Amelie

Nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Original Screenplay, this magical comedy earned overwhelming acclaim nationwide! A painfully shy waitress working at a tiny Paris cafe, Amélie makes a surprising discovery and sees her life drastically changed for the better! From then on, Amélie dedicates herself to helping others find happiness ... in the most delightfully unexpected way! But will she have the courage to do for herself what she has done for others?

Perhaps the most charming movie of all time, Amélie is certainly one of the top 10. The title character (the bashful and impish Audrey Tautou) is a single waitress who decides to help other lonely people fix their lives. Her widowed father yearns to travel but won't, so to inspire the old man she sends his garden gnome on a tour of the world; with whispered gossip, she brings together two cranky regulars at her café; she reverses the doorknobs and reprograms the speed dial of a grocer who's mean to his assistant. Gradually she realizes her own life needs fixing, and a chance meeting leads to her most elaborate stratagem of all. This is a deeply wonderful movie, an illuminating mix of magic and pragmatism. Fans of the director's previous films (Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children) will not be disappointed; newcomers will be delighted. --Bret Fetzer