As Time Goes By (TV, 1992-2005) [TV-PG] *****

Late in 1952, Lionel Hardcastle (Geoffrey Palmer) a young second lieutenant in training with the Middlesex Regiment meets nineteen-year-old nurse Jean Pargetter (Judi Dench). They spend three months together during which they fall in love, and then Lionel is posted to Korea. He writes to Jean immediately:

1st Battalion
The Middlesex Regiment
BFPO3
February 10th ‘53

My Darling Jean
England seems so far away
and I miss you terribly. This is
the first chance I have had to
send you my address here in
Korea.
Do write back straight away
my darling…

However, Lionel doesn’t receive a reply and he incorrectly assumes Jean wants to forget him. She never receives his letter and incorrectly assumes he wants to forget her. And so he never writes another letter to her and she never tries to find his address in Korea.

Thirty-eight years pass. Jean marries, has a daughter Judith (Moira Brooker), her husband passes away, and she opens a secretarial service Type For You. Lionel meanwhile has gone to Kenya and started a coffee plantation, married and divorced, sold the plantation and moved back to London.

He has written an autobiography about his years in Kenya, titled My Life in Kenya, however his publisher Alistair Deacon (Philip Bretherton) wants him to make some edits, so he contacts Jean’s secretarial service, and Judith, who works for her mother, becomes his secretary. He invites her out for dinner, goes to Jean’s Holland Park row house, where Judith lives with her mother, and meets Jean. They don’t recognize each other immediately but each one suspects who the other one is, and later, when they meet again in the lobby of Lionel’s hotel, it becomes clear, and they realize how young and proud and stupid they were, so long ago, when they each let the other one go.

Their story is a poignant, slightly bittersweet romantic comedy-drama about two former lovers who reunite after thirty-eight years, and try to determine if they can recapture their youthful passion and exuberance, or if it is too late. They understand that they have been given a second chance, but it is a new relationship they must create, based on their nearly forty years of life experience apart, and their bittersweet regrets of the years they missed. Their story echoes the wish many of us have later in life, that we could go back and experience again the passion and possessiveness of those first weeks and months of a love affair.

The cast is uniformly excellent, and the writing has the perfect blend of the comedy that finds itself in a variety of domestic and work-related situations, and the drama that accompanies the search for love, not only for Jean and Lionel, but for her daughter Judith, for his publisher Alistair, and for Sandy (Jenny Funnell) who begins as a young employee at the secretarial service and becomes a live-in member of the Pargetter-Hardcastle family, and, really, a second daughter to Jean and Lionel.

Labels: comedy, drama, romance, rom-com-faves
IMDb 83/100 
RottenTomatoes (critics=tbd, viewers=tbd) 
DVD 
britbox 

Can You Keep A Secret (2019) [TV-MA] ***

 A film review by Nick Allen for rogerebert.com on Sept. 13, 2019.

Can You Keep a Secret? begins with a word-vomit meet-cute that’s a stretch, even by the standards of romantic comedies that force themselves into action. Emma (Alexandra Daddario) thinks she is going to die during a bit of plane turbulence, and nervously spews her secrets to a handsome strange man (Tyler Hoechlin) sitting next to her. The secrets aren’t very juicy, so much as set up what in her life needs addressing: the fake friendships she has with her snooty co-workers, the sexual inefficacy of her jazz-loving boyfriend. Amongst her nervous spewing, she even proclaims, I’ve never been in love! while the man listens with a small smile creeping on his face. Emma tries to stop herself at one point, but he encourages her to keep going. It’s the start of a connection that isn’t sweet or clever enough to look past the predatory nature.

The next day, Emma gets to her hip New York City office and realizes that the owner of her employing company, Jack Harper, is none other than the man she rambled to. Horrified, Emma fumbles around trying to play it cool, while the other members of the office try to impress him, creating awkward nervous slapstick by Daddario and weak jokes from the supporting cast - even Laverne Cox is wasted as Cybill, the office manager, trying to run a tight ship and prop herself up in the process. Director Elise Duran (working from a script by Peter Hutchings, an adaptation of Sophie Kinsella's novel) flashes back to other stuff she innocently revealed about her work ethic - like how her friend Casey (Robert King) asks her to go over some numbers, AKA sneak out for coffee - and Emma is embarrassed, vulnerable. In a different scenario, her boss could fire her if she got caught doing what she's already confessed to doing.

