Nora Ephron

Sleepless in Seattle (10th Anniversary Edition)

Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan star in Nora Ephron's wonderfully romantic comedy about two people drawn together by destiny.Tom Hanks stars as Sam Baldwin a widowed father who thanks to the wiles of his worried son becomes a reluctant guest on a radio call-in show. He's an instant hit with thousands of female listeners who deluge his Seattle home with letters o comfort. Meanwhile inspired in equal parts by Sam's story and by classic Hollywood romance writer Annie Reed (Meg Ryan) becomes convinced that it's her destiny to meet Sam. There are just two problems: Annie's engaged to someone else and Sam doesn t know - yet - that they're made for each other.System Requirements:Running Time: 105 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: PG UPC: 043396016323 Manufacturer No: 01632

You've Got Mail

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

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

Michael

After the box-office success of Phenomenon, John Travolta continued to charm audiences with this 1996 comedy-fantasy in which he plays a grubby angel who's got one last good deed to do before heading back to heaven. Living peacefully in the rural Iowa home of an old, friendly motel owner (Jean Stapleton), the winged Michael (Travolta) is hardly the image of a perfect angel. He's scruffy, unshaven, eats sweetened cereal by the box-full and chain-smokes all day long. But when tabloid reporters (William Hurt, Robert Pastorelli) learn of Michael's alleged existence and head to Iowa to check him out, Michael soon realizes that it's his task to see that Hurt falls in love with an "angel expert" (Andie MacDowell) and breaks free from his habitually cynical attitude. There's more to the story, of course (and Chasing Amy fans will recognize Joey Lauren Adams as a waitress who charms the angel), but Michael is more about the effect that this enchanting angel has on the earthbound humans around him. Whether he's chipping away at Hurt's skepticism or attracting a crowd of women on a truck-stop dance floor, Michael is an enchanting figure, and Travolta plays him with just the right tone of humor, reverence, and effervescent charm. Sure, it's lightweight fluff, but director Nora Ephron specializes in lightweight fluff, and Michael is the kind of feel-good movie that never wears out its welcome. --Jeff Shannon

Tabloid reporters go to investigate reports that an angel is living in Iowa and imagine their surprise when they indeed do find an angel.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: PG
Release Date: 8-FEB-2005
Media Type: DVD

You've Got Mail (Deluxe Edition)

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.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY/ROMANTIC COMEDY UPC: 085391164197 Manufacturer No: 1000025469

Bewitched (Special Edition)

An actor trying to save his career seeks to remake the 1960's sitcom with an unknown actress, the woman chosen is a witch trying to live as a mortal.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 8-SEP-2006
Media Type: DVD

As one of many in the ongoing trend of resurrecting old TV shows and turning them into contemporary Hollywood product, Bewitched tries awfully hard to distinguish itself. It succeeds in lots of surprising ways, not least of which is the star power brought by Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell. Even if they don't create the kind of romantic chemistry that would have elevated the already high concept, they act as delightful foils to each other, but more often to themselves. The conceit of this Bewitched is that it's a self-reflexive look at the entertainment business, with Ferrell playing Jack Wyatt, an actor starring in an updated version of the classic TV show. Out of favor with the Hollywood elite and desperately in need of a hit, he insists on an unknown to play Samantha, as he wants the show to be about him, since if something doesn't come his way soon, he's going to be hearing a lot of no's, despite the yes-men surrounding him. While his agent (Jason Schwartzman in hilarious high Hollywood sleaze mode) gets him the "unknown Samantha" deal, it's Jack himself who discovers his own leading lady in the delightful figure of Isabel Bigalow (Kidman), who possesses just the right nose wiggle, not to mention other wiggles.

But wouldn't you know it, Isabel really is a witch, and exactly the kind of "good" witch trying to rely less on her magical powers that Samantha Stevens was back in her "real" world. Instead of a cranky mother like Endora, Isabel has a distinguished father, Nigel (Michael Caine) who lurks around her as a constant reminder that she can't be who she's not (a mere mortal), and she certainly can't be the star of some zany TV show. As the plot thickens and the movie's reflexivity grows more convoluted, Nigel falls for the non-witch actress who plays Endora (Shirley MacLaine), and Jack and Isabel fall for each other. Here's where the Ferrell/Kidman gel doesn't quite become aspic, but her perkiness (I mean, come on, it is Nicole Kidman, for crying out loud) and his goofiness (Ferrell is at his peak of intelligent bumbling) are more than enough to make the entirety of the proceedings a delectable trifle. Director Nora Ephron has fun skewering her own business in the script she co-wrote with her sister Delia, and her eye for quality craft makes everything sparkle as it should. Even if we have yet to see the definitive remake of an old TV show on the big screen, at least Bewitched is well more than run-of-the-mill as so many adaptations have been, and so many will be. --Ted Fry

Sleepless in Seattle (Special Edition)

Mixed Nuts

Martin is a nutty suicide hotline worker whose group is about to be evicted on Christmas Eve.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 1-JUN-2004
Media Type: DVD

Writer-director Nora Ephron hit a low point with this disappointingly dreary comedy set in a suicide clinic on Christmas Eve. The joke is supposed to be that all of the crisis counselors are themselves a pack of lovable losers, led by a badly toupeed Steve Martin. But it's a short step from lovable loser to annoying dweeb and most of the people in this movie cross that line very quickly. It's too bad, because the cast includes Madeline Kahn, Robert Klein, Rob Reiner, Garry Shandling, and Adam Sandler. Somehow, Ephron manages to restrain this lineup from doing anything funny. --Marshall Fine

