Thomas Crown (Pierce Brosnan) is a smart, ruthless Wall Street mergers and acquisitions investment banker with a love of racing sailboats, sleek glider aircraft, gorgeous women, and priceless works of art. He's attracted to Claude Monet's 1908 painting of the monastery island of San Giorgio, identified as the first true work of Impressionist art. Of course, it's valued at $100 million and is a closely-guarded treasure at the Metropolitan Art Museum.
But Crown has a plan, and using a large-scale robbery as a diversion, he steals the Monet. Knowing that he can never sell the painting, and that he risks everything just possessing it, Crown devises an ingenious plan to hide the Monet so that it is perfectly safe, but not in his possession, at least not until the insurance claim is paid off.
Unfortunately Crown finds that Catherine Banning (Rene Russo), a beautiful, sexy, and tenacious insurance investigator for the Swiss insurer of the painting is on his trail. Crown and Banning begin to play a seductive cat and mouse game, and as Crown starts to fall for the woman, it gradually becomes clear that he cannot have both her and the Monet, and that he has a decision to make.
This is a far better scripted, directed and acted film than the 1968 film of the same name starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. Brosnan and Russo have terrific romantic chemistry, and the museum Bowler Hat scene as Crown attempts to return the Monet is incredibly stylish and inventive. If you've enjoyed Pierce Brosnan in his James Bond roles, you won't want to miss The Thomas Crown Affair. You'll also want to check out this webpage The Thomas Crown Affair for more information on the film, including filming locations and songs used in the soundtrack.
Labels: crime, drama, romance, rom-drama-faves, thriller
IMDb (68/100)
MetaScore (critics=72, viewers=75)
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=64, viewers=78)
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Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner) has been a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers for his entire pro baseball career. Now after nineteen years, in the twilight of his great, hall-of-fame career, he learns from Mr. Wheeler (Brian Cox) the team's owner that his team has been sold to a corporate group, that the first business of the new owners will be to trade Billy to another team, and his girlfriend Jane Aubrey (Kelly Preston) is leaving him to take a job in London.
As Billy's friend and favorite catcher Gus Sinski (John C. Reilly) observes: Billy, this ain't your day! But what happens to Billy and Gus, Detroit manager Frank Perry (J.K. Simmons) and the rest of the Tigers on that fateful day in Yankee Stadium at the end of a long season is truly magical. This is a great baseball-themed romantic drama. Costner and Preston have terrific romantic chemistry; there's a great screenplay with some memorable dialogue, a beautiful soundtrack, excellent supporting work from Jane's daughter Heather (Jena Malone) and eye-popping cinematography. If you enjoyed films like Field of Dreams, The Natural and The Rookie, you won't want to miss For Love of the Game.
Labels: baseball, Christmas, drama, romance, rom-drama-faves
Internet Movie Database 6.6/10
MetaCritic (critics=43, viewers=59)
RottenTomatoes (critics=47, viewers=75)
Blu-ray
James Berardinelli's review (3 stars out of 4)
Harper Sloane (Sarah Polley) feels like a misfit. It's her older sister's wedding day, and while Harper is supposed to go to law school in the fall, she feels out of place in a family in which her domineering, emasculating mother (Jean Smart), her compliant father, and her brilliant sister are all successful San Francisco attorneys. Harper wants to rebel, to run away more than anything, because she doesn't really want to go to law school.
And then she meets Cornelius Connie Fitzpatrick (Stephen Rea), the wedding photographer. He's straight out of San Francisco of the 1960s, Jack Kerouac's Beat Generation, the Black Hawk and Hungry I nightclubs and the City Lights bookstore. Connie has a bohemian philosophy and a North Beach loft. He takes a pensive, soul-revealing photograph of Harper at the wedding, signs it To Guinevere and offers her a way out. She can live in his loft with him. All she has to do is work, create something... photograph, paint, sculpt, write or dance. And, of course, share his bed.
And so Harper makes a choice to stay with Connie, to learn from him. What she doesn't know is that she is only the latest in a long line of starry-eyed ingenues who have been Guinevere to this aging alcoholic photographer. Inevitably Harper falls in love with Connie, with his past celebrity as a North Beach photographer, and just as inevitably he breaks her heart. Somehow Harper and Connie both know when their relationship has run its course, and the inevitable ending leaves Harper older, sadder and wiser.
As a modern, sensitive portrayal of the classic Svengali story, Guinevere works because of an excellent screenplay, a great supporting cast, and because Sarah Polley and Stephen Rea are so believable in their roles. If you enjoy character-driven, romantic dramas about artists and the process of creating art, films like The Anniversary Party, How to Make an American Quilt, Sirens, Still Breathing and The Shape of Things, then you might enjoy Guinevere.