But Jack has something else in mind for this employee, concealed under the way he encourages her to check those numbers with Casey, or doesn’t tell one of Emma’s co-workers that she didn’t actually read as part of the book club. Can You Keep a Secret? tries to leverage this boss-worker dynamic by giving Jack his own secret - he doesn’t know want people to know that he was flying back from Chicago when she first met him - and Emma readily proclaims that she won’t tell anyone. His secret, later revealed, also isn’t scandalous, even if the script tries to nudge you on your worst inclinations on why a man would hide a plane trip, and sometimes steal away to answer his phone.

Hanging this premise on the currency of secrets proves far too simple, even for the lovingly unabashed Merry-Go-Round thrills of a rom-com. That’s especially the case when the movie gets to its main point, when Emma finally breaks it off with her dorky boyfriend, and Jack swoops in in a way that isn’t romantic so much as predatory, given that even the most necessary of break ups can leave someone in a vulnerable state. But once the two start dating - with Emma getting encouragement from her roommate Lissy (Sunita Mani), and deflecting stuff from her far more cynical roommate Gemma (Kimiko Glenn) - we can tell that it’s a mismatch. She’s full of life and genuine, and shares a backstory of fighting for self-love that is totally endearing, vivid. But Jack, on the other hand, is a milquetoast Christian Grey with a masculine forcefulness that’s merely to be presumed by his rugged face and rock-hard abs. Jack doesn’t share much about who he is as Emma gets closer to him, and his intentions are too vague. The secrecy doesn’t make him mysterious, so much as a three scoops of vanilla with a red flag on top.

In one moment of bliss, before everyone's secrets come out in a way that’s endemically dull, the movie achieves a few pangs of romance: When it’s about that feeling of falling in love, it feels true - of stealing a look at your partner while sitting together quietly on the couch, or baring your soul to someone special at some unknown hour of the night, in bed. These glimpses pass in a montage, but there’s enough sweetness to show you what could have been.

Pushing itself along as a comedy, Daddario doesn’t nearly get the material that can match her abundant energy and natural embrace of goofiness, which she displays from the opening scene, trying to make this line sound like it's not a genre staple: I have to land this account to get this promotion! But she is the one interesting character in the whole bunch. Everyone else is either not realistic or silly enough, and we’re stuck with a lot of stale jokes about effeminate men, wacky co-workers, and later a sequence about amateur ballet dancers.

Can You Keep a Secret? doesn’t elicit warm laughs so much as heavy sighs, even though the film has some zippiness - there’s a slapstick spirit to the movie that doesn’t shine because the jokes are plain, the couple is tough to root for, and the general tension behind this weird situation is on the lazier side of rom-com premises. Romance is hard, and comedy even more so, but Can You Keep a Secret? too openly tries to skip through both. [Allen’s rating: 1.5 stars out of 4]

Blogger's comment: Well, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I liked this romantic comedy, especially the opening and ending scenes on the airplane. In fact, here is the ending scene in screen captures:

Now, I like to imagine one scene after this one, which would probably take place in Jack's apartment in Chicago, in which he calls Cybill, the manager of Panda's New York office:
Jack: Hello, Cybill?
Cybill: Hello, Jack. What can I do for you?
Jack: Well, I just wanted to let you know that Emma won't be coming back to work, and you should start looking for her replacement. Also, you can box up everything in her cubicle and put it in my office, and when we get back from our honeymoon we'll come by and pick it up.
Cybill: Well, congratulations to both of you, and I can't wait to see you when you get back. Perhaps we can have a little office party.
Jack: That would be wonderful. Emma likes that idea, too.

Labels: comedy, romance, rom-com-faves
IMDb 53/100
MetaScore (critics=35, viewers=55)
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=44, viewers=52)
Netflix
Daddario and Hoechlin filming in NYC - 18 Oct 2018

La La Land (2016) [PG-13] *****

A film review by James Berardinelli for ReelViews.net on Dec. 8, 2016.

