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Our heroes are fourteen-year-old pals Flama and Moko, who’ve been left alone for a Sunday afternoon in their well-appointed high-rise apartment. They plan to spend their time playing a video game, pausing now and then to peruse their secret stash of forbidden magazines. Then things begin to happen: an “older” teenage girl who lives down the hall asks if she can borrow the use of their oven to bake brownies. A pizza delivery boy shows up just past the thirty-minute mark—at least, according to Flama and Moko—and refuses to leave without his money. And so on…

If it were merely a series of unrelated incidents, Duck Season might be just an amusing trifle, but first-time feature-film director Fernando Eimbcke and his cowriter Paula Markovitch manage to give us a rich portrait using very few brushstrokes. We can draw our own conclusions about the boys’ relationship to their parents, their loneliness and escape into the world of television and video games, the isolation of life in an apartment complex that offers luxury but no feeling of a neighborhood, and more.

Duck Season filters this perceptive look at modern-day adolescence through a layer of whimsy, with felicitous results. It’s well worth a look.

32. EAST IS EAST

(1999)

Directed by Damien O’Donnell

Screenplay by Ayub Khan-Din

Based on the play by Ayub Khan-Din

Actors:

OM PURI

LINDA BASSETT

JORDAN ROUTLEDGE

ARCHIE PANJABI

EMIL MARWA

CHRIS BISSON

JIMI MISTRY

RAJI JAMES

IAN ASPINALL

LESLEY NICOL

GARY DAMER

EMMA RYDAL

RUTH JONES

JOHN BARDON

Some storytelling themes are as universal as they are timeless. The idea of children wanting to live their own lives, causing their parents some degree of anguish in the process, can be found in everything from Romeo and Juliet to Fiddler on the Roof. It’s surefire dramatic fodder because it’s based on a real-life situation we all recognize.

In the British comedy-drama East is East, the leading character is a Pakistani immigrant now living in England who talks a good show but sends mixed signals to his children. He’s played by the wonderful Indian actor Om Puri, who’s one of the busiest, best-loved performers in his native country and a recognized actor of distinction around the world.

The year is 1971 and George Khan (Puri) expects his seven children to abide by his old-world Muslim customs and traditions, even though he left a wife behind in Pakistan twenty-five years ago to marry their mother, who helps him run a very British fish-and-chips shop. What’s more, they’ve all grown up in England and don’t feel the same bond that he does to the old country…to put it mildly.

The family is put to its ultimate test when the bombastic father sets up arranged marriages for two of his sons. He has no idea that one of the boys is in love with the blond girl next door, whose father has no use for immigrants of any kind.

George Khan is a blustery fellow and Puri paints him with broad strokes, but he always seems real, not a cardboard comic character. Even more important, we respect his relationship with his wife and believe their love for each another.

You’d never guess that this lively, entertaining film was based on a play; its movement through the neighborhood, in and out of various locations, seems absolutely natural. Ayub Khan-Din adapted his stage work for the screen without missing a beat, and Damien O’Donnell’s direction guarantees that there’s never a dull moment.

I don’t think you have to know anything about England in the ’70s to understand or appreciate this story. You could substitute almost any setting, any time period, and any ethnicity and it would still play. That the characters and incidents in East is East all seem so authentic makes it an especially fruitful variation on a time-tested idea.

33. EVERYTHING PUT TOGETHER

(2001)

Directed by Marc Forster

Screenplay by Catherine Lloyd Burns,

Adam Forgash, and Marc Forster

Actors:

RADHA MITCHELL

MEGAN MULLALLY

JUSTIN LOUIS

CATHERINE LLOYD BURNS

ALAN RUCK

MICHELE HICKS

MATT MALLOY

VINCE VIELUF

MARK BOONE JUNIOR

Every time I