Rush, Deborah

You've Got Mail

By now, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan have amassed such a fund of goodwill with moviegoers that any new onscreen pairing brings nearly reflexive smiles. In You've Got Mail, the quintessential boy and girl next door repeat the tentative romantic crescendo that made Sleepless in Seattle, writer-director Nora Ephron's previous excursion with the duo, a massive hit. The prospective couple do actually meet face to face early on, but Mail otherwise repeats the earlier feature's gentle, extended tease of saving its romantic resolution until the final, gauzy shot.

The underlying narrative is an even more old-fashioned romantic pas de deux that is casually hooked to a newfangled device. The script, cowritten by the director and her sister, Delia Ephron, updates and relocates the Ernst Lubitsch classic, The Shop Around the Corner, to contemporary Manhattan, where Joe Fox (Hanks) is a cheerfully rapacious merchant whose chain of book superstores is gobbling up smaller, more specialized shops such as the children's bookstore owned by Kathleen Kelly (Ryan). Their lives run in close parallel in the same idealized neighborhood, yet they first meet anonymously, online, where they gradually nurture a warm, even intimate correspondence. As they begin to wonder whether this e-mail flirtation might lead them to be soul mates, however, they meet and clash over their colliding business fortunes.

It's no small testament to the two stars that we wind up liking and caring about them despite the inevitable (and highly manipulative) arc of the plot. Although their chemistry transcended the consciously improbable romantic premise of Sleepless, enabling director Ephron to attain a kind of amorous soufflé, this time around there's a slow leak that considerably deflates the affair. Less credulous viewers will challenge Joe's logic in prolonging the concealment of his online identity from Kathleen, and may shake their heads at Ephron's reinvention of Manhattan as a spotless, sun-dappled wonderland where everybody lives in million-dollar apartments and color coordinates their wardrobes for cocktail parties. --Sam Sutherland

Neigborhood bookstore rivals unwittingly become e-mail pen pals in this charming remake of The Shop Around the CornerRunning Time: 119 min.System Requirements:ACTORS Jane Adams Reiko Aylesworth Michael Badalucco Heather Burns David Chappelle Dabney Coleman Elwood Edwards Kate Finneran Tom Hanks Hallie Hirsh Greg Kinnear Parker Posey John Randolph Meg Ryan Katie Sogona Howard Spiegel Jean Stapleton Steve Zahn LENGTH 2 hrs RATING PG ComedyFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating:  UPC: 085391695424 Manufacturer No: 16954

Big Business

Two sets of identical twins, separated at birth and reared in drastically different environments, are reunited in the big city of Manhattan, for a series of comedic mishaps.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: PG
Release Date: 13-JAN-2004
Media Type: DVD

In & Out

High school teacher Howard Brackett is outed by former student during the Oscars and does his frantic best to assert his manliness.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 9-AUG-2005
Media Type: DVD

When a Hollywood heartthrob (Matt Dillon, playing a Brad Pitt look-alike) "outs" his small-town high-school drama teacher Howard Brackett (Kevin Kline) during the Oscar telecast, the entire (fictional) town of Greenleaf, Indiana, wonders if Howard's really gay. More to the point, Howard wonders, too--quite a dilemma considering his pending marriage to Emily (Joan Cusack), who's patiently tolerated a three-year engagement. While a TV reporter (Tom Selleck) covers the ensuing furor, screenwriter Paul Rudnick and director Frank Oz make good-natured humor their highest priority, turning the "crisis" of coming out into a laugh-out-loud spin on conventional romantic comedy. The result is a film that delivers constant laughs and a golden opportunity for its fine cast to show off their considerable comedic talents--especially Cusack, who deservedly earned an Oscar nomination for her hilarious performance as the bride who's almost as confused as her would-be husband. That Rudnick and Oz have made a great comedy that's both old-fashioned and relevant to the late 20th century is no small feat, but In & Out has no hidden agenda apart from its triumphant desire to entertain. --Jeff Shannon

The Visitor

A deeply moving drama built around longtime character actor Richard Jenkins, The Visitor is a simmering drama about a college professor and recent widower, Walter Vale (Jenkins), who discovers a pair of homeless, illegal aliens living in his New York apartment. After the mix-up is resolved, Vale invites the couple--a young, Syrian musician named Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his Senegalese girlfriend (Danai Gurira--to stay with him. An unlikely friendship develops between the retiring, quiet Vale and the vital Tarek, and the former begins to loosen up and respond to Tarek's drumming lessons as if something in him waiting to be liberated has finally arrived. All goes well until Tarek is hauled in by immigration authorities and threatened with deportation. His mother, Mouna (Hiam Abbass), turns up and stays with Vale, sparking a renewed if subdued interest in courtship. But the wheels of injustice in immigration crush all manner of hopes in post-9/11 America. Vale soon realizes his unexpected capacity for anger over Tarek's plight, and the positive changes to his personal life that emerged from a deep involvement with his friend and Mouna, might be the only legacy he takes from this experience. Writer-director Thomas McCarthy has created a wonderfully measured story about change and renewal, and put it all on the shoulders of Jenkins, a largely unheralded but masterful performer whose time for renown has surely come. --Tom Keogh

A college professor becomes embroiled in the lives of a young immigrant couple living in New York City and stumbles into an unexpected romance as a result. As these strangers struggle to deal with their individual lives in a changed world, their shared humanity is revealed in awkward, humorus and dramatic ways.