La La Land, Damien Chazelle’s much-anticipated follow-up to his stunning 2014 feature debut, Whiplash, illustrates the magic that can result when a director is fully committed to a vision. Chazelle doesn’t just want to tell a story (although he does). He doesn’t just want to enrapture an audience (which he also does). And he doesn’t want to rely on nostalgia to make his story work (although it plays a big part in the overall experience). La La Land isn’t just the best made-for-the-screen musical to reach theaters in a very long time, it’s arguably the best (non-animated) cinematic musical of any kind since 1986’s delightful Little Shop of Horrors. Yes, it’s more vibrant than Chicago, more heartfelt than Les Miserables, and more successfully staged than a chorus of other contenders.

To make La La Land, Chazelle has turned back the clock. The style, approach, camerawork, color palette, and viewpoint are all straight out of the 1950s. The lead actors, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, can frequently be caught channeling Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and Ginger Rogers. Chazelle and his cinematographer, Linus Sandgren, love long takes and perhaps none is more ambitious than the opening one - a musical number on a jammed freeway, where drivers exit their cars and use singing and dancing as an antidote to road rage. The filmmakers’ love of the Golden Age Musicals emerges most forcefully in numbers like this but it permeates every frame of La La Land. With the exception of a few profane utterances (probably incorporated to avoid the worrisomely tame PG rating), there’s not an element in this film that couldn’t have been found in something made in 1952. The setting is modern day but the feel is old-fashioned (and that’s not in any way a bad thing).

Chazelle doesn’t only love classic musicals, he loves jazz. That much was clear from Whiplash but he makes doubly sure we know it here. The male main character is a frustrated jazz musician and a key aspect of the plot involves his passing on his love of music to his leading lady. Chazelle isn’t shy when it comes to exposing the viewer to all types of jazz - from the classic style that evokes the greats to the commercially viable modern variation used to attract a younger generation. John Legend comes along for the ride as a spokesperson for the latter. When it comes to addressing the tension between the two camps, Chazelle avoids condescension as Legend brutally lays out some hard truths about why die hards are killing jazz by holding tight to the great men of the past rather than innovating for the future.

La La Land is divided into five acts that follow the progression of the seasons - Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter. Although it starts out trading on our memories of old musicals, it eventually gains its own identity. Thematically, there’s nothing groundbreaking here. It’s a boy-meets-girl, boy-and-girl-fall-in love, boy-loses-girl kind of story that reminds us that following a dream demands a price. La La Land is a fairy tale but it has a realistic edge. Instead of embracing the happily ever after ending in which all things are possible, La La Land uses a kind of inverted It’s a Wonderful Life to show how things might have been in another film.

Chazelle requires tremendous range from his leads. They have to sing (which they do well enough) and dance (which they do better than well enough). They have to be able to handle drama and comedy. And they have to strike sparks when they look into each other’s eyes, hold hands during a movie, or kiss. These are adept actors (both are past Oscar nominees) but in this tale, chemistry is as important as acting, and there’s no deficiency there. And, although there are times when Gosling and Stone’s singing is found wanting, they occasionally surprise. (After an uncertain start, Stone nails Audition.) Chazelle has opted not to go the Marnie Nixon route, allowing his actors to do their own vocal stunt work, favoring authenticity over polish. (This is one area in which his approach is decidedly unlike that of his 1950s predecessors.)

When we first encounter Mia (Emma Stone) and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), they are trapped in the opening traffic jam, although neither participates in the song-and-dance block party. Their lives, like their cars, are crawling along. Their dreams seem far away, perhaps unattainable. Sebastian wants to open a jazz club but he’s trapped playing Christmas carols on a piano in a high-end restaurant for a grouchy J.K. Simmons. Mia is one of many - a wannabe actress who is forced to work as a barista to make ends meet while waiting for elusive audition calls and even more elusive call-backs. These two are getting nowhere fast until they meet. It takes three times before things click. As summer arrives, they’re in love but, as with the seasons, the height of warmth augurs the start of a predictable decline.

