a counterfeiting workshop run by the S.S. and staffed by Jewish prisoners skilled as printers and graphic artists. The Nazi plan is to produce enormous amounts of authentic-looking British and American currency, dump it on the market, and undermine the economies of those countries. Sally's unit produces the British pound in bulk, but his perfect design for the dollar is sabotaged by a Communist printer in the group, a fiery anti-Nazi who can't bring himself to help the German war effort. "The Counterfeiters is a swift and suspenseful thriller" (A.O. Scott, N.Y. Times).

Newly restored on 35mm and available for the first time in almost a decade, Albert Lamorisse's The Red Balloon remains one of the most beloved children's films of all time. In this deceptively simple, nearly wordless tale, a young boy discovers a stray balloon that seems to have a mind of its own. Wandering through the streets of Paris, the two become inseparable, to the surprise of the neighborhood and the envy of other children. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, The Red Balloon has enchanted the young — and the young at heart — for decades, and it will surely find a new generation of fans with this rerelease. Shown with White Mane, an earlier film from Lamorisse. In the south of France is a near-desert region called La Camargue, there lives White Mane, a magnificent stallion and the leader of a herd of wild horses too proud to let themselves be broken in by humans. Only Folco, a young fisherman, manages to tame him. A strong friendship grows between the boy and the horse, but they must elude the wrangler and his herdsmen to live freely. Beloved by generations of French children, White Mane comes to North America in a glorious new restoration, featuring a new English translation.

In the fall of 2006, Martin Scorsese filmed the Stones in a pair of concerts at the Beacon, a relatively small New York theater, and the result, Shine a Light, is a testament to the band's longevity, vitality and verve. Shot with an electric energy, Shine captures a band performing their unassailable catalog of songs with spark and zest that leave you agape, and guest players Jack White, Buddy Guy and Christina Aguilera underscore the Stones' timelessness. "Shine a Light has two maestros, Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger, and once they begin to mesh, around the third or fourth song, they put on a display of showmanship that erases the line between art and entertainment" (Michael Sragow, Baltimore Sun).

Wong Kar Wai's sensibility is wildly romantic — he's dedicated to replicating, in visual terms, what it's like to feel passion. The movie is the story of Elizabeth (singer Norah Jones) and her travels. Trying to heal a broken heart and get on with her life, she goes to several small towns and takes waitressing and barmaid jobs, and runs into a lovestruck Jude Law. Jones, in her acting debut, is stunned into self-reflection by the spectacle of an alcoholic cop (David Straitharn) still helplessly in love with his estranged wife (Rachel Weisz). So does the demeanor of a strangely buoyant gambler (Natalie Portman), who swallows her grief and lives from thrill to thrill in Las Vegas. "Captures the overwhelming and uncontrollable emotional assault of loving and living through captured moments and sensuous images" (Sean Axmaker, Seattle Post-Intelligencer).

Morgan Spurlock, who exposed the evils of a fast-food diet in Super Size Me, returns with his follow-up, in which he embarks on a quest to track down the world's most wanted man. The movie starts out with some imaginative graphics lampooning our paranoia of Osama and some funny business showing Spurlock preparing for his mission — action movies have taught him that complex global problems are best solved by lone heroes. He settles in for a Politics 101 travelogue through the Mideast, going from a Moroccan slum to a fundamentalist Jewish neighborhood of Tel Aviv, all the way to Osama's former cave headquarters in the hills of Tora Bora. "Spurlock is good company, a more likable, less abrasive, less manipulative Michael Moore. And there's nothing wrong with his message that the extremists are small in number, most people just want to live peacefully and the meek probably will inherit the Earth" (William Arnold, Seattle Post-Intelligencer).

Zak Penn's mockumentary delivers plenty of sharply funny moments in introducing us to the best poker players in America, gathering in Las Vegas for the Grand Championship of Poker, all hoping to walk away with the $10,000,000 pot. The film is one long series of riffs — some very funny — leading up to the final roundtable showdown. Even it was unscripted, the outcome was determined by the luck of the draw and how well the cast (including David Cross and Woody Harrelson, and needless to say, dominated by real-life poker enthusiasts) played their hands. Penn's cast is top notch and German director Werner Herzog — who starred in Penn's 2004 mockumentary, Incident at Loch Ness — once again turns in a dryly hilarious performance. "The Grand is a seesaw, but the setting — the high-stakes poker subculture — is remarkably fertile and the actors are a treat" (David Edelstein, New York Magazine).

Taking a page from the book "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?," Rock Bridge High student Hudson spent March interviewing students about why they voluntarily separate themselves into groups based on skin color or religious practices. The resulting documentary mixes in historical clips about desegregation to tell the real story behind our racial divide. Hudson will be in attendance to answer questions.

A non-fiction film about 80-year-olds who sing Talking Heads, Sonic Youth, and James Brown in a community chorus can expect to put off hardened skeptics expecting to be hit over the head with a charm offensive. But this is one of the great films of the year, a surprisingly profound documentary. Walker has found a delicate, respectful, witty way to convey both the matter-of-fact dignity of the individual men and women singing "Should I Stay or Should I Go" as well as the ineffable power of determining to live fully until there's no brea th left. Physical frailty, illness, and death are not magically overcome by showing up for rehearsal; the group, led by music director Bob Cilman, has cause to mourn during the course of Walker's time with them. "They also make joyful music, communicated, with an authority that quite knocks off socks" (Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly).

Featuring an award-caliber performance by Richard Jenkins as a college professor who comes out of his shell, The Visitor is a heartfelt human drama that sneaks up and floors you. In only his second film as writer and director, following his acclaimed The Station Agent, Tom McCarthy works in miniature to reveal major truths. At a barely used apartment the professor and his late wife kept in the city, he finds a beautiful young Senegalese woman and her boyfriend, a Syrian musician, who've rented the place from a scam artist. After a few awkward moments, Walter invites the couple to stay till they find new digs, and a profound relationship ensues. McCarthy could have made his film a moral treatise about post-9/11 immigration abuses. Instead, he lets issues present themselves through personal interaction. McCarthy opens up a whole world for us on the face of his leading actor. "You've seen Jenkins before — as the ghost father on Six Feet Under, the gay FBI agent in Flirting With Disaster, the bored shrink in There's Something About Mary. Now it's time to remember his name. This is the role of his career, and Jenkins doesn't tackle it (that would be the obvious choice of a lesser actor), instead he wears it like a second skin" (Peter Travers, Rolling Stone).