American Pie 3 Movie Pie Pack: The Franchise Collection (Unrated)

She-Devil

Someone stole her husband...and now there s hell to pay! Roseanne Barr puts a hilarious twist on the domestic goddess persona that made her a star and Meryl Streep makes you marvel at [her] real comic witchcraft (Newsweek). She-Devil is a film that doesn t stop at mild-mannered prankster revenge it s a funny Fatal Attraction on steroids with attitude that s gone bad! Meet Mary Fisher (Streep). She s got it all: a cliff-side villa overlooking the ocean a wholly satisfying career as a romance novelist...and Ruth Patchett s husband. And when Ruth (Barr) discovers that her social-climbing spouse (Ed Begley Jr.) has been spending his time at Mary s pink-and-white-monstrosity-by-the-sea she doesn t just vow to get him back...she vows to get even! Setting out to destroy his business accounts as well as Mary s precious reputation and career Ruth proves the old adage about a woman scorned by delivering up a husband nearly scorched!System Requirements:Running Time: 95 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: PG-13 UPC: 027616867797 Manufacturer No: 1002578

My Blue Heaven

The idea is clever but the movie can't seem to pull its comic weight: Steve Martin plays a mob informer who is placed in the witness-protection program and doesn't fit into the suburban California life the Feds have picked out for him. Rick Moranis is the FBI agent assigned to protect him. Martin mugs his way through the role of an Italian wise guy from the New York streets, but his performance is never more than an impersonation. The script leaves a lot to be desired, as well. Director Herbert Ross (The Turning Point) brings some gloss to the production, but he can't seem to do much else with the material. --Tom Keogh

10

As a famous composer turns forty-two he enters his mid-life crisis and chases a young woman he sees on her way to her wedding.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: R
Release Date: 2-NOV-2004
Media Type: DVD

One of the best comedies of the 1970s, Blake Edwards's ode to midlife crisis and the hazards of infidelity now plays like a valentine to that self-indulgent decade, and it's still as funny as it ever was. In the signature role of his career (along with "Arthur"), Dudley Moore plays a songwriter with a severe case of marital restlessness, and all it takes is a chance encounter with Bo Derek (in her screen debut) to jump-start his libido. Julie Andrews plays Moore's wife, who will only tolerate so much of her husband's desperate need to reaffirm his sexual vitality, while Moore pursues Derek to a tropical rendezvous. The action builds to the now-famous bedroom scene that sent everyone rushing to the music store for their own copy of Ravel's Boléro. Talk about a classical climax! --Jeff Shannon

The Good Girl

Justine Last longs for a more fulfilling life than the one she leads with her boring husband and a dead end job, and when she meets a young co-worker who believes he is Holden Caulfield, she begins an affair with him.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: R
Release Date: 6-FEB-2007
Media Type: DVD

Jennifer Aniston gives a career-changing performance in The Good Girl, a movie that questions whether goodness is a virtue or a trap. Justine (Aniston), weary of her dead-end retail job and her childless marriage to Phil (John C. Reilly), diverts herself with a new coworker named Holden (Jake Gyllenhaal), who feels as ill-treated by his life as Justine does with hers. The empathy between them leads, all too quickly, to an affair--which just as quickly turns into an obsession that threatens to destroy Justine's marriage. But this is only the beginning; Phil's buddy Bubba (Tim Blake Nelson), the store security guard (Mike White), and a handful of other characters all have a part to play in the unraveling of Justine's life. The script and performances of The Good Girl are subtle but vivid, and the movie's emotional impact will linger long after the movie is over. --Bret Fetzer

Strangers with Candy

Jerri Blank (Amy Sedaris) is a forty-seven year old ex-con who decides to return to her childhood home after thirty-two years working the streets and in prison. Upon her arrival she discovers her father is in a self-induced coma. Hoping to wake him Jerri decides to turn her life around by picking it up exactly where she left off as a high school freshman. But for a former boozer user and loser hanging with the in crowd is going to be harder than turning tricks!System Requirements:Run Time: 91 minsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: R UPC: 821575549059 Manufacturer No: TF-54905

Comedy Central's creatively crass "after-school special," Strangers with Candy, takes a well-deserved curtain call with this feature film version of the series. Canceled (some fans felt prematurely) after only three seasons, each SWC episode told the story of Jerri Blank (Amy Sedaris), the 46-year-old former "boozer, user, and loser" who goes back to high school to pick up "exactly where (she) left off."

The principal audience for this film will be folks who already know the show and need a Candy fix, and they'll be relieved to find that most of the original cast has returned. Co-creators Stephen Colbert and Paul Dinello are there (Dinello also directed the movie), and other favorites include Greg Hollimon as Principal Onyx Blackman; Maria Thayer as Jerri's best girlfriend, Tammi Littlenut; Deborah Rush as Jerri's wicked stepmother; and David Pasquesi as her stepmother's lover, Stew. (A few key supporting characters, including Jerri's ethnic friend Orlando, and her half-brother Derrick, have been recast.) The smaller parts are filled out by the biggest stars, including Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, and Philip Seymour Hoffman; Broderick deserves two thumbs up for his turn as the superstar science teacher, Dr. Roger Beekman.

SWC the movie plays almost as a Reader's Digest version of the show, with Jerri up to her old tricks, including betraying friends and trying to seduce the popular boys. If diehard fans find any fault with the film, it may be that the script doesn't cover enough new territory; a hilarious opening sequence of Miss Blank in prison, for example, only leaves one wanting more. For those who haven't yet matriculated with Jerri, the best way to get to know her wickedly misguided ways is through the series. The show was like cake... the movie is just the icing. --Leah Weathersby