La La Land offers moments of unabashed euphoria but it’s never saccharine. That’s the key to its appeal - it allows us to dance with the characters but never feels manipulative. Its dramatic moments are more genuine than is often the case in musicals. Chazelle is as interested in developing a compelling, character-based romance as he is in selling soundtracks. And, although not all the songs are instantly memorable, at least two of them (Mia’s theme, Audition, and Sebastian’s theme, City of Stars) linger. They aren’t generic songs that get lost in a miasma of same-sounding tunes. There are five or six original compositions (music by Justin Hurwitz; lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul), none of which fall into the instantly forgotten category.

It seems that every Oscar season offers viewers a new musical or two. Many of these are well-produced, masterfully choreographed, and impeccably staged. None of Hollywood’s recent offerings has lifted me up with the potency and grace of La La Land, one of the year’s most effervescent samples of pure entertainment. [Berardinelli’s rating: 3.5 out of 4 stars]

Labels: comedy, drama, music, musical, rom-com-faves, romance

Internet Movie Database 80 

MetaScore (critics=94, viewers=84) 

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=86, viewers=81) 

Blu-ray 

NOTE: The following YouTube links were last checked June 12, 2020.

City of Stars (Gosling) 

City of Stars (Gosling & Stone) 

Audition (Stone) 

Friends (1994-2004) [TV-14] *****

Over the course of ten years and 236 television episodes, we enjoyed a peek into the hearts and minds, lives and loves of six New York City, apartment-dwelling friends in their twenties and thirties. They included fun-loving, fashion-sensitive Rachel Green (Jennifer Aniston), organized and obsessive Monica Geller (Courteney Cox), scatterbrained Phoebe Buffay (Lisa Kudrow), geeky-romantic paleontologist and Monica’s older brother Dr. Ross Geller (David Schwimmer), good-hearted but slow-witted soap opera actor Joey Tribbiani (Matt LeBlanc) and always-ready-with-an-inappropriate-joke Chandler Bing (Matthew Perry).

When the six friends were not hanging out at the Central Perk coffee house, they were in Monica and Rachel’s apartment above the coffee house, or Joey and Chandler’s apartment across the hall. Here are links to the real buildings:

Central Perk is real!

What does the ‘Friends’ apartment in NYC look like?

Now that over a decade has passed since Friends ended its ten-season run, you can still find syndicated reruns on television, but the best way to watch the sitcom and appreciate the character growth and evolving relationships is to binge-watch all ten seasons in chronological order, a couple of hours (five or six 22-minute episodes) each evening. That’s roughly 86 hours or about seven weeks. You can buy the 21-disc Blu-ray boxed set on Amazon for $120 or find it new on Ebay for about half that price.

If you do this, I can practically guarantee that you’ll find yourself immersed in their lives, you’ll be disappointed when you’ve watched the two-part final episode The Last One, and you’ll wonder, as I did, whether they still keep in touch… both the characters in the sitcom, and the real-life performers.

In response to continued questions from fans, there has been speculation that a season 11 would be produced, but so far it’s been just that… speculation. But the cast did get together in 2016 for a private reunion, absent Matthew Perry who couldn’t get away from his commitment to perform in a stage play.

Private cast reunion in 2016

Labels: comedy, rom-com-faves, romance

Internet Movie Database 8.9/10

Metacritic 65/100
RottenTomatoes (critics=78, viewers=93)

Blu-ray

2016 "Friends" Reunion - EXTENDED!!!

Victoria in Dover (1954) [NR] **** (updated 13June2025)

Victoria in Dover, also titled The Story of Vickie and originally titled Mädchenjahre einer Königin (literally girl years of a queen) is a delightful Austrian historical romantic comedy about Queen Victoria’s youth, directed by Ernst Marischka and starring Romy Schneider as Victoria, Adrian Hoven as Price Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and Magda Schneider, Romy’s real-life mother, as her confidant Baroness Lehzen. It is a remake of the 1936 Erich Engel film Victoria in Dover, which was based on a 1932 play by Sil-Vara. Romy Schneider's performance as a spirited young royal was a lead-in to her role in Sissi and its sequels, which made her an internationally recognized star.

