Margaret's Museum

A diamond in the rough, this award-winning Canadian film has the same quirky charm and vivid, colorful characters as Local Hero, but its impact is much more potent. Based on the short stories by Sheldon Currie, the film is at once a portrait of life in a Nova Scotia mining town in the 1940's, and a sweet love story about the offbeat courtship between Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) and Neil (Clive Russell), a towering, shaggy, bagpipe-playing man who has resolved to quit the mines. Kate Nelligan is magnificent as Margaret's hardened mother, who has already lost a husband and son to the pit, and is afraid her daughter is making the same mistakes she did. "I'm sure you'll be happy or miserable, as the case may be," she allows on the couple's wedding day. Highly recommended. (K. Lee Benson)