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In 1969, then 14-year-old Beatle fan Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced the rock icon to do interview with him. Thirty-eight years later Levitan enlists director Josh Raskin to transform that reel-to-reel interview into a visual poem, using various animation techniques to bring the words of peace to life.

Throughout the film, Lennon rifts on various topics especially the need to bring about world change through peaceful means. With his endless wit, Lennon questions rebels that destroy the government when all they want is to be in power themselves. Why blow up buildings when they might be useful to have when you’re the Establishment? The imagery slyly mirrors and comments on the spoken words. Images flow and blend effortlessly, creating a visual dream. As Lennon says, “Piss for peace, smile for peace, go to school for peace, don’t go to school for peace” then images of a dog peeing to a smile to a school to a boot smashing to school flip by like cue cards. The images pops up so quickly it feels like visual improv, working off the cues of the three-decade-old recording.

The film doesn’t just highlight the genius of Lennon, but also the boldness and naiveté of Levitan, who at one moment asks the music legend serious questions about his immigration problems with the U.S. and then asks him fan boy inquiries about why people would ever listen to the Bee Gees. This lively, smile-inducing, duel-layered time capsule of illustrations and found images captures the energy of the 1960s, as well as the energy of one gutsy young man.

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The French visual effects firm BUF created this devilish CG short, which proves that one can say a lot in a short period of time. A priest gets a call to intercede into the life of a miserly farmer, who has been saving his money all his life, and may be in danger from a shadowy figure racing toward the man’s cottage on a motorcycle. Like a door-to-door salesman, the priest offers the man an offer he should not refuse. The super-deluxe machine the priest is offering will give the old man a guaranteed trip to the pearly gates. Or will it?

This short takes its clever premise and delivers in a sly, subversive way to poke fun at the church, as well as life and death. The CG animation has a warm, grainy, rustic feel, which is contrary to the bright, slick CG that’s typical of feature animation in the U.S. Director Samuel Tourneux wrote the script along with Karine Binaux and Olivier Gilvert, crafting a story with tight plotting and good timing. Even though a good part of the film takes place in the old man’s home as the priest pitches the old man, the film still retains the breakneck energy that the action sequences have. Take note to the pacing of the priest versus that of the old man and think about how it matches their personalities and motives perfectly. This black comedy doesn’t say anything new about its themes, but in the way it does it, it puts the themes into a new and poignant light.

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Every year the new animated shorts from the NFB are always a reason to celebrate. It is a rare year when a film from Canada’s National Film Board isn’t in the running for the Oscar. As their work has done time and time again, MADAME TUTLI-PUTLI continues the organization’s tradition of innovation. This stop-motion short is an astonishing visual treat. Filmmakers Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowsk had real human eyes combined with their detailed puppets, in a process created and painstakingly carried out by artist Jason Walker, creating an eerie and evocative style that is totally original and mind-boggling.

Madame Tutli-Putli, with all her Earthly possessions in tow, boards a night train where she encounters a host of strange individuals, including a menacing Chinese boy, two intense men playing chess in the overhead baggage bin, and a lecherous pro tennis player. During the trip, strange trench-coat-clad men enter the train and the young woman’s trip turns into a Hitchcockian nightmare.

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Life and art intersect and blend and overlap and intrude in on each other in Ingmar Bergman’s challenging masterpiece, PERSONA. This is film as art. Like all artforms, there are pieces that are more accessible than others. It takes a fuller grasp of the artform and sometimes the artist to understand the complete scope of their work. A novice, or even causal, reader doesn’t start with Proust, they will start with easier classics from the likes of Twain. The same can be said about film. CITIZEN KANE’s accepted place as “the best movie ever made” has as much to do with its accessibility as it does its innovation and quality. From its experimental opening to its elusive ending, this film is what it is on the surface and it’s much more at the same time.

Elisabet Vogler (Liv Ullmann, SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE) is a famed stage actor, who has stopped speaking. She has been profoundly struck by the fact that her entire life from her profession to her personal life is based on artifice. So in an effort to find some truth, she stops all verbal communication. A young nurse named Alma (Bibi Andersson, THE SEVENTH SEAL) is assigned to care for the actress. At first she wonders if she is too young to handle such a strong willed woman, but once the two women travel to a seaside vacation home together, they begin to draw closer. Elisabet continues to not speak, only listening to the increasingly frank confessions of Alma, who tells the older woman of a brief sexual encounter that was exhilarating, but resulted in a great deal of regret. Soon the silence becomes too much for Alma, who cannot handle the quiet judgment of Elisabet. The battle of wills will break down and blur their identities and cross the line between reality and fantasy.

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Set in the Echo Park section of Los Angeles, this touching coming of age story deals with the bridging of the sexual threshold. Centering on the quinceañera, or the coming out party for girls in the Latino community, the story honestly portrays the developing sexual curiosity that teens deal with. Though this film is set in a poorer section of the city, the directing/writing team of Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland break down assumptions about their characters, painting an original tale that does not wallow in gang or ghetto clichés.

Magdalena (Emily Rios, upcoming VICIOUS CIRCLE) is approaching her fifteenth birthday and what she really wants for her quinceanera is a Hummer limo. Her father Ernesto (Jesus Castanos), a storefront minister/ security guard, thinks the idea is blasphemous. They are not a wealthy family, so Magdalena has to wear an altered hand-me-down dress from her cousin. However, when Magdalena can’t fit in the dress only a few weeks after she was measured, her mother Maria (Araceli Guzman-Rico) suspects that her daughter is pregnant, which turns out to be true. Magdalena’s father is devastated, even more so when his daughter insists that she never slept with her boyfriend Herman (J.R. Cruz), who is supportive about the pregnancy, but is afraid to tell his mother about. Magdalena is kicked out her house and goes to live with her great-granduncle Tio Tomas Alvarez (Chalo Gonzalez, BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA), who has already taken in her ostracized cousin Carlos (Jesse Garcia, THE COMEBACKS). The three form their own family, living in the guesthouse of a gay couple named Gary (David W. Ross from the boy band Bad Boys Inc.) and James (Jason L. Wood, TV’s MARTHA BEHIND BARS).