Upon the death of her uncle, King William IV in June, 1837, Victoria, who had just turned eighteen, became queen. Totally unprepared, she was ably assisted and coached by Lord Melbourne (Karl Ludwig Diehl), her Prime Minister. However, by the spring of 1839, Victoria was nearly twenty and her mother, the Duchess of Kent (Christl Mardayn) and Lord Melbourne decided it was time for her to marry. Three royal suitors were selected, one of whom was Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Victoria’s first cousin (Albert’s father was the brother of Victoria’s mother).

When Victoria heard about the plan, she realized that she had no experience with eligible young men and romance, so she would be unable to make a good choice. She decided to go, incognito, to Paris, the City of Love, to get some experience. Taking only her confidant Baroness Lehzen and her butler George (Rudolf Vogel) she escaped from Buckingham Palace, but when they reached Dover there was a raging storm, so they took shelter in an inn, where Victoria asked a young man, whom she assumed was an employee, to start a fire in her room. Unbeknownst to her, this was Prince Albert, who, accompanied by his tutor Prof. Landmann (Paul Hörbiger), was on his way to London for Victoria’s birthday celebration.

Later that evening the four of them (Victoria, Baroness Lehzen, Albert and Prof. Landmann) sat at the same table for dinner, and Albert pointed out Johann Strauss, who was also on his way to London for Victoria’s birthday celebration and who wrote waltzes, the new dance form. Albert offered to teach Victoria to dance the waltz and she accepted.

Before the evening was over, the two had fallen in love, and Albert had told Prof. Landmann that he wasn’t going to London, but rather he was going to follow Victoria to Paris. Prof. Landmann reminded Albert that he had done this sort of thing many times before, and the outcomes were rarely good. And, besides, he was expected at Buckingham Palace for Queen Victoria’s birthday celebration. Unable to persuade Albert, he then went to Victoria, confided in her who the young man really was, that he HAD to go to London, and offered to give her thirty pounds if she would leave immediately. Graciously, Victoria accepted five pounds to pay their bill (neither she nor George nor the Baroness had brought any money) and informed the Baroness that they would be leaving immediately. They returned to London just in time for Victoria’s birthday celebration, Albert and his professor arrived later, recognized Victoria, danced with her, and the rest is history.

Victoria in Dover is included in the Sissi Collection because there are strong links between this film and Sissi, over and above its lead Romy Schneider and its director Ernst Marischka. Everything about Victoria in Dover, from its title sequence, to its basic plot involving a royal meet-cute culminating in a predestined royal marriage makes this film play like a pilot film for Sissi. Victoria in Dover is a bit more consistently light-hearted than Sissi, perhaps approaching more of a traditional comedy of manners.

The coupling of Hoven and Schneider may not have quite the romantic chemistry of that between Karlheinz Böhm and Romy Schneider in Sissi, but this film's overall lighter tone helps to balance that issue. Also, much like Sissi, Victoria in Dover plays very much like a live-action fairy tale, with a princess who finds her prince and lives happily ever after without too much anxiety and tension. Victoria in Dover may not be historically accurate, but it's fun and engaging, sort of like a Hallmark movie.

Released in 1954, Victoria in Dover was likely filmed in the summer and autumn of 1953, when Romy Schneider (b. Sept. 23, 1938) was turning fifteen. She is radiantly lovely and continues to be so throughout the three films of the Sissi Collection.

If you prefer something much more historically accurate, with a better script, direction, acting, editing, costumes and sets, I can highly recommend The Young Victoria (2009) with Emily Blunt, Rupert Friend and Paul Bettany.

Labels: comedy, history, romance, rom-com-faves, Romy Schneider

IMDb 65/100

Blu-ray

Amazon TV 

Blu-ray.com review by Jeffrey Kauffman

Wikipedia (film) 

Wikipedia Queen Victoria

Wikipedia Prince Albert 

Top Five Victoria & Alberts on Screen 

Victoria in Dover (1954) complete film with ads on YouTube

Midnight in Paris (2011) [PG-13] ****/*****

Gil and Inez are on a pre-wedding shopping trip in Paris, traveling with Inez's father and mother, who are there on business. Gil (Owen Wilson) is a successful Hollywood screenwriter, who would rather be a successful novelist, and who is struggling with his first novel. Gil loves Paris, especially Paris during its romantic Golden Age, the 1920s. He would like to live in Paris with Inez (Rachel McAdams) after they are married, but Inez has little patience with Gil and his fantasies about Paris, and her parents simply don't think Gil is right for their daughter.

