A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence is a philosophical comedy, Monty Python meets Kierkegaard, with the title of Damien Hirst's famous sharkwork, "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living," thrown in for good keeping.

Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth, the famed memoir of the author's time as a nurse during World War I, is now a major motion picture perfectly poised for summer. Leave it to David Heyman, the producer of the Harry Potter films, to put this book on screen.

What does an angst-ridden comedienne tackling abortion onstage and in her personal life, a closeted heir to a vast fortune with a yen for Olympic-bound wrestlers, and a concierge bedding septuagenarians have in common? They are all characters in films selected by the curators of the Museum of Modern Art.