Labels: drama, romance, tragedy
Internet Movie Database 6.0/10
Metacritic 68/100
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=69, viewers=64)
NOTE: Writer/director Audrey Wells might have modeled the character of Cornelius Connie Fitzpatrick after noted S.F. Bay Area photographer Jerry Stoll (b.1924 - d.2004). One of Stoll's best-known publications was his popular photo-essay book I AM A LOVER (1961), with selected comments by Evan S. Connell, Jr.
Padua High School in present-day Seattle is the setting for this updated version of The Taming of the Shrew.
Katarina Kat Stratford (Julia Stiles) is a senior, and she has a reputation as a man-hater, or as her guidance counselor Ms Perky (Allison Janney) puts it - heinous bitch is the term used most often. Kat has a younger sister Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) a sophomore, and Bianca is everything that Kat is not... dewy-eyed, virginal and innocent. Bianca would love to be dating boys, but their paranoid OB-GYN physician father Dr. Walter Stratford (Larry Miller) has ruled that Bianca cannot date until Kat does, which may be never.
But all is not lost. Bianca has caught the eye of Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt); and Cameron's buddy Michael (David Krumholtz) has come up with an ingenious plan. They must find a suitor for Kat, so Cameron can date Bianca. They decide Patrick Verona (the late Heath Ledger) is their man. Patrick is a recent transfer to Padua, and he has an unsavory reputation, so Kat won't intimidate him. But Patrick won't date Kat for nothing, so they must convince Joey Donner (Andrew Keegan), a wealthy, self-absorbed male model who's also interested in Bianca, to bankroll Patrick, so Joey (and, secretly, Cameron) can date Bianca.
10 Things I Hate About You is one of the freshest, most original teen ensemble romantic comedies to come along in decades. The screenplay is tight and fast-paced; and the dialog is incredibly clever. Direction and editing are excellent. The casting is perfect; there are no weak performances. And the soundtrack is terrific. The action revolves around Kat and Patrick's romance and his efforts to convince her to go out with him. Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger have terrific chemistry, and you can see flashes of the brilliance that Ledger would develop further in later roles. If you enjoyed films like The Prince & Me and She's the Man, then I predict you'll really enjoy 10 Things I Hate About You.
Labels: comedy, high-school, Julia Stiles, music, rom-com-faves, romance, teenager
Internet Movie Database 73/100
MetaScore (critics=70, viewers=70)
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=63, viewers=64)
Blu-ray
Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You
William Thacker (Hugh Grant), the shy, protective owner of a travel bookstore in London's quaint Notting Hill district, crosses paths with Anna Scott (Julia Roberts), the world's most famous and most temperamental film actress. William offers Anna a welcome refuge from her surreal world of fame and paparazzi. Will she return his love for her, or will she break his heart?
This is a delightful romantic comedy; Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant have wonderful chemistry, the supporting cast is outstanding, and the ending is happy, uplifting, and believable. And, if you love Notting Hill, you won't want to miss Just Write, a charming romance, with an independent film flavor, on a very similar theme: a Hollywood tour bus driver who dreams of being a screenwriter meets his favorite young actress.
Labels: Cinderella-story, comedy, filmmaking, rom-com-faves, romance
Internet Movie Database 72/100
MetaScore (critics=68, viewers=80)
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=71, viewers=78)
Blu-ray
James Berardinelli's review (2.5 stars out of 4)
A film review by Roger Ebert, April 9, 1999.
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Never Been Kissed stars Drew Barrymore as a copy editor for that excellent newspaper, the Chicago Sun-Times. I recommend its use as a recruiting film -- not because it offers a realistic view of journalistic life, but because who wouldn't want to meet a copy editor like Barrymore? Even when she's explaining the difference between interoffice and intraoffice, she's a charmer. The movie's screenplay is contrived and not blindingly original, but Barrymore illuminates it with sunniness, and creates a lovable character. I think this is what's known as star power.
She plays a 25-year-old named Josie Geller, who despite a few unhappy early experiences with spit-swapping has indeed never really been kissed. At the paper, she issues copy-editing edicts while hiding behind a mousy brown hairdo and a wardrobe inspired by mudslides. Her editor, played as subtly as one of the Three Stooges by Garry Marshall, likes to pound the conference table with a bat while conducting meetings; he wants an undercover series on high school life and assigns Josie, because she looks young enough.