Then, by coincidence, Gil and Inez meet Paul and his wife. Paul is a former college professor of Inez's, on whom she had a serious crush. At the moment, he's a visiting professor at the Sorbonne, and while Paul and Inez renew their friendship, Gil roams the streets of Paris by day and by night, soaking up the ambience and wishing he were living there during the 1920s, and could enjoy the company of his favorite writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.

Then late one night, as the clock strikes midnight, a 1920's-vintage, chauffeur-driven limousine stops before Gil. The door opens and Gil is invited to join the champagne party inside the limousine. What happens next is a fantastic journey, a journey that gives Gil an understanding of what Paris really is, and the inspiration he needs to write his novel.

Written and directed by Woody Allen, this is a wonderful romantic fantasy. The casting is outstanding, especially Owen Wilson who perfectly channels Woody Allen himself, and a large, talented supporting cast that includes Marion Cotillard, Tom Hiddleston, Michael Sheen, Corey Stoll, Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody and Léa Seydoux. The cinematography is incredible; I have never seen a film that so perfectly captures the beauty of Paris, the lights and shadows of its streets and buildings, bridges and landmarks. If you have enjoyed romantic fantasies like Kate and Leopold, Peggy Sue Got Married, Pleasantville, Somewhere in Time, and The Time Traveler's Wife, you will feel right at home with Midnight in Paris. And, if you love Paris and the films of Woody Allen, you are in for a real treat. 

Labels: comedy, fantasy, Paris, period, rom-com-faves, romance, space-time    
Internet Movie Database 77/100  
MetaScore (critics=81, viewers=80)   
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=78, viewers=80)    
Blu-ray    
Wikipedia (caution: spoilers)
Sidney Bechet - Si Tu Vois Ma Mère (Midnight in Paris)

Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film 3½ stars out of four. He ended his review with this quote: This is Woody Allen's 41st film. He writes his films himself, and directs them with wit and grace. I consider him a treasure of the cinema. Some people take him for granted, although "Midnight in Paris" reportedly charmed even the jaded veterans of the Cannes press screenings. There is nothing to dislike about it. Either you connect with it or not. I'm wearying of movies that are for "everybody" – which means, nobody in particular. "Midnight in Paris" is for me, in particular, and that's just fine with moi.

NOTE: I recently discovered that, in 1923 the French franc collapsed. Suddenly, ordinary Americans could afford to live in Paris, by converting U.S. dollars into newly devalued francs. This event encouraged a wave of U.S. expatriates like Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. So, without the devaluation of the French franc, we might never have had the Lost Generation. Who knew? Currency Wars by James Rickards

My favorite films are romantic comedies or dramas that I don't want to end, and for which I can imagine more scenes after the film's final one. "Midnight in Paris" (2011) is a great example. In the final scene Gil (Owen Wilson) is walking over the Pont Alexandre III bridge when he sees Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux), the girl from the Paris nostalgia shop coming toward him. It starts to rain and they walk away from the viewer, together. I can imagine Gil asking Gabrielle if she'd like to meet some of his friends.

By the way, the Pont Alexandre III is a deck arch bridge that spans the Seine. It connects the Champs-Élysées quarter with those of the Invalides and Eiffel Tower. The bridge is widely regarded as the most ornate, extravagant bridge in Paris. It has been classified as a French monument historique since 1975.

