The Red Violin (1998, R)

This is a Canadian film originally entitled Le Violon Rouge.  This film begins with a brief scene as Samuel L. Jackson entering a Montreal auction house that is selling fine antique musical instruments.  After that, it moves to a series of vignettes around the several-century history of the famed (in the world of the film) Red Violin, separated by the auction house scene being retold from the point of view of different prospective buyers.  The framing sequence is in English and the other stories are spoken in (and subtitled from, when applicable) Italian, German, French, English and Mandarin depending on the setting of the stories.  This format could easily be boring, as I don't find the history of a musical instrument to be particularly entrancing, but each of the stories is quite different from the others and each is a quite good short story on its own.  They have character and they have heart.  It would take a sharper ear than mine to hear the differences between one violin and another when the same musician is playing the same musical piece, but the title instrument is said to be "the perfect acoustic machine", and some characters in the stories can tell this immediately.

Dog Day Afternoon (1975, R)

This film, based on a true story, is about a bank robbery gone FUBAR that turned into a hostage situation.  The whole film is from the point of view of the main robber, Sonny Wortzik, played by Al Pacino (The Devil's Advocate, Scent Of A Woman, Scarface).  The movie is not a comedy, but I definitely chuckled a few times early in the film as various things go wrong and various characters prove that they don't know what they're doing (Ocean's 11, they are not!).  Sonny is clearly a first-time bank robber, and when they arrive I wonder if the police on the scene are first-time cops.  The detective in charge is played by Charles Durning (Tootsie, The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas).

Kissed (1996 , R)

This film is not for everyone, let me just say that from the start.  It's about a girl played by Molly Parker (from several tv series such as Deadwood, Shattered, Dexter) who has a fascination/obsession with death.  She doesn't wear black (ever, I think) and she doesn't write mopey poetry, but she has this... "reverence" is probably the best word for it... for the dead.  It's somehow less creepy than it should be (a little less creepy) because she seems to have a genuine love for the departed rather than a morbid curiosity.  The movie starts with her as a child as she caresses a dead bird she found and rubs it on her neck before "enshrouding" it in toilet paper and planting it in a grave in the woods behind her house.  And it goes on from there.  She grows up and the film follows her obsession through each phase of her life.  Ultimately with her taking night classes in college and working full time in a funeral parlor (her dream job) during the day.  The childhood scenes seem to take place in the early 1960's and the young adulthood scenes in the '70's.