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Happy New Year! Welcome back to another wonderful episode of Critique-o-polis. Today, we review the French-Italian film "Cinema Paradiso." Let me just start off by saying, if you haven't seen or heard of this movie, (ever), watch the trailer and decide for yourself if you want to watch it. Just watching the trailer makes me cry. Also, there are three different versions of this movie, so you don't necessarily have to watch the almost 3 hour version, although, that is the one that we watched.

The central plot in Cinema Paradiso revolves around Salvatore, nicknamed Toto, and his friend and mentor Alfredo. When the movie opens, we see an adult Salvatore living his fancy adult life in Rome when he receives a phone call from his mother telling him that Alfredo has died.

While Salvatore is starting to think about Alfredo and how he helped to shape Salvatore's life, the movie goes back into the past and we meet a young Salvatore in his tiny hometown in Italy. Salvatore is a frequent attendee at the local Cinema, but his real dream is to learn how to be a movie projectionist. This he has to beg to learn from Alfredo, who gives in, in return for a favor that Toto did for Alfredo.

The movies' string and wind heavy score was written by Ennio Morricone and his son, Andrea. The Love Theme in this movie is beautiful. The whole score is beautiful. It really helps carry the movie along.

Jay has also included a new honey based recipe in this episode. Please enjoy. I think it is one that we will try soon! Again, Happy New Year and Happy Listening.

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Guess what? Jay finally remembered to include a honey based recipe. He felt so bad about not remembering to deliver a recipe the last several episodes that he put this one at the front of the episode. Try not to be too hard on him, he's getting rather elderly and forgetting things.

This week we watched the Japanese animated "Tokyo Godfathers." Although, this movie is set on Christmas Eve, you hardly remember "or know" that it is actually Christmas Eve.

The plotline centers around 3 main characters: Gin, Hana and Miyuki. All are voluntary homeless. Their personal choices in their past lives have led them to where they are now. One of the characters, for example, Gin, regales the story that his family died a long time ago and he has been left alone in the world without them and is overcome with loneliness. And then we find out later that the truth is much different and this is the arc for all of the characters. The story that they tell themselves are fictions they create and during the course of the story, they must reconcile with the truth.

There are many plot points in this movie: One being that these three friends are "given" the unexpected gift of a newborn baby that they are "asked" to take care of while trying to find the baby's birth parents. Another member of this makeshift family, Hana, is elated as she has always wanted to be a mother.

Tokyo Godfathers is the 2003 endeavor by renowned animator, screenwriter and manga artist, Satoshi Kon. At this point, this was Kon's most ambitious and expensive project tipping the scales at 300 million yen in production costs. Themes of homelessness and abandonment interweaved with comedy are it's core tenants.

The screenplay for this movie was written by Keiko Nobumoto. Kon's movie also marked the transition from celluloid animation to digital animation.

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We watched the 2011 French Film, the Intouchables, but before we get into that, Jay goes on an absolute, untethered tirade about a run in with a person at market who tried to steal a parking spot from a vendor. You should listen just for that. Jay becomes completely unglued. P.S. He forgot the recipe again (turn in next week, he finally remembered).

The Intouchables is a French buddy comedy drama that explores a transformative relationship from two men from two different socioeconomic backgrounds. Phillippe, a quadriplegic billionaire who struggles with everyday tasks and Driss, a poor immigrant from the wrong side of the tracks who stumbles into the role of Phillippe's caretaker.

What starts off as a contentious relationship soon morphs into a symbiosis that neither man expected, but both men needed. It didn't make me want to be quadriplegic, but it did make me want to be rich.