With this next Tom Hanks archive review, I have to admit that I’m cheating. I have watched “Splash” before, but never reviewed it; in fact, I don’t have reviews of any 1980s Hanks films, and I wanted to get something posted from his earlier work. So last weekend I watched “Splash,” which enchanted me when […]

There’s always been an inexplicable connection between music, love and the movies. Certain songs always seem to set the tone for various kinds of love and romance in film, whether the light-hearted or the dramatic. “High Fidelity” not only uses the power of that emotional mixture, but also focuses on it and attempts to understand it.

There is no brighter gem in movies than a love story told right. That is “The Notebook.” Romance is central to hundreds of thousands of films, but few are told as well as this film tells it. Between Nicholas Sparks’ heart-wrenching story, director Nick Cassevetes’ attention to setting and mood and the acting brilliance and universally good looks of Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, a bigger emotional punch is hard to come by.

With so much garbage being dished out these days by Hollywood under the label of “romantic comedy,” films like “Roman Holiday” never grow old. The timeless fairytale elements like a princess trying to disguise herself as a commoner and the classic routine of two people being dishonest with each other while falling in love only gets better when played against the live backdrop of Rome.

Julie Taymor’s Beatles movie musical “Across the Universe” has multiple personalities. At one point you’re watching a drama–then a music video–then an art piece–then an actual stage musical–then a raging acid trip–and back to a drama again. The good news is the film leaves you with its strongest form: drama musical, and it leaves you feeling good.

Classical cinema sensibilities collide with 21st century realities in Damien Chazelle’s “La La Land.” The “Whiplash” filmmaker follows up that highly acclaimed effort with its tonal opposite, a breezy, colorful romance wrapped in original songs and musical numbers.

As much as “Brooklyn” is a vibrantly realized 1950s period piece, the story itself is a throwback too; it’s a reminder of a classic storytelling technique seemingly uncommon at the movies today – draw in the audience in and charm its socks off.

Time travel is one of the more hit-or-miss story conceits in film; it’s certain to get people’s attention, but almost as certain to expose the film to a barrage of criticism related to logic and the butterfly effect. In the hands of filmmaker Richard Curtis, however, today’s finest purveyor of charming little films (“Love, Actually,” […]

“Hyde Park on Hudson” might forever be known as that other film in 2012 featuring a U.S. president — if anyone remembers it at all. Both films are entirely different portrayals, namely in the scope of both the stories they tell and the span of time in which they take place, but only one of […]

If you think it’s tough to think or talk about old people having sex, try being one of said old people. “Hope Springs” pairs two Oscar-winning and well-aging talents in Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones as Kay and Arnold, who endure the ups and downs of couples counseling with the main goal of rekindling […]

Steven Soderbergh and a movie about male dancers are two things most commonly found on opposite sides of a video store (or completely different categories on your Netflix recommendations, if we’re being modern), but behold “Magic Mike,” a film that is both, and a film that works surprisingly well.

The recent trend of comedies centered on experimental relationships continues with “Friends with Kids,” which explores what happens when longtime best friends who both want kids decide to have a baby to avoid the complications raising children has on romantic relationships. It seems like a Hollywood-typical setup, but writer, director and star Jennifer Westfeldt (“Kissing […]

There are romantic comedies and then there’s real life. “The Five-Year Engagement,”  believes it can be both. This latest collaboration between Nicholas Stoller and Jason Segel (“Forgetting Sarah Marshall”) stars Segel and Emily Blunt as Tom and Violet, a pair of totally-in-love inseparables whose plans to tie the knot keep getting pushed back to accommodate […]

After vampires, movie studios these days love the apocalypse (or at least an alien invasion that could bring it about), so it was a matter of time before we started to get different riffs on Armageddon. “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” brings doomsday into romantic comedy territory and the resulting story […]

In an era when a lot of movies don’t know when to shut up, how nice to have “The Artist.” So much of Hollywood is the search for the next big thing (looking at you, 3D), yet the Silent Era and those who clung to its sinking ship back in the late 1920s understood a […]