BEAUTIFUL GIRLS (COMEDY-DRAMA/ROMANCE) Directed by Ted Demme
Starring: Timothy Hutton, Matt Dillon, Uma Thurman, Natalie Portman, Lauren Holly, Mira Sorvino, Noah Emmerich, Max Perlich, Michael Rapaport, Annabeth Gish, Martha Plimpton, Rosie O'Donnell, Anne Bobby
Rated R for strong language and nude pin-ups.
112 minutes
4/4
Even though it's a low-key movie all about relationships, Ted Demme's BEAUTIFUL GIRLS is more a guy's movie than a lady's movie, but that's not to say that the ladies won't like it as well.
Willie Conway (Timothy Hutton) is at a crossroads when he returns home for a high school reunion. The only one of his group of friends to make it out of their small, snowy town of Knights Ridge, Massachusetts, Willie is struggling to make it as a musician, but approaching age 30, is contemplating marriage to his long-term girlfriend and a more steady job. His friend Tommy Rowland (Matt Dillon), who was the high school football star and now drives a snowplow, feels regret for not fulfilling his potential, and despite having a devoted girlfriend, is having an affair with his now-married high school flame. Others in their group of friends are dealing with their own inability to settle into adulthood and appreciate their relationships, while Willie starts developing a highly questionable interest with the 13-year old neighbor girl, Marty (Natalie Portman in an early role), and the local bartender's visiting cousin Andera (Uma Thurman) starts turning every man's head.
It's a soft-spoken, warmhearted, feel-good movie with lots of humor, and has a strong appreciation for the power of human affection.
Directed by Yimou Zhang
Starring: Andy Lau, Ziyi Zhang, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Dandan Song
Rated PG-13 for sequences of stylized martial arts violence, and some sexuality.
119 minutes
3/4
It's a bit on the corny side, but HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS makes up for it in visual splendor, thrilling and inventive action scenes and a romantic simplicity.
A wuxia film (translated as "martial hero", a Chinese genre featuring hyper-stylized, poetic action, i.e. CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON), HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS is more a love story than anything else. Set in medieval China, Jin, a police captain (Takeshi Kaneshiro) is tasked with bringing down a Robin Hood-esque rebel organization called the Flying Daggers. When a blind dancer named Mei (Ziyi Zhang) is arrested and believed to be connected to the Flying Daggers, Jin poses as an unaffiliated warrior and breaks her out of prison, promising to escort her to the Flying Daggers' base and allowing him to infiltrate the rebel community. But naturally, they start to fall for one another on the trip, while various warring factions attack them from both sides.
Inspired by an ancient Chinese poem (which is presented as a song in the film), it's a lush, violent story that may be a bit hamfisted in its emotions, but it's an engrossing experience.
Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche
Starring: Adele Exarchopoulos, Lea Seydoux, Salim Kechiouche, Aurelien Recoing, Catherine Salee, Benjamin Siksou, Mona Walravens, Alma Jodorowsky, Jeremie Laheurte
Rated NC-17 for explicit sexual content.
179 minutes
3.5/4
People who read this probably won't see BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR, but I'd like you know that's it's a really good movie anyway, and a notable movie romance.
The winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, awarded by a jury headed by Steven Spielberg, BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR or La Vie D'Adele - Chapitres 1 & 2 (translated as "The Life of Adele - Chapters 1 & 2") is a three-hour French romantic drama with a lot of eating and some very lengthy, extremely graphic lesbian sex scenes (okay, some of you might watch the movie now). Adele (Adele Exarchopoulos) is a young high school student, surrounded by a teen girl culture obsessed with boys, but such relationships don't seem to work for her. But then she meets an outgoing art student named Emma (Lea Seydoux), who opens her eyes to a whole other way of life, and they experience a long-term relationship as Adele blossoms into a woman.
It's an intimate epic about love found and lost, finding your identity, even as an outsider, and the dichotomy between French class, culture and politics. Just know what you're getting into before you watch it on a first (or twentieth) date.