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Mira Nair, the director of KAMA SUTRA, MONSOON WEDDING and 2004’s VANITY FAIR, forms Sooni Taraporevala’s adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel into an engaging and emotionally resonant film about Indian immigrants to the U.S. and the divide that is formed between them and their American children. Blessed with a first-rate cast, the story slowly builds, creating a complexity, which stings of life, which rarely goes where we have planned it to go, but often, where we came from influences where we end up, usually in unexpected ways.

As a young man, Ashoke Ganguli (Irfan Khan, A MIGHTY HEART) was content traveling via books. But after a near-fatal accident, he takes the chance for a new life in America. Later, he returns to India where he is arranged to marry Ashima (Tabu, I HAVE FOUND IT), who is quickly gripped by the loneliness of being a stranger living in a strange land. When she wants to move back to India, Ashoke reminds her of the opportunities lost to their children if they return to their homeland.

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With the underrated sports film, PERSONAL BEST, arriving on DVD for the first time last week, it seemed like a good time to look at other overlooked sports films. There are many best sports movie lists to be found online and most have HOOISERS, BULL DURHAM, FIELD OF DREAMS, HOOP DREAMS, RUDY, BRIAN’S SONG, JERRY MAGUIRE or RAGING BULL near the top. Three boxing films have won Oscars — ROCKY and MILLION DOLLAR BABY for best picture and WHEN WE WERE KINGS for best documentary. CHARIOTS OF FIRE, another sports movie, won the best picture Oscar as well. MURDERBALL, about hardcore wheelchair rugby players, was nominated a few years ago. All these films are very good to great films, but the five films in this week’s lineup deserve to be in their ranks. The closing film is actually my favorite sports movie.

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Taking inspiration from the infamous family feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys, Buster Keaton creates a hilarious Romeo & Juliet scenario filled with his brilliant character-based gags. With so many so called comedies throwing in slapstick for cheap laughs, it’s so refreshing to watch the work of Keaton who knew that falling down wasn’t the main component to making a gag funny. It’s the context.

In a moody dramatic prologue, the film sets up the blood feud that Keaton’s 21-year-old Willie McKay will find himself stuck in the middle of. Having been raised far away from his Appalachian homestead, he knows very little of the death wish out on him. After receiving notice that he has inherited his father’s estate, he hops on a train to visit his birthplace. On the trip, he meets and falls for the pretty Virginia, who turns out to be the daughter of the McKay’s archenemy Joseph Canfield (Joe Roberts, COPS). However, due to the code of Southern hospitality, Joseph and his sons Clayton (Ralph Bushman, WAY OUT WEST) and Lee (Craig Ward) are bound to give Willie respect as long as he is a guest in their home. Willie finds various ways to extend his stay.

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Okay, I’ll get it out of the way right from the start — this Oscar winner is not better than fellow nominees SAVING PRIVATE RYAN or even LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL. However, this should not taint how good the film really is. A greatly inspired romantic comedy that ranks up with many of the best of all time, SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE is filled with well-drafted characters and an abundance of witty dialogue. In recent years the romantic comedy has sunk to the bottom of the genre gene pool and this film provides hope that we are not de-evolving into a lesser organism.

Will Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes, ENEMY AT THE GATES) has lost his muse. Rose Theatre owner Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush, SHINE) is in such debt that lender Hugh Fennyman (Tom Wilkinson, IN THE BEDROOM) has the impresario’s feet put over hot coals. He demands a crowd-pleasing comedy from Shakespeare — one with a catchy title like “Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter.” And it has to have a bit with a dog in it — people love funny bits with dogs. Mr. Henslowe’s financial woes are not enough to stir the creative juices in the young playwright, however, the beautiful lady Viola De Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow, GREAT EXPECTATIONS), the daughter of a wealthy man who has virtually sold her to the financially strapped tobacco baron Lord Wessex (Colin Firth, BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY), is just the inspiration he is looking for. Uninterested in her fiancée, Viola poses as a boy named Thomas Kent so that she can audition for Shakespeare’s new play. The playwright is so taken by Kent’s honest performance that he demands “him” to return to the theater and star as Romeo.

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Seven years after launching his feature-directing career with THE TERMINATOR, James Cameron revisited the franchise he created, building on the visual effects landmark that he set in his preceding film THE ABYSS. With Arnold Schwarzenegger recast as the protector and not the killer of the future’s last hope, John Connor, the film contains a heart and message that the first film lacked. Few sequels are an improvement on the original; here is one of those rare cases.

John (Edward Furlong, PECKER) is now a tween living in foster care. His street smarts come from his mother — Sarah (Linda Hamilton, MR. DESTINY) — who after the events of the first film tries to convince the world of its impending destruction and is institutionalized for her efforts. The future robotic rulers send an upgraded assassin, the T-1000 (Robert Patrick, WALK THE LINE) to kill John. Making this new Terminator all the more scary is that it’s made of liquid metal that reforms around wounds. The future John reprograms the original Terminator (Schwarzenegger) to come back and protect his younger self. Along the way, John and the Terminator free Sarah, who sets out to end the mechanized threat by murdering Miles Dyson (Joe Morton, THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET), the creator of SkyNet, the computer system that eventually destroys mankind.

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