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A Walk on the Moon (1999)
It was the summer of Woodstock... when she became the woman she always wanted to be.
Filmmaker(s): Tony Goldwyn

The world of a young housewife is turned upside down when she has an affair with a free-spirited blouse salesman.

Nixon Wins is a huge failure as a movie, but an interesting one in a way. At least for someone my age who lived through the period appropriated here. Here’s the basic challenge in showing a love story: how do you cinematically show the pulls on...


Published December 25, 2022
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A Very Long Engagement (2004)
Never let go.
Filmmaker(s): Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Young Frenchwoman Mathilde searches for the truth about her missing fiancé, lost during World War I, and learns many unexpected things along the way. The love of her life is gone. But she refuses to believe he's gone forever — and she needs to know for sure.

Gluttony of the hardest things in the world is to stop when you know you should, but the attraction, the romance of your obsession pulls you deeper and deeper into the thing. It happens with big things like love and little things like this film. It...


Published December 25, 2022
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A Girl in Black (1956)
Filmmaker(s): Mihalis Kakogiannis

Against the backdrop of a cloudless summer, love's unforeseen complications will entwine an Athenian writer, a morosely beautiful daughter, and a scorned local suitor. And then, calamity strikes. Can love redeem the sad girl in black?

Do Greek Villagers Deserve Ice Cream? small drama, lots of contrasts. Cruel jokes, innocent deaths. The story told by the filmmaker of the writer; the implied story told by the writer, and the stories confabulated by the villagers and imposed on their peers. These three...


Published December 24, 2022
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A Free Soul (1931)
She wasn't a divorcee but she believed that strangers could kiss!
Filmmaker(s): Clarence Brown

An alcoholic lawyer who successfully defended a notorious gambler on a murder charge objects when his free-spirited daughter becomes romantically involved with him.

The Big Speech movies are theatrical in the sense that all their values and methods are derived from stage values. This is one. Some movies are in that sweet spot after talkies got going and before the code was enforced, so they have a vitality that...


Published December 24, 2022
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A Cinderella Story (2004)
Once upon a time... can happen any time.
Filmmaker(s): Mark Rosman

Routinely exploited by her wicked stepmother, the downtrodden Samantha Montgomery is excited about the prospect of meeting her Internet beau at the school's Halloween dance.

Variations this is a simple syrupy tale, childish and cliched with actors of ordinary skill and charm. But I liked it. The oddest thing is that though Disney cannot make decent cartoons any more, they sure have the old fashioned sentimental tale down, stuff from the...


Published December 24, 2022
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Her (2013)
A Spike Jonze love story.
Filmmaker(s): Spike Jonze

In the not so distant future, Theodore, a lonely writer, purchases a newly developed operating system designed to meet the user's every need. To Theodore's surprise, a romantic relationship develops between him and his operating system. This unconventional love story blends science fiction and romance in a sweet tale that explores the nature of love and the ways that technology isolates and connects us all.

<strong>Wild Things recipe for a whole narrative is to create a world, a character and a situation, each affecting the others while containing them. It is a hard, hard thing to do cinematically, but look at what has been done here. The world is conveyed...


Published December 24, 2022
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From Here to Eternity (1953)
The boldest book of our time… honestly, fearlessly on the screen!
Filmmaker(s): Fred Zinnemann

In 1941 Hawaii, a private is cruelly punished for not boxing on his unit's team, while his captain's wife and second in command are falling in love.

The Rule of Threes own estimation is that this is a pretty poor movie cinematically, with the exeption of the then-shocking juicy exuberance of the beach scene. But it is crackling good storytelling and that overcomes the wooden direction and uninspired acting. I’m a believer in the...


Published December 24, 2022
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1984 (1984)
George Orwell's terrifying vision comes to the screen.
Filmmaker(s): Michael Radford

George Orwell's novel of a totalitarian future society in which a man whose daily work is rewriting history tries to rebel by falling in love.

Is What It Shows is a pet peeve of mine to discover films whose point is undermined by its container. Most of these are the trivial case of movies about taking chances and being unique, but the form of the movie is the complete opposite. What...


Published December 15, 2022
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500 Days of Summer (2009)
This is not a love story. This is a story about love.
Filmmaker(s): Marc Webb

Tom, greeting-card writer and hopeless romantic, is caught completely off-guard when his girlfriend, Summer, suddenly dumps him. He reflects on their 500 days together to try to figure out where their love affair went sour, and in doing so, Tom rediscovers his true passions in life.

Death by Numbers how frustrating it is to have a movie that is near perfect in some respects but broken in others, especially when it has the potential to do things. This has the potential because it is a love story that bends the expectations for...


Published December 15, 2022
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The African Queen (1951)
The greatest adventure a man ever lived… with a woman!
Filmmaker(s): John Huston

At the start of the First World War, in the middle of Africa’s nowhere, a gin soaked riverboat captain is persuaded by a strong-willed missionary to go down river and face-off a German warship.

Leeches Cruise played an exaggerated version of himself in “Magnolia,” following a tradition set long ago. We liked to believe that the sex sirens we saw in movies the 30’s were really that way in life and probably they were. John Wayne followed, never playing anything...


Published December 12, 2022
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