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Jonathan Demme channels the style of the late Robert Altman and crafts one of the best films of his career. THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS director has also crafted one of the premiere films of 2008. This bittersweet tale, written by Jenny Lumet (daughter of famed director Sidney Lumet) creates one of the most honest and rich wedding films ever. Those blessed events are ripe for filmmakers to use as a means of bringing families together and exploring conflicts. This film understands family dynamics with an acute attention to personality clashes and how those affect all the people around them.

Kym (Anne Hathaway, GET SMART) is leaving rehab to attend her sister’s wedding. Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt, TV’s MAD MEN) has a loving, but combative relationship with her troubled sister. Kym has issues with everyone judging her, especially when it comes to the doting of her father Paul (Bill Irwin, POPEYE). He is divorced from their mother Abby (Debra Winger, AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN), who resigned herself to take a hands-off role in the wedding, allowing Paul and his new wife Carol (Anna Deavere Smith, PHILADELPHIA) to do much of the work. Many of Rachel’s family are meeting her fiancée Sidney (Tunde Adebimpe, member of the band TV on the Radio) for the first time. Paul trusts Kym so little that he makes her ride a bike to her AA meeting where she meets Kieran (Mather Zickel, TV’s RENO 911!), whom happens to be Sidney’s best man.

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Eleven years after making one of the best children’s films of all time, BABE, Chris Noonan crafted the true-life tale of one of the best children’s authors of all time, Beatrix Potter. Similar in tone and subject matter as the PETER PAN author J.M. Barrie biopic, FINDING NEVERLAND, MISS POTTER has a sweet love story at its core and the right touch of whimsy throughout.

Beatrix Potter (Renee Zellweger, COLD MOUNTAIN) was a never-married thirty-something living with her parents when she first published “The Tale of Peter Rabbit.” Her publishers, run by the Warne family, were not accustomed to children’s books, and assigned the title to the youngest son Norman (Ewan McGregor, EMMA), who had never worked on a book before. Working together, the newbie writer and inexperienced publisher set out to make the book colorful and inexpensive so children could afford it. After the success of the first book, they continued with other animal filled adventures, striking up a close relationship in the process. Taken by Beatrix’s work, Norman’s sister Millie (Emily Watson, BREAKING THE WAVES), a follow never-married, becomes fast friends with the writer and illustrator. Despite, her fame and eventual fortune, Beatrix struggles with the conservative attitudes of her mother Helen (Barbara Flynn, TV’s ELIZABETH I).

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