The Man Who Would Not See

Director Terry Gilliam adroitly applies his Monty Python sensibilities upon the "career" of famed German prevaricator Baron von Munchausen. Played herein by John Neville, the baron is seen quelling a war that he himself started, flying into the stratosphere on the back of a cannonball, ballooning to the moon, exploring the innards of a volcano, being swallowed by a whale….In short, all of Munchausen's fabulous lies are here presented as "truth," played out in full view of nonplussed witnesses Eric Idle, Charles McKeown, Jack Purvis, and Sarah Polley. Fringe benefits include several loving medium shots of jaybird-naked Uma Thurman as Boticelli's Venus and an extended unbilled cameo by Robin Williams – that is, by the head of Robin Williams – as the King of the Moon.

Endlessly imitated and parodied, Ingmar Bergman's landmark art movie The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde Inseglet) retains its ability to hold an audience spellbound. Bergman regular Max von Sydow stars as a 14th century knight named Antonius Block, wearily heading home after ten years' worth of combat. Disillusioned by unending war, plague, and misery Block has concluded that God does not exist. As he trudges across the wilderness, Block is visited by Death (Bengt Ekerot), garbed in the traditional black robe. Unwilling to give up the ghost, Block challenges Death to a game of chess. If he wins, he lives – if not, he'll allow Death to claim him. As they play, the knight and the Grim Reaper get into a spirited discussion over whether or not God exists. To recount all that happens next would diminish the impact of the film itself; we can observe that The Seventh Seal ends with one of the most indelible of all of Bergman's cinematic images: the near-silhouette "Dance of Death".

A woman's long history of bad luck starts to change when she puts her life on the line in this romantic drama. Adèle (Vanessa Paradis) is a 22-year-old woman whose life seems to have been a long series of miscalculations; she's never had much luck with love, life, or career, and is standing on a bridge overlooking the Seine one night, contemplating suicide, when she's approached by a man named Gabor (Daniel Auteuil). Gabor announces he's a knife-thrower who needs a new human target for his act. Would Adèle be interested? Adèle's immediate answer is to jump into the water, but after Gabor fishes her out and gets her to a hospital, she has a change of heart and the pair are soon on their way to Monaco, where Gabor gets a spot at a circus. Adèle and Gabor make a great team; he's good with knives, she's young and beautiful, and suddenly Adèle's luck starts to change. She visits a casino one night and comes home with a fortune, and even when Gabor throws blindfolded, she walks away without so much as a scratch.

One quiet night, as his friends gather to share their goodbyes to him, John offers up a delicious conundrum: let’s say a man - a caveman, really - managed to survive for 14,000 years, never dying. What would he be like today? John’s friends, professors and academics from a nearby college, enjoy the puzzle and the countless questions it creates. What about his biology would help him live so long? How far back could his memories go before they cloud up? How much knowledge could such a man gather over thousands of lifetimes? How many relationships must he deny himself in order to keep his past a secret?