Directed by Delbert Mann
Starring: Ernest Borgnine, Betsy Blair, Esther Minciotti, Augusta Ciolli, Joe Mantell, Karen Steele, Jerry Paris, Frank Sutton
Not Rated (PG-level; some mild thematic elements including suggestive content).
90 minutes
3/4
The Academy Award-winner for Best Picture from 1955 and winner of the Palme d'Or at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival, one of only two films in history to win both highly prestigious awards, MARTY is heavily celebrated and respected movie that is nonetheless mostly forgotten by the general public. A feel-good romance for the lonely-hearted, the Academy Award-winning screenplay is the story of Marty Piletti (Ernest Borgnine, in an Academy Award-winning performance), a friendly, Italian-American butcher who lives with his widowed mother in The Bronx. Hurt too many times in the game of love, past his prime and not particularly attractive, Marty has resigned himself to being a bachelor, but one night, after being pressured into going out to a dance, he meets Clara (Betsy Blair), a plain-looking schoolteacher abandoned by her callous blind date. Together they spend the evening, finding in one another a kindred spirit, but having finally found what just might be real love, Marty finds opposition on all sides, from his misogynistic friends and his mother, who worries about being left alone once he marries.
It's a simple and sweet story, with plenty of cultural flavor.
Directed by Woody Allen
Starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Carol Kane, Paul Simon, Janet Margolin, Shelley Duvall, Christopher Walken, Colleen Dewhurst, Jonathan Munk
Rated PG for unspecified reasons (PG-13-level; mature thematic elements involving sexual content, and some drug use).
93 minutes
3.5/4
ANNIE HALL isn't a typical romance movie. It's more of a cinematic essay on romantic relationships, sex and gender dynamics, mixing in elements of political and cultural identity, told with a fast-paced, unconventional, self-aware narrative style.
Arguably Woody Allen's best movie, and the movie that, perhaps unjustly, stole the Academy Award for Best Picture away from STAR WARS (ANNIE HALL is great, but come on, it's STAR WARS!), it's about Alvy Singer (Allen), a highly neurotic New York comedian, as he looks back on his relationship with the WASP-y Annie Hall (Diane Keaton), how it started, where it went and how it ended.
Funnily enough, even in the shadow of STAR WARS, ANNIE HALL is a cultural touchstone in its own right, laying the foundation for many screen romances to follow, like WHEN HARRY MET SALLY... and ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND. It's funny, wry, intellectual and endlessly discussable.
THE APARTMENT (COMEDY-DRAMA/ROMANCE) Directed by Billy Wilder
Starring: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Jack Kruschen, Ray Walston, David Lewis, Hope Holiday, Joan Shawlee, Naomi Stevens, Johnny Seven, Joyce Jameson
Not Rated (PG-13-level; mature thematic elements, some suggestive material and smoking).
125 minutes
4/4
THE APARTMENT is one of those movies that's almost too perfect. Okay, actually, it's not "perfect"; it's a bit dated and misogynistic, but it's such a feel good rush that it might as well be perfect.
Writer/director Billy Wilder's Academy Award-winner for Best Picture, which also won him his second Academy Award for Best Director and his third for Best Screenplay, THE APARTMENT blends Wilder's trademark cynical wit with real, heartfelt emotion and sympathy. Jack Lemmon (reuniting with Wilder after SOME LIKE IT HOT) stars as C.C. "Bud" Baxter, an lonesome cog in the vast machinery that is the insurance company he works for, but he's slowly working his way up the ranks in an unconventional way. Baxter loans his apartment out to his office superiors as a love nest, for their individual romantic trysts, and when news of the arrangements makes its way up to the big boss, Mr. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), he wants in too, and Baxter finally gets the big promotion he's been waiting for. But it turns out that Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), the elevator girl and object of Baxter's affections, is Sheldrake's secret paramour.
It's an emotional roller coaster from old Hollywood; funny, sad, smart and sweet. It came out near the end of "Old Hollywood" in 1960, and represents an emerging presence of sexuality and other adult themes in movies, but it has the glorious feel of a classic Hollywood romance that people associate with the Golden Age.
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