Just in time for New Year’s, This Weekend’s Film Festival provides an eclectic lineup of New Year’s Eve set films. Each of the five films feature New Year’s at a key moment and a few capture the essence of New Year’s as well. New starts and redemption. Tragedy and survival. Families and betrayal. To celebrate the New Year, TWFF gives you drama and good cheer. So, crack open the champagne and cozy up by the TV, This Weekend’s Film Festival provides the entertainment.

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The only sequel to follow its Oscar-winning original into an Oscar win, Francis Ford Coppola’s THE GODFATHER: PART II continues the tale of moral decline of the once promising Michael Corleone, as well as the rise of his father Vito. Dark irony casts a shadow from the father’s tale to the son’s. The more Michael attempts to take the Corleone family into legit business, the more he slips further into the seedy underworld where he came. The really question is how far will he sink?

The film begins with an origin story of Vito (as an adult played by Robert DeNiro, HEAT) in Sicily. We see how violence touched his life at an early age and how it has had a hold on him his entire life. He escapes Italy for America, where he starts a family, working as a shop hand. When his kind boss must fire him due to the extortion of the neighborhood’s gangster, he questions the ruthless control Don Fanucci (Gastone Moschin, THE CONFORMIST) has on their fellow Italians. Instead of ruling over them, he feels a Don should protect them.

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DOUBT never spells anything out for the audience, which is perfect for a film about doubt. John Patrick Shanley adapts his own play for the screen in an examination of how blind faith and certainty can be a dangerous force. How can someone be certain when there is a lack of facts? This idea doesn’t just relate to religion, which is the foundation for the story, but to life in general. When facts are missing, what other agenda is filling in those gaps?

In 1964, Father Brendan Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman, CAPOTE) comes to a new parish where he brings new ideas. He wants to make the church friendlier. His reform ideas come in strict conflict with Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep, SOPHIE’S CHOICE), who thinks fear will keep the students at their school in line. The new nun Sister James (Amy Adams, JUNEBUG) is caught in the middle between the two opposing forces. When she sees something that doesn’t seem right between Father Flynn and the school’s only black student Donald Miller (Joseph Foster, TWELVE AND HOLDING), she goes to Sister Aloysius, whom is certain Flynn is guilty of nefarious acts. In trying to uncover proof, Sister Aloysius meets with Donald’s mother (Viola Davis, FAR FROM HEAVEN), which only clouds the issue even more — for the viewer not for Sister Aloysius.

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GHOST TOWN presents a very well worn premise — a living human is tormented by ghosts looking to make amends for unfinished business in their lives. This isn’t even the first time the premise was done this year (OVER MY DEAD BODY came earlier in the year). But few are written and directed by David Koepp, writer of SPIDER-MAN, CARLITO’S WAY and JURASSIC PARK. They also don’t have the comic talents of Ricky Gervais, BBC’s THE OFFICE and EXTRAS.

Gervais plays dentist Bertram Pincus, a man who doesn’t even like being around other people. As a dentist he can just shove cotton balls in their mouths. During a routine colonoscopy, he died for a few minutes, and ever since, he sees dead people. The recently departed Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear, AS GOOD AS IT GETS) in particular won’t let Dr. Pincus alone. He wants Pincus to help him break up the relationship of his former wife Gwen (Tea Leoni, SPANGLISH) and her civil rights lawyer finance Richard (Billy Campbell, TV’s THE 4400). It seems unlikely that the impersonal Pincus could woo Gwen away from Mr. Right, but when he stops being a jerk, he can be quite charming. But as we learn right from the start, Gwen has a thing for jerks; Frank was cheating on her.

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I went into this movie having not seen the stage production. Following the ordeal of watching it, I have no desire to see the stage production. They should put a “For Abba Fans Only” warning label on this stuff. But even Abba fans should be disappointed with this film treatment, because the Hollywood stars’ voices just don’t cut it. I can understand making a musical as an excuse to string a certain band’s songs together, but you’d think fans would have wanted them sung well.

The sitcom plot goes like this — Donna Sheridan (Meryl Streep, DOUBT) got pregnant 20 years ago and the problem is she doesn’t know which of the three men she was with at the time is her daughter’s father. So as a wedding surprise, her daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried, TV’s BIG LOVE) steals her mother’s diary and invites the three men to her wedding. Sam Carmichael (Pierce Brosnan, GOLDENEYE) is Donna’s true love who ran off to marry someone else. Harry Bright (Colin Firth, BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY) was the punk rocker turned conservative lover, while Bill Anderson (Stellan Skarsgard, GOOD WILL HUNTING) is her adventurous writer lover. When Donna discovers the three men in her goat barn, she is mortified that Sophie might discover them. On her wedding day even.

