Life is Beautiful  (1997)

I put off watching this for ages, just because an Italian film about the holocaust doesn’t sound like a pleasant way to spend an evening.  So I was totally surprised by it.  For one thing, I was cracking up throughout the whole first half of the movie.  The film is incredibly well done.  The humour sort of stays the same, but once the holocaust stuff kicks in it’s in a totally different light.  Benigni totally deserved the Oscar for this.