Ronald Harwood
Description
One fateful night in a small English regional theatre during World War II, a troupe of touring actors stage a production of Shakespeare's "King Lear." Bombs are falling, sirens are wailing, the curtain is up in an hour but the actor/manager "Sir" who is playing Lear is nowhere to be seen. His dresser "Norman" must scramble to keep the production alive but will Sir turn up in time? And if he does, will he be able to perform that night?
2) Quartet
Description
The rumor circling the halls is that Beecham House (the home for retired musicians) is soon to play host to a new resident. Word is, it's a star. Reginald, Wilfred and Cecily are in for a special shock when the new arrival turns out to be none other than their former singing partner, Jean. Her subsequent career as a star soloist, and the ego that accompanied it, split up their long friendship and ended her marriage to Reggie, who takes the news of...
4) The pianist
Description
Based on the memoirs of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew, who was a brilliant pianist. He watched as his family was shipped off to Nazi labor camps. He managed to escape and lived for years in the ruins of Warsaw, hiding from the Nazis.
Description
The story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, French editor of Elle magazine, who suffered a stroke at the age of 43, paralyzing his entire body except his left eye. Using that eye to blink out his memoir, Bauby described the aspects of his interior world, from the psychological torment of being trapped inside his body to his imagined stories from lands he'd only visited in his mind.
7) Australia
Description
In northern Australia at the beginning of World War II, an English aristocrat inherits a cattle station the size of Maryland. When English cattle barons plot to take her land, she reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn stock-man to drive 2,000 head of cattle across hundreds of miles of the country's most unforgiving land, only to still face the bombing of Darwin, Australia, by the Japanese forces that had attacked Pearl Harbor only months earlier....
8) Oliver Twist
Description
A slightly darker version of the classic Charles Dickens tale. After living in poor conditions, Oliver runs away to the streets of London. There he meets a gang of pickpockets and soon Oliver's life is changed forever.