Category: Romance

  • Definitely, Maybe (2008)

    It’s never too early to romanticize the past, particularly when it involves affairs of the heart. Amid today’s app-friendly hookups, where a potential relationship is a mere swipe right away, perhaps it is inevitable that a romantic comedy like Definitely, Maybe would turn to the not-so-distant and ostensibly simpler 1990s, back when the Internet was…

  • The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989)

    When you have real-life brothers portraying brothers, you’re bound to elicit some interesting dynamics. That’s the case with The Fabulous Baker Boys. A modest box-office success upon its 1989 theatrical release, it chiefly earned raves at the time for a memorable star turn by Michelle Pfeiffer. But the movie holds up, thanks to its richly drawn…

  • Romance on the Big Screen

    This week we commemorate the 95th anniversary of that fateful day seven members of the George “Bugs” Moran gang were mowed down, deep-dish Chicago style, by four of Al Capone’s Tommy gun-wielding henchmen. Or to put it another way, this Wednesday marks Valentine’s Day. As such, it seems as appropriate a time as any to…

  • The Lunchbox (2013)

    Sometimes you must board the wrong train to get to the right station. It’s a bit of wisdom that figures prominently in, and is offered by, The Lunchbox, a sweetly engaging Hindi-language film about two wounded souls who make an accidental but critical connection in the Indian city of Mumbai. What makes an already-appealing movie…

  • Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

    I love Moonrise Kingdom. There, I said it. End of review. OK, that’s not really the end. Pardon my rapturous take, but writer-director Wes Anderson appears to be one of very few filmmakers who can truly capture the strange world of adolescent love — its exuberance, its earnestness and its flat-out weirdness. Anderson’s best works,…

  • Valley Girl (1983)

    For that segment of the population that doesn’t remember a time before email and social media, the 1980s have the haze of nostalgia, a romanticism borne from snappy oddities like skinny ties, checkered sneakers and Andrew McCarthy. But don’t believe it, youngsters. It wasn’t all lollipops and John Hughes. Not even the syrupy gaze of…

  • The Wedding Singer (1998)

    Cauliflower isn’t the most flavorful of veggies, but slather it in ranch dressing and it’s damned tasty. Why do I tell you this? It’s akin to my theory about why The Wedding Singer remains such a pleasant (if unremarkable) romantic comedy 25 years after its theatrical release. It’s all about The Wedding Singer‘s slathering of…

  • Baby It’s You (1983)

    Writer-director John Sayles has a gift for taking the most cliché-riddled formula and then – voila! – skirting cliché. Such is the redemptive power of full-blooded characterization and an understanding that people are unpredictable. Baby It’s You is a modest story of young love, but it nicely illustrates the filmmaker’s knack for wringing genuine complexity from what otherwise could…