The film opens in a happy, comfortable upper middle-class home in Victorian London. One night the three children see their father usher two strangers into his study. After an argument he leaves with them and does not return. They and their mother fall on hard times and eventually move to a cottage in the country. Yet they keep their spirits up and find ways to help others. Fascinated by the nearby railroad, they wave to the passengers faithfully every day, and their vigilance and courage prevent an accident. Their kindness makes friends of some important people who can help solve the mystery of their missing father.

In a small Minnesota town, the annual beauty pageant is being covered by a TV crew. Former winner Gladys Leeman wants to make sure her daughter follows in her footsteps. Explosions, falling lights, and trailer fires prove that. As the Leemans are the richest family in town the police are pretty relaxed about it all. Despite everything, main rival (but nice) Amber Atkins won’t be stopped. There could well be more death and disappointment to come. Written by Jeremy Perkins {jwp@aber.ac.uk}

In the final instalment of the Godfather Trilogy, an aging Don Michael Corleone seeks to legitimize his crime family’s interests and remove himself from the violent underworld but is kept back by the ambitions of the young. While he attempts to link the Corleone’s finances with the Vatican, Michael must deal with the machinations of a hungrier gangster seeking to upset the existing Mafioso order and a young protoge’s love affair with his daughter. Written by Keith Loh {loh@sfu.ca}

The story begins as “Don” Vito Corleone, the head of a New York Mafia “family”, oversees his daughter’s wedding. His beloved son Michael has just come home from the war, but does not intend to become part of his father’s business. Through Michael’s life the nature of the family business becomes clear. The business of the family is just like the head of the family, kind and benevolent to those who give respect, but given to ruthless violence whenever anything stands against the good of the family. Don Vito lives his life in the way of the old country, but times are changing and some don’t want to follow the old ways and look out for community and “family”. An up and coming rival of the Corleone family wants to start selling drugs in New York, and needs the Don’s influence to further his plan. The clash of the Don’s fading old world values and the new ways will demand a terrible price, especially from Michael, all for the sake of the family. Written by Charlie Ness

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The year is 1985 and Marty McFly is your everyday teenager, except for one problem. He is stuck in 1955. After his good friend Doc Emmett Brown is gunned down, Marty ends up sending the DeLorean back thirty years into the past. Now, he must find the Doc and convince him that he is from the future, in order for the Doc to send him back to the future, but this is the least of Marty’s problem. After accidentally getting in the way of the important meeting between his future mother and father, Marty must get them back together before he changes time forever, and destroys his own existence. Written by simon

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Elliot is your normal boy, until one day, when he meets a little lost alien. Elliot decides to keep the alien, in which he gives the name E.T. Elliot works with E.T. in trying to find him a way to get back home. Elliot must make the difficult sacrifice. Whether to help his new friend or to lose him? Whatever the decision is, Elliot must keep him hidden, as someone else is out to look for him. Written by simon

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The idealistic lifestyle of an old West farmer (Leonardo Pieracconi), his Indian wife (Sandrine Holt) and half-breed son (Yudii Mercredi), who narrates the tale, is disrupted when his grandfather (Harvey Keitel), an old gunslinger, shows up on the farm. Although looking to retire, the family is not happy with his return, given his past lifestyle and mistreatment of his family. Things get worse when another gunfighter (David Bowie) shows up and terrorizes the town, trying to force the father into a gun fight. Written by John Sacksteder {jsackste@bellsouth.net}

I bet the filmmakers would love to have a dollar for every time someone compares this movie to “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” Their coffers would be greatly enriched, as comparisons to Nia Vardalos‘ “Greek Wedding” are inevitable. As I left the screening, the majority of the audience rumblings had to do with renaming the film. I heard “My Big Fat Indian Wedding” and “My Big Fat Soccer Movie” kicked around the most frequently, proving that comparisons to last year’s indie-film-that-could will undoubtedly be made.

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Jack Elgin is the European editor of The Economist, which is based in London, England. Jack has a wife named Maria and three kids named Joanne, Julia, and Andrew. Jack subtly changes the family vacation from a lazy week of Mediterranean fun and sun in Corfu, Greece, to a tour of India, because of a story he has to cover. Maria is not as impressed by this as the kids are. Jack himself envisioned a chance to simultaneously work an easy reporting assignment and spend a little quality time with his family. But on the way to India, the airplane, a 747 owned by AM Air, an American airline, makes an unscheduled stopover in Limassol Cyprus, because of a mechanical problem. After a while of waiting inside the Limassol airport, everyone gets back on the plane — which is then hijacked by a group of terrorists known as the August 15th Movement, led by a Serbian man named Ivanic Loyvek and his right-hand man Karadan Maldic. And they are demanding $50,000,000 from the US State Department in one hour, or everyone on the airplane will die. The demand is met, and Loyvek and Maldic start releasing the women and children, with the men to go last. But as soon as a front passenger door is opened, a local police team gunning for the terrorists opens fire. The flight attendants frantically open the rest of the airplane’s doors and start getting passengers out, but the terrorists start killing passengers, leading to an explosion. Maria, Joanne, and Julia get out of the airplane, and then Jack, holding Andrew, gets out — only to watch Maria, Joanne, and Julia get shot by the terrorists. Jack tries to hide Andrew’s face so he can’t see it. Maria and Joanne are dead, and Julia is still alive — but Julia burns to death while crying for help. Jack and Andrew survive. In all, a total of 15 passengers die, and Loyvek and Maldic, the surviving terrorists, escape, knowing that they now have the $50,000,000. The hijacking would never have ended this way if the police team had waited until after the passengers were released from the airplane before getting trigger happy. Back in London, an absolutely devastated Jack is told that the terrorists were captured, but they were released and deported secretly, with no charges and no arrest, the result of some awfully compromised politics. Jack is understandably enraged that Loyvek and Maldic got off scot-free. While helping Andrew cope, Jack tries all the legal ways to ensure justice for his family, but to no avail. Jack even pays a visit to Henry Davidson, a CIA agent who works at the American Embassy in London. Davidson tells Jack that there’s little that can be done. Obviously, the American and British governments are completely impotent when it comes to going after Loyvek and Maldic, so Jack has absolutely no choice in the matter. He must do it himself. With the help of his ex-intelligence operative friend Kate Stockton, who is well-schooled in the finer points of international intelligence, Jack becomes a one-man anti-terrorist squadron, searching for Loyvek and Maldich. Dogging Jack’s trail is FBI agent Jules Bernard, who’s cooperating with Scotland Yard on anti-terrorist activities, and who suspects that Jack is the man who has been killing anyone involved in the hijacking. But as it turns out, Jules is on Jack’s side, and he’s willing to help Jack make those responsible pay for the deaths of his family and the other people who died in Cyprus. Written by Todd Baldridge

When two American brothers, Graham and Allen Granville, learn that they have inherited a chateau in France, they cannot believe their luck. However, when they arrive, the brothers find themselves completely ill-equipped to communicate with the chateau’s staff (even with the help of a pocket dictionary). With no hope of paying off the chateau’s enormous debt, the pair are forced to sell the chateau, leaving a bewildered staff resorting to desperate and hilarious measures to keep their home. Through a series of comedic misunderstandings, the film’s stars not only uncover they’re not as distant from the staff as they might think, they also discover something about the importance of family. Written by ifp/west

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