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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.

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This is the week after Thanksgiving, not necessarily coincidentally we are reviewing a holiday movie: Home for the Holidays. This movie has an all star cast, featuring Holly Hunter, Claire Danes (briefly), Robert Downey Jr., Dylan McDermott and Ann Bancroft to name a few! Holly Hunter plays Claudia, a single Mom traveling without her daughter from Chicago (her home) to Baltimore (her childhood home) for Thanksgiving. We don't want to say too much more here because we don't want to give too many fun details away, but Claudia's family is not the perfect cookie cutter image family that her older sister, Joanne, played by Cynthia Stevenson, hopes it would be. As several publications have mentioned, this is a dysfunctional family for many reasons. Albeit very similar to what happens in most families especially during the Thanksgiving and/or the Christmas holidays.

If you enjoy watching other families dysfunction to take your mind off of your own family: watch Home for the Holidays. Although, it didn't do very well when it was released, it has now become somewhat of a cult-classic enjoyed by many for it's comedy, romance and drama all wrapped into one movie.

I had never seen it before and I started to watch it again, almost immediately after I watched it for the first time. Enjoy!

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Today we review "All of Me," a movie starring Steve Martin, Lily Tomlin and Victoria Tennant from 1984. This movie falls into the categories of Drama, Fantasy and Comedy. I think that I would agree with all of those choices.

Steve Martin plays Roger, a lawyer at a Law Firm where he is hoping to help represent a client that will showcase his talents and earn him a future partnership. Lily Tomlin plays Edwina, a lady who has been terminally ill for most of her life. As Edwina is nearing the end of her life she contacts the Law Firm that Roger works at hoping to settle her affairs before her death. Edwina has willed her entire estate to Terry Hoskins (Victoria Tennant), daughter of Fred Hoskins. Fred Hoskins works on Edwina's Estate taking care of the Horses.

Edwina soon dies and is cremated. Her ashes are expected to enter Terry's body, but during the process, Edwina's ashes, in a metal bowl accidently fall out of the window of her bedroom and hit Roger on the head. Edwina's soul enters the right half of Roger's body and Steve Martin's hilarious physical comedy ensue.

I will not say anything more as I highly recommend that you watch this movie to find out what happens. It is not only absurd and amusing, but Steve Martin's physical comedy is brilliant! Enjoy!

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So ... Why Part 2 for the episode? Because Jay can't tell the difference between the pause and the stop button on the recorder. He graduated with honors from college (completely untrue) and he can't figure out the difference between 'pause' and 'stop.'

We have more to say about the movie Weapons so please keep listening.

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Brace yourselves. Jay made Louisa watch a horror movie! Well, okay, it's not like it was forced, but it did take a bit more convincing than usual. We got through the movie and Louisa doesn't need therapy.

Weapons is Zach Cregger's sophomore endeavor (the first being Barbarian). Pretty impressive as he took a $38 million dollar budget and transformed it into $268 million, but we will discuss line producing and accounting another day.

With a cast that was rounded out by Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, and Amy Madigan, Weapons has been suto-marketed as a supernatural/psychological horror, but we think that it fits better in the thriller/psychological mystery section (but if Blockbuster were still in business, it would probably be in the horror section).

In short, 17 kids get up at 2:17 in the morning and run out of their homes to God knows where. 7 members of the community have converging perspectives on what happened to them. Oh, and a mysterious woman named Gladys who looks like she raided Cesar Romero's wardrobe when he played the Joker, keeps popping up and giving the audience the non-descript "ick."

This episode has a Part 2.

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We're back! Today we are reviewing the French animated movie "Ernest and Celestine." Now mind you, we did not watch the original French version of this movie, but "instead," Jay and I watched the dubbed over version in English. "Ernest and Celestine" is a delightful movie about the friendship of Ernest, a bear and Celestine, a mouse. Ernest and Celestine are an unlikely pair for several reasons, but mostly because of their meeting by chance ... Ernest lives above Celestine, in the bear world and Celestine lives underground in the mouse world.

There are many details to this Story, all of which eventually come together at the end of the movie. The two main characters find out that they need each other's help to live and survive together in this world where things are not always easy.

Even though, this is a movie made for kids to enjoy, there is a lot of commentary on various social and political topics.

That being said, I think that people of all ages would enjoy this beautifully animated film.

The American version includes many famous voice overs. You might recognize a few names ... Check it out on a snowy or rainy afternoon ...