Psychological thriller? Sci-Fi Drama? Take your pick with Danish director Lars von Trier’s MELANCHOLIA, starring Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, and Charlotte Rampling.

It’s Justine and Michael’s wedding day, and the hitherto undiscovered planet Melancholia is hurtling towards Earth. Happy and sad come together like opposing particle beams. Through the disturbed, unpredictable behavior of the bride (Dunst), MELANCHOLIA develops a slow beat of anxiety and dread. Perhaps a catastrophic collusion with the planet might not be such a bad thing, after all.

Profoundly metaphysical, confident in its gorgeous spectacle of human nature, MELANCHOLIA is a hypnotic experience you will either embrace or deny. Unlike the case of the advancing planet, there’s no predicting. Our most requested movie this winter; Please come early to get a good seat.

Lars Von Trier’s MELANCHOLIA plays one show only, 7 p.m., Thursday, February 9, at the Empire Theatres Studio 10, 325 Prince Street, Sydney. Tickets $11, students $7. Our winter-spring season runs every Thursday through April 19. Buy a season pass to the remaining 12 films for $85.

Film series patrons gave LE HAVRE, 4.3 points out of 5.

Four Canadian Anglos and one New Yorker travel to the pure laine Quebec village of St. Isidore-du-Coeur-de-Jésus (pop. 2,000) for two weeks of intensive language training. What they’re really immersed in, though, is an over-the-top spoof of Canadian-Québécois culture wars.

Director Kevin Tierney, who produced the much loved BON COP BAD COP (Canada’s top grossing domestic box office hit ever), seems to be specializing in bilingual comedies. As with BON COP BAD COP, Serious Critics have dismissed the parody as outrageous, cartoon-like, and, of course, offensive.

Audiences love it, though, and so did the Globe and Mail critic who observed that this “farcical send-up of English-Canadian and Québécois customs… is fondly reminiscent of rollicking British comedies of the sixties. The film could be titled Carry On Up the St. Lawrence.”

FRENCH IMMERSION plays one show only, 7 p.m., Thursday, February 2, at the Empire Theatres Studio 10, 325 Prince Street, Sydney. Tickets $11, students $7. Our winter-spring season runs every Thursday through April 19. Buy a season pass to the remaining 12 films for $85.

If you’ve never heard of Finish writer-director Aki Kaurismäki, LE HAVRE is a great way to get to know him.

Voted by many European critics as the best film of 2011, LE HAVRE is a droll, deadpan comedy about what Europeans call the refugee problem (and North Americans call immigration). In the French port city that gives the movie its name, Marcel Marx, a middle-aged bohemian, shines shoes for a living and worries about his younger wife’s sudden illness.

When a stowaway African lad stumbles into Marcel’s path, with the police hot on his trail, the kindly shoe shiner must make some difficult choices. The result is a charming, and subtly suspenseful, political fairy tale.

Highly regarded in Europe, Kaurismäki is largely unknown in North America, thanks in part to his habit of boycotting US awards ceremonies in protest over that country’s various overseas offenses. It’s exactly the kind of movie your film series was created to bring you.

LE HAVRE plays one show only, 7 p.m., Thursday, January 26, at the Empire Theatres Studio 10, 325 Prince Street, Sydney. Tickets $11, students $7. Our winter-spring season runs every Thursday through April 19. Buy a season pass to all 13 films for $90.