Easy A (2010) [PG-13] ****

Olive (Emma Stone) is a pretty, but socially invisible, high school student in the beautiful town of Ojai, California (40 mi. east of Santa Barbara, 25 mi. north of Ventura). Fascinated by the story of Hester Prynne, the adulteress in Nathaniel Hawthorne's 19th-century novel The Scarlet Letter, Olive decides that she can boost her popularity by pretending to be sexually active. To impress her best friend Rhiannon (Alyson Michalka) Olive invents a hot date with an imaginary community college student, but when the chaste and pious Marianne (Amanda Bynes) overhears Olive and Rhiannon talking in the bathroom, it's not long before the rumor mill is working overtime, and Olive finds herself branded as the school slut. No longer socially invisible, Olive begins accepting money and gifts from male students who want to boast that they've had sex with her. She soon discovers that while her notoriety is increasing, her social standing is rapidly declining, and she realizes that, at some point, she's got to come clean and recover her self-esteem, even at the risk of her popularity.

This is a light, entertaining teen comedy, one that has all the typical characters and the typical teen comedy set pieces. The production values are excellent, as is the supporting cast, including Thomas Haden Church and Lisa Kudrow as husband and wife who are Olive's English teacher and guidance counselor, respectively, Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as Olive's parents, and Penn Badgley as Todd, Olive's real love interest. 

But this is Emma Stone's film, and she is on-screen virtually the entire film. Emma is smart, witty, wonderfully talented, and irresistibly charming, with a wide range of facial expressions, a great sense of physical comedy and amazing comedic timing. It's obvious that she has the screen presence and the acting chops to open a film, in a way that many other young actresses (for instance Alexis Bledel and Amanda Bynes) cannot. If you've enjoyed good teen comedies like Ferris Bueller's Day Off, She's All That, She's the Man, Some Kind of Wonderful, and 10 Things I Hate About You, or you enjoyed Emma Stone in Crazy, Stupid, Love, then you're going to enjoy Easy A. 

Labels: comedy, high-school, rom-com-faves, romance, satire, teenager   
Internet Movie Database 7.1/10    
Metacritic 72/100    
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=71, viewers=76)    
Blu-ray

Tamara Drewe (2010) [R] ****

Tamara Drewe (Gemma Arterton) was once the ugly duckling in her little Dorset village of Ewedown. Now a glamorous London journalist with face-changing plastic surgery, a curvaceous body and new-found self esteem, Tamara (pronounced ta-MAR-a) has returned to sell her late mother's house.

To prepare the house for sale, she's hired former flame Andy Cobb (Luke Evans), who also works for a neighboring estate, where pretentious old author, and serial philanderer, Nicholas Hardiment (Roger Allam) and his wife Beth (Tamsin Greig) run a year-round weekend writers' retreat and a poultry farm. While covering a local rock concert Tamara meets and falls for arrogant drummer Ben Sergeant (Dominic Cooper), to the great delight of his teen fan Jody (Jessica Barden) and her girlfriend Casey (Charlotte Christie). As Tamara arouses lustful feelings in Andy, Nicholas and Ben, and the bed-hopping begins, the jealous Jody breaks into Tamara's home and uses her computer to send incriminating emails. And, then Casey emails Beth a camera-phone picture of Nicholas kissing Tamara.

Adapted from a comic strip by Posy Simmonds, the screenplay by Moira Buffini is surprisingly inventive, with some wildly entertaining plot twists. Basically, this film is a raucous, very English black comedy... a sex farce with a dash of Agatha Christie. The direction by Oscar-nominated Stephen Frears (The Grifters, The Queen) is fast-paced and taut, and the use of unpredictable, celebrity-obsessed teenage girls as a plot device is hilarious, and a bit reminiscent of The World of Henry Orient. If you enjoy contemporary British romantic comedy, like About Adam, you won't want to miss Tamara Drewe. 

Labels: comedy, rom-com-faves, romance 
Internet Movie Database 6.2/10    
Metacritic 64/100  
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=63, viewers=62)    
Blu-ray

Entourage (2004-2011) [TV-MA] ****

A review of Entourage Season #5 by Brian Lowry for Variety.com on Sept. 3, 2008. (Caution: spoilers ahead)

The opening episodes of Entourage’s new season highlight how far the show has come: Having stumbled around through year one, the series gradually began grasping the power of story arcs, following its fictional star, Vincent Chase, as he climbed a fairy-tale staircase of (mostly) ups through the movie business. Yet the current year — given Vince’s maddening nonchalance in the past — promises to be more intriguing, as he seeks to redeem himself after a disastrous foray into indie film. Although characteristically frothy, this could be the story line that those sporadically frustrated by the show have waited for.

