1998

Running time: N/A

Maverick film and sound editor Walter Murch joins us for a special screening of the classic film The Conversation. In the midst of our current infatuation with information, particularly telecommunications, how often do you wonder who may be listening in on your cell phone conversation or furtively slitting open that cyber envelope of your latest e-mail? Released more than 23 years ago, Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation is, nonetheless, as eerily contemporary as www.privacynomore.com.

Running time: N/A

Everyone hated this baseball legend. And he loved it'' the tag line for Cobb's release and most appropriate. Ty Cobb was certainly not a favorite and was, by many accounts, a mean-tempered, vicious, drunken, wife-beating, racist SOB who was impossible to spend any length of time with, and the movie Cobb faithfully represents those qualities, especially the last one. But don't let that scare you away. Ron Shelton's Cobb is one of the most original sports biopics. Why? Because it tells the truth, and you most likely will have trouble finding a better performance by Tommy Lee Jones.

Running time: N/A

Diego Musiak's second feature film is a delightful mix of travelogue, romance, and comedy, and when you watch it, you'll learn something. An Argentinean production filmed in Cuba, Clandestine Stories in Havana is a series of inter-related stories, beginning with Laura's. She's just arrived in Havana from Argentina, newly separated from her husband, and unsure about her future in both work and love. Also unsure about his love life is Frank, the taxi driver Laura meets. His wife has left him, he lives with his mother, and he's in no mood for love.

Running time: N/A

Solveig has a dream. She wants her tiny church choir to one day perform Bach's Christmas Oratorio. Not only is Solveig the one true singer in the choir,but also she is the one true light of her husband's and son's lives. Tragically, her light is snuffed too soon, leaving her dream unfulfilled and her husband and son to search for the light elsewhere. Eventually Solveig's husband, Aron, falls in love with a woman he has met only through the mail. The longing for the light he once knew with Solveig slowly tears him away from reality.

Running time: N/A

Here is one of those boy-meets-boy, boy-loses-boy, boyfriend-gets gay-bashed, boy-finds-love-and-his-true-self stories I want to see on TV, but my cable operator doesn't offer QTV... Suffice to say that Defying Gravity is not your typical love story... it's better. Poor Griff, studly frat boy that everyone wants to be friends with, he's ''the ultimate boy next door,'' and has a great friend with his fraternity brother Todd. Griff also has a big secret: Pete. Griff and Pete get together for trysts now and again, but until he is given an ultimatum by Pete, Griff tries to pretend he's straight.

Running time: N/A

Blue Heaven exists on the border between the city and the country, between urban sprawl and rural purity, and three generations of women struggle to maintain some balance in their lives on that edge. Czech director Eva Borusovicova's first feature is a poetic film, a tragicomedy about a mother, daughter, and grandmother forced by circumstance and tenuous relationships into living and coping together. Out of a sincere effort to help one another, they struggle to understand and accept each other's failings. Unfortunately, they're not always able to.

Running time: N/A

Drifting, alone but for the memories of youth, the eminent Greek poet C.P. Cavafy lies ill in a hospital bed in Alexandria. But his memories are revived through the words of the young biographer who has come to read his writings to Cavafy, seeking the poet's accord before publishing. Alexandria, his childhood, the poet's relationship with his mother, the life of ease until the Arab uprising, and their flight to Constantinople all are part of Cavafy's life. But it is the city night life and its pervading eroticism etched in his memory, and his sexual preference begins to blossom.

Running time: N/A

Here's your chance to finally catch the rarely seen director's cut of a certifiable cult classic, called by American Cinematheque ''...completely repulsive and fascinating at the same time.'' Bloodsucking Freaks is the story of Dr. Sardu and his Theatre of the Macabre. On the surface an impresario and master of ceremonies with a sick sense of humor and a compulsive need to shock and offend, Dr. Sardu turns out to be a much more sinister and dangerous sort. In his basement he is hiding a prison of horrors where beautiful young women are tortured and mutilated.

Running time: N/A

As we all know from reading ''tell-all'' biographies of American politicians, sex and politics are a natural mix and have been, from the earliest days of the Republic. But rarely has the liaison of a well-known politician and an ''exotic'' dancer been so public as that of former Governor Earl Long of Louisiana and the well-known stripper of her day, Belle Starr. Ron Shelton's Blaze shows Long and Starr's earthy and hilarious goings-on in the full light of day, all of which is well covered by the tabloid press.

Running time: N/A

Remember those times when you felt hurt and betrayed by those things which made you who you are. Visualize that pit of despair that rumbled in your gut and angered you to the point of total hate. Now take that feeling and intensify it by a million as your liberties and freedoms are taken away because you are deemed an outcast by the place you call home, the people you call brothers. Then and only then can you attempt to understand the misery and abandonment of the 100th Infantry Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team.