Sentimental Chirping by MATTHEW HAYS For filmgoers, sentimentality is in the eye of the beholder. What some see as over-the-top tearmongering on the part of directors, screenwriters and actors, others see as simply heartfelt storytelling. I would be shocked, however, if there were any debate whatsoever regarding The Legend of 1900, the latest film from Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore (opens this Friday, Jan. 14). Though his Oscar-winning Cinema Paradiso was also ludicrously overblown with bathos, there was something more palatable about the director's style when it came with subtitles. Now he's made his first English-language film, and one can feel the director's overbearing hands reaching out from the screen and attempting to tug on the audience's collective heart. The fictional story involves an orphan who was abandoned on an Atlantic cruise liner at the turn of the century. When one of the ship's crew finds him, he decides to keep him on board and bring him up in the ship's boiler room (one of the film's many believable plot twists). But after the adoptive father dies in a freak accident (hit in the head with a crane--apparently a common ailment on cruise liners), the boy is left to fend for himself. The young man soon finds he can stay on the ship by playing the piano, after proving himself a genius on the instrument and wowing the captain. There is the remotest sense of a potentially okay film here, but Tornatore--who seems to feel cinematic histrionics can make up for real character development--spends so much time trying to make us weep in every sequence, he spoils the entire film. Perhaps the only redeeming qualities here are the art direction and cinematography. The Legend of 1900 is a beautiful film--too bad it's so damn empty. Not quite so sentimental is the latest from Barry Levinson, Liberty Heights (also opening Jan. 14). The film profiles a Jewish family in Baltimore during the '50s, as the brothers deal with racial integration in school (black students are introduced to their classes) and anti-Semitism from some of the white kids. Levinson is a more talented director than Tornatore, for sure, and certainly more restrained, but there are still far too many simplistic, sentimental sequences here. Do we really need any more well-meaning, we-are-the-world looks back at integration? These scenes seem like guilt relief for white audiences more than anything else. In entirely unrelated cinematic news, Let It Come Down, a doc profile of the late writer Paul Bowles, opens at the Ex-Centris this Friday (Jan. 14). Fans of the novelist won't want to miss the film, which features an in-depth conversation about the man's life and work. See repertory listings for showtimes. Also arriving on the rep circuit is Spike and Mike's 1999 Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation. Indeed, this anthology of films, which opens at the Parc, live up to the title. I wasn't entirely sold on these films but if you're into endless jokes about private parts (shocking!) and bowel movements (such political incorrectness!) then this collection is for you. : COMMENTS: matt_hays@babylon.montreal.qc.ca