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Memory is a funny thing. We remember bits and pieces of things. Influential people’s faces, but not their names. Memories that seem so real to us that never really happened. Memories forgotten because they are too painful to bear. Director Ari Folman addresses his own tricks of memory in his new animated documentary WALTZ WITH BASHIR. Folman has discovered that he has no memories of his service in the Israeli army when it occupied Lebanon. So he sets out to interview those that may have served with him to reawaken his memory.

One night at a bar, Folman’s friend Boaz Rein Buskila confesses that he has been plagued with a dream of dogs chasing him. The angry dogs stem back to actions he took during the war. Folman now realizes that his only memory of his service is floating naked in the ocean as bombs rain down on the Sabra and Shatila zones, where the massacre of Palestinians took place. Folman visits his friend Ori Sivan, a shrink, who tells him to seek out those he served with to help remember. In his ocean memory, Folman is with his longtime friend Carmi Cnaa’n, whom now lives in Holland. He is very reluctant to talk about anything that happened during the war.

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This epic tale is unlike director David Fincher’s previous work on SE7EN, FIGHT CLUB, and ZODIAC. The film feels far more like the previous work of its screenwriter Eric Roth, whom penned FORREST GUMP. Inspired by a F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, Roth’s take on the story of a man who ages backwards is less comically absurd than Fitzgerald’s work. In the film, Benjamin Button floats upon the winds of life as an outcast, trying to make sense of his predicament like we all do.

Benjamin Button was born the size of any baby, but wrinkled and crippled like a man “well into his 80s.” Upon seeing his freakish offspring, Thomas Button (Jason Flemyng, SNATCH), the owner of the famed Button Buttons company, snatches up his son and runs into the streets. He deposits the baby on the steps of an old folks home, run by the caring black woman Queenie (Taraji P. Henson, HUSTLE & FLOW). When he meets the love of his life, Daisy (Elle Fanning, BABEL), when she is seven, he looks quiet old with his 70-year-old appearance and cane. When Benjamin turns 17 (looking in his 50s), he tries to find his own way in the world and joins the tugboat crew of Capt. Mike (Jared Harris, HAPPINESS), heading out to see the world, and leaving behind a heartbroken Daisy (Cate Blanchett, THE AVIATOR), who will become a famed dancer.

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If Joel and Ethan aren’t making dark crime thrillers, they’re making dark comedies. With the release of their spy spoof, BURN AFTER READING, on DVD, This Weekend’s Film Festival takes a look at their comedies. This lineup of laughers isn’t what one might expect. There’s a trilogy. A short. A Cannes-winning Hollywood satire. A dark screwball romance. And a film based on Homer’s THE ODYSSEY.

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Using the structure of Homer’s THE ODYSSEY, Joel and Ethan Coen conjure a road movie that’s part comedy, part musical and part fantastic fable. The title is a reference to the serious drama that the comedy director in Preston Sturges’ SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS is desperate to make. But in the Coens’ O BROTHER the only thing serious is its “source” material. In combining all these elements, the Coen Brothers craft a funny and truly original film. How many movies have wonderful bluegrass music, the Klu Klux Klan, a cyclops, Tommy “sounds like Robert” Johnson, Baptist Lotus-eaters, Baby Face Nelson, beautiful sirens and George Clooney?

Clooney plays Everett, the de facto leader an outfit of three escaped convicts. Pete (John Turturro, DO THE RIGHT THING) and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson, THE GOOD GIRL) are his dimwitted associates, who at one point find salvation with a band of ethereal Baptists. Everett believes them fools. His only desire is to locate some buried treasure and win back his estranged wife Penny (Holly Hunter, RAISING ARIZONA), who is set to marry another man. During their adventure, they will run into a peculiar cast of shady, nefarious and/or fascinating characters.

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After his overly ambitious, flawed experiment, THE FOUNTAIN, director Darren Aronofsky for THE WRESTLER dials back down to an indie scope where he shined in his debut film PI. Like the world of drug addicts in REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, Aronofsky creates the world of AAA-level local pro-wrestling with sadness and accuracy. When the screenplay plays too close to the well-worn script for underdog tales, Aronofsky just tags his teammates Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei and they deliver a smack down performance that wins the match.

Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Rourke, SIN CITY) was once on the top of the wrestling game, playing big matches in Madison Square Garden. Now he’s performing gymnasiums for peanuts. His body is broken down. He lives in a trailer park and is behind on the rent. He works a day job at a grocery store. His college-aged daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood, ACROSS THE UNIVERSE) hates him for choosing a rock ‘n roll lifestyle over her. He confuses the attention of an aging stripper named Cassidy (Tomei, BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD) as real affection. Then after one particularly brutal match, Randy must confront the reality that he might be able to wrestle forever.

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