To briefly recap, Vince (Adrian Grenier) and bosom pal Eric (Kevin Connolly) gambled everything on Vince producing and starring in Medellin, the blood-soaked story of a drug kingpin. The screening at Cannes, however, flopped, threatening not just Vince’s career but the show’s most durable attribute, their lifelong friendship.

The new campaign thus finds Vince licking his wounds — attended by the obligatory set of hot girls — on a Mexican beach (actually Hawaii), while both Eric and Vince’s agent Ari (Jeremy Piven, in what continues to be the role of a lifetime) plot his rebirth.

What makes the year take off, though (and consider this a small spoiler), is that Vince’s setback has finally jolted him out of his carefree attitude. Spurred by Eric, Ari and his own humiliation, he’s finally chosen to become an active participant in his career. In the premiere penned by showrunner Doug Ellin, he’s awakened as if out of a slumber, and pressed by Ari to embrace stardom, which the agent clearly distinguishes from acting.

Of course, what endears Entourage most to its insider constituencies on the coasts relies on its knowing references to Hollywood, and there’s again plenty of that on display. Highlights (and occasional lowlights) include a producer’s description of agents (They’re all pricks), the insane quirks of Vince’s exposed-nerve actor-brother Johnny Drama Chase (Kevin Dillon), and cameos by the likes of Fox’s Tom Rothman, who proves more adept at playing himself than is NBC Entertainment’s Ben Silverman or series producer Mark Wahlberg.

There’s an unintended wrinkle, meanwhile, to an appearance by critic Richard Roeper, whose pan of Vince’s movie prompts Ari to proclaim, No one mention Richard Roeper again! Given that Roeper has split from his syndicated TV film-reviewing gig since the episode was shot, that line might hit a bit too close to home.

Entourage’s inordinate popularity around Hollywood yields obvious dividends to HBO — attracting stars and execs eager to demonstrate what good sports they are by playing warped versions of themselves.

The show’s polished exterior, however, has seldom scratched the surface hard enough to find anything deeper underneath. Vince’s career odyssey back from Medellin could provide just that — the season-long hook to make a show already on Hollywood’s A-list match that with an actual A-game. [Lowry rates Entourage Season #5 as *** ½ out of 5 stars = 70%]

Labels: comedy, drama, filmmaking, rom-com-faves, romance

Internet Movie Database 

[IMDb viewers rated this series 85/100 based on nearly 167,000 votes]
Overall weight from all critics & viewers for 96 episodes = 67.4/100

Season #1, 2004; 8 episodes: 76.8 score, 6.40 wtd)
IMDb 79/100

MetaScore (critics=67, viewers=tbd)

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=73, viewers=88) 

Season #2, 2005; 14 episodes: (84.8 score, 12.37 wtd)
IMDb 84/100

MetaScore (critics=tbd, viewers=89)

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=73, viewers=93) 

Season #3, 2006; 20 episodes: (82.6 score, 17.21 wtd)
IMDb 84/100

MetaScore (critics=73, viewers=86)

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=76, viewers=94) 

Season #4, 2007; 12 episodes: (79.3 score, 9.91 wtd)
IMDb 83/100

MetaScore (critics=tbd, viewers=84)

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=70, viewers=80) 

Season #5, 2008; 12 episodes: (81.2 score, 10.20 wtd)
IMDb 84/100

MetaScore (critics=70, viewers=87)

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=76, viewers=89) 

Season #6, 2009; 12 episodes: (73.5 score, 9.19 wtd)
IMDb 81/100

MetaScore (critics=tbd, viewers=78)

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=56, viewers=79) 

Season #7, 2010; 10 episodes: (66.2 score, 6.90 wtd)
IMDb 79/100

MetaScore (critics=61, viewers=65)

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=57, viewers=69)

Season #8, 2011; 8 episodes: (62.6 score, 5.22 wtd)
IMDb 80/100

MetaScore (critics 62, viewers=53)

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=46, viewers=72) 

Blu-ray