Sam Dawson has the mental capacity of a 7-year-old. He works at a Starbucks and is obsessed with the Beatles. He has a daughter with a homeless woman; she abandons them as soon as they leave the hospital. He names his daughter Lucy Diamond (after the Beatles song), and raises her. But as she reaches age 7 herself, Sam’s limitations start to become a problem at school; she’s intentionally holding back to avoid looking smarter than him. The authorities take her away, and Sam shames high-priced lawyer Rita Harrison into taking his case pro bono. In the process, he teaches her a great deal about love, and whether it’s really all you need. Written by Jon Reeves {jreeves@imdb.com}

War threatens London as Miss Pettigrew, a destitute governess, filches a client’s card from her agency and presents herself at the door. A singer named Delysia Lafosse wants a social secretary as she seeks a West End role by sleeping with a feckless producer in the bed of Nick, a smarmy nightclub owner with whom she also dallies. She ignores Michael, her piano player, who loves her and has tickets for New York on the Queen Mary. Miss Pettigrew’s job is to make sure Delysia gets the part. Over 24 hours, Miss Pettigrew is also called upon to help an ambitious and unfaithful fashion editor patch things up with her older fiancé, a lingerie designer. Has Miss Pettigrew found her calling? Written by {jhailey@hotmail.com}

The Wildcats are back. They start off getting out of school, where Shar Pay makes sure Troy has job at her country club. Troy then in returns gets everyone else a job at the country club too. Gabrielle is the new lifeguard, while Troy, Chad, and the others work in the kitchen. At the country club there is a talent show, which Sharpay and Ryan win every year. Kelsie had written a song for Troy and Gabrielle to sing at the talent show, which later on Sharpay takes (at a faster tempo) for her and Troy to sing at the talent show. Sharpay plots to take Troy away from Gabrielle,by getting him a better job than the rest of the Wildcats. Troy starts changing, all for a “scholarship”, starting to act like a jerk, which results in Gabrielle breaking up with Troy, saying she doesn’t belong there. After Troy loses all his friends, because he began acting like a jerk and had found out that Sharpay had made it where no Junior Staffers can perform in the talent show, he decides to do something about it, and asks for his old job back with the rest of his friends and quits the talent show leaving Sharpay with nothing, since she had ditched her brother to perform with Troy. She then goes back to Ryan, who had been working with the Junior Staffers on an act, who then leaves her saying she always wanted the spotlight, now she has it. Troy ends up doing the talent show, thinking that he would be performing with Sharpay. He learns a new song within a matter of minutes. Written by Anonymous

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Calendar Girls is about the women of the Rylstone Women’s Institute in North Yorkshire. This Women’s Group produces a calendar each year based around scenes of the Yorkshire dales. In 1999, one of the ladies husbands became ill with leukemia. He would say that if the ladies planted Sunflowers, he’d make sure he’d get better so he could see them. Unfortunately, he didn’t pull through and in order to raise funds for Leukemia research the women decided to make an alternative calendar of themselves in the nude hoping to sell a few hundred copies around their villages. This calendar in fact became a worldwide sensation, out-selling even those of Britney Spears and Cindy Crawford. Written by Steve Mappley

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Based on the true story of Australian pianist David Helfgott, this delightful movie charts the early and traumatic early years. Telling the story in flashback we see David as he grows up and into a child prodigy while his father abuses him and his siblings with the memory of his childhood in Europe and the loss of his family in the concentration camps. David finally breaks away from his father and goes away to study overseas, he later suffers a breakdown and returns to Australia and a life in an institution. Many years later he is released and through several twists of fate (in reality even more unlikely than film portrays) he starts playing a piano in a bar before finally returning to the concert hall. Written by randbanks@yahoo.com

Emma Woodhouse is a congenial young lady who delights in meddling in other people’s affairs. She is perpetually trying to unite men and women who are utterly wrong for each other. Despite her interest in romance, Emma is clueless about her own feelings, and her relationship with gentle Mr. Knightly. Written by Philip Brubaker {coda@nando.net}

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I’ve heard people refer to “The Notebook” as cheesy, as a ‘chick flick’ (a label very few of my colleagues can stand because of its negative connotation), as predictable and sappy. So “The Notebook” doesn’t exactly take a brain surgeon to guess how the story is going to play out. And it does unapologetically play on your emotions, practically begging you to squeeze out a few tears. But here’s why I enjoyed “The Notebook”: it’s a movie you can relax and let flow over you. It’s also one of the few films out there that tells a complete story. There’s a well-defined beginning, middle, and end.

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A woman named Grace retires with her two children to a mansion on Jersey, towards the end of the Second World War, where she’s waiting for her husband to come back from battle. The children have a disease which means they cannot be touched by direct sunlight without being hurt in some way. They will live alone there with oppressive, strange and almost religious rules, until she needs to hire a group of servants for them. Their arrival will accidentally begin to break the rules with unexpected consequences. Written by David Villalmanzo

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Mitch, Frank and Beanie are disillusioned with their personal lives begining when Mitch’s nymphomanic girlfriend, Heidi, cheats on him, then former party animal Frank gets married, but unwilling to get go of his wild life, and Beanie is a family man seeking to reclaim his wild and crazy youth. Beanie suggests that they form their own fraternity in Mitch’s new house on a college campus to re-live their glory days by bringing together a variety of misfit college students, losers, middle-aged and elderly retirees as their new friends and later try to avoid being evicted by the new Dean of Students, Pritchard, whom still holds a personal grudge against all three of them. Written by Matthew Patay

In 1982 legendary British heavy metal band Spinal Tap attempt an American comeback tour accompanied by a fan who is also a film-maker. The resulting documentary, interspersed with powerful performances of Tap’s pivotal music and profound lyrics, candidly follows a rock group heading towards crisis, culminating in the infamous affair of the eighteen-inch-high Stonehenge stage prop. Written by Jeremy Perkins {jwp@aber.ac.uk}

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