That sets up Josie's chance to return to high school and get it right. The first time around, she was known as Josie Grossie, an ugly duckling with braces on her teeth, hair in her eyes, baby fat, pimples and glasses. Barrymore does a surprisingly convincing job of conveying this insecure lump of unpopularity; it's one of the reasons we develop such sympathy for Josie.
Josie borrows a car from her brother Rob (David Arquette), a once-promising baseball player who now works in a store that's a cross between Kinko's and Trader Vic's. She adopts a new blond hairstyle and gets rid of the glasses. But her first day on her secret assignment gets off to the wrong start, thanks to a wardrobe (white jeans and a gigantic feather boa) that might have been Cruella DeVil's teenage costume. The popular girls mock her, but she's befriended by Aldys (Leelee Sobieski), leader of the smart kids: How are you at calculus? How would you like to join the Denominators? That's the math club, with matching sweatshirts.
Josie's unpopularity reaches such a height that her car is deposited by pranksters in the middle of the football field. Rob analyzes the situation and says she needs to be certified as acceptable by a popular kid. What kid? Rob himself. He enrolls in high school, and is popular by lunchtime, after winning a coleslaw-eating contest. Following his example, the students accept Josie, while Rob meanwhile reawakens his fantasy of playing for a state championship baseball team.
The title Never Been Kissed gives us reason to hope that Josie will be, sooner or later, kissed. Soon we have reason to believe that the kisser may be Mr. Coulson (Michael Vartan), the English teacher, and of course the taboo against student-teacher relationships adds spice to this possibility. Meanwhile, Josie's adventures in high school are monitored at the Sun-Times through a remarkable invention, a brooch that contains a miniature TV camera and transmits everything she sees back to the office. We do not actually have such technology at the Sun-Times, and thank heavens, or my editors would have had to suffer through Baby Geniuses. The story develops along a familiar arc. Josie has flashbacks to her horrible high school memories, but this time around, she flowers. Unspoken romance blooms with Mr. Coulson. Comic relief comes from Josie's friend Anita (Molly Shannon), who is mistaken for a high-school sex lecturer and offers advice startling in its fervor. Alas, Josie gets scooped on a story about the local teenage hangout, and her editor bangs the conference table some more. We are left to marvel at the portrait of Chicago journalism in both this movie and Message in a Bottle, which had Robin Wright Penn as a Tribune researcher. Apparently at both papers the way to get a big salary and an office is to devote thousands of dollars and weeks of time to an assignment where you hardly ever write anything.
Never Been Kissed is not deep or sophisticated, but it's funny and big-hearted and it wins us over. The credit goes to Barrymore. In this movie and Ever After: A Cinderella Story (and in The Wedding Singer, where I liked her a lot more than the movie), she emerges as a real star -- an actor whose personality and charisma are the real subject of the story. Never Been Kissed ends in a scene that, in any other movie, I would have hooted at. Without revealing it, I'll identify it as the five-minute wait. This scene is so contrived and artificial, it could be subtitled Shameless Audience Manipulation. But you know what? Because the wait involved Barrymore, I actually cared. Yes, I did.
Labels: comedy, drama, high-school, romance, teenager
Internet Movie Database
Metacritic 60/100
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=57, viewers=66)
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Marty Sachs (Ron Livingston) is a lonely New York City newspaper sports writer with no love life, no agent for his suspense novel, and no self-esteem. Then he meets two beautiful women named Nina. Nina Cohen (Cara Buono) could be his soul mate, but she’s been burned before and is very cautious. Nina Harris (Amanda Peet) gives him an adrenaline rush and great sex, but they have nothing in common. How can Marty find out which Nina is the right one for him? And by the time he does, will the two Ninas have discovered what he has been doing? Will Marty have jeopardized his one chance for happiness?
This thought-provoking movie asks us to define commitment and cheating, and speculate about what we would do in a similar situation. The screen writing is good, although Marty’s friend Davis (Bray Poor) is a distraction when he acts as the narrator. This film has a similar theme to a more recent Ron Livingston film, Little Black Book, also starring Brittany Murphy and Holly Hunter, so if you enjoyed that film, you might enjoy Two Ninas.
Labels: comedy, romance
Internet Movie Database
Metacritic 41/100
Tomatometer (critics=67, viewers=49)
Thomas Crown (Pierce Brosnan) is a smart, ruthless Wall Street mergers and acquisitions investment banker with a love of racing sailboats, sleek glider aircraft, gorgeous women, and priceless works of art. He's attracted to Claude Monet's 1908 painting of the monastery island of San Giorgio, identified as the first true work of Impressionist art. Of course, it's valued at $100 million and is a closely-guarded treasure at the Metropolitan Art Museum.
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