Lucky Numbers

John Travolta plays Russ Richards, a small-town weatherman who is such a local celebrity that he even has his own table at the local Denny's. He obviously sees himself as a big deal about town, and he's got the spending habits to prove it, including payments on a big house and a fancy Jaguar. His unstable life is further complicated by the fling he's having with the station's lotto girl (Lisa Kudrow), who is also having an affair with the married station manager (Ed O'Neill). On the verge of bankruptcy, Russ asks the advice of his good friend and strip club owner Gig (Tim Roth), who cooks up a plan to fix the lottery. The hardest part of the whole scheme turns out to be finding a trustworthy person to cash in the ticket. This is a mean-spirited comedy, which is to be expected from writer Adam Resnick (Cabin Boy, TV's Get a Life), but not from director Nora Ephron (You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle). Then again, maybe she always has patronized the characters in her movies. Clearly, the casting needed to tap into the oddball surrealism of someone like Chris Elliott, whereas Travolta is just playing a dumb, self-deluded guy, and Kudrow, in her most unlikable role yet, is playing not just a ditz but a ditsy sociopath. The movie is not a total waste, thanks mostly to some stunning supporting performances by Tim Roth, Ed O'Neill, and especially Bill Pullman as the lazy cop. Overall, a mixed bag. --Andy Spletzer

Hitch (Widescreen) / Bewitched (Special Edition)

Love Tickles (My Best Friend's Wedding / Sleepless in Seattle / The Wedding Planner / As Good as It Gets)

My Best Friend's Wedding
One of the best romantic comedies of the 1990s, My Best Friend's Wedding not only gave Julia Roberts a delightful vehicle for her crowd-pleasing comeback, but it further distinguished itself by avoiding the conventional plotting of the genre. Julia plays a prominent Chicago restaurant critic whose best friend (Dermot Mulroney) is a former lover from her college days with whom she'd made a binding pact: if neither of them were married by the age of 28, they'd marry each other. Just when they're about to reach the deadline of their agreement, Mulroney arrives in Chicago to introduce Roberts to his seemingly perfect fiancée (Cameron Diaz) and announce their wedding in just three days. That leaves the shocked Julia with just three short days to sabotage the wedding and marry the man she now realizes she's loved all along. With potential heartbreak waiting in the wings, she'll either get what she wants or pay the price for her selfish behavior, and Ronald Bass's cleverly constructed screenplay keeps us guessing to the very end. Rupert Everett scored rave reviews for his scene-stealing performance as Robert's gay friend who goes along with her scheming (but only so far), and even as she makes her character's needy desperation disarmingly appealing, Roberts wisely allows Diaz to capitalize on her charming time in the spotlight. As the romantic outcome remains uncertain, the viewer is held in a state of giddy suspense, and director P.J. Hogan pulls off some hilarious scenes (like a restaurant full of people singing the Dionne Warwick hit "I Say a Little Prayer") that could easily have fallen flat in the hands of a less talented filmmaker. It's no surprise that this was one of the box-office smashes of 1997. --Jeff Shannon

Sleepless in Seattle
The director and stars of 1998's You've Got Mail scored a breakthrough hit with this hugely popular romantic comedy from 1993, about a recently engaged woman (Meg Ryan) who hears the sad story of a grieving widower (Tom Hanks) on the radio and believes that they're destined to be together. She's single in New York, he lives in Seattle with a young son, but the cross-country attraction proves irresistible, and pretty soon Meg's on a westbound flight. What happens from there is ... well, you must have been living in a cave to have let this sweet-hearted comedy slip below your pop-cultural radar. There's little complexity or depth to writer-director Nora Ephron's cheesy tale of a romantic fait accompli, and more than a little contrivance to the subplots that threaten to keep Hanks and Ryan from actually meeting. But the purity of star chemistry here is hard to deny, and this may be the first film to indicate the more serious and sympathetic side of Hanks that is revealed in later roles. With its clever jokes about "chick movies" and repeated homage to the classic weeper An Affair to Remember, this may not be everybody's brand of amorous entertainment, but it's got an old-Hollywood charm that appeals to many a movie fan. --Jeff Shannon

The Wedding Planner
The good news is, yes, Jennifer Lopez can do comedy. In The Wedding Planner Lopez is Mary, a lovable woman who believes "those who can't do, teach. Those who can't wed, plan!" Her slapstick moments are lighthearted and she is spot-on as the controlling, compulsive-yet-sweet planner. The bad news is Lopez didn't get much of a vehicle in which to test drive her newfound comedic skills. Mary's life is her career. Planning other people's weddings takes all of her time, leaving no room for a love life of her own. Her only personal life is a Scrabble club, to which she and her father (Alex Rocco, whose wandering Italian accent is painful to listen to) belong. When a handsome young doctor (Matthew McConaughey) saves her from a collision with a runaway dumpster (really, it works), she is instantly wooed by his quiet charm. Too bad he's the fiancé of Mary's biggest client, Fran (played winningly by Bridgette Wilson-Sampras), the job that will launch Mary as a partner in her firm. The main problem with this film is that no one wants to hurt anyone else's feelings. Everyone is just so gosh-darn nice. In a subplot, Mary's father is trying to arrange her marriage to just the nicest Italian boy. Gee, he's sweet. Golly, Fran is nice. Is there ever a way out of this mess and to leave everyone smiling? Yet, there is a touch of old-fashioned romance to this wholesome film, which can only be described as "cute." And while things may unfold in a predictable manner, The Wedding Planner is still lighthearted fun of the sort that inspires dreamy romantic thoughts. --Jenny Brown

As Good as It Gets
For all of its conventional plotting about an obsessive-compulsive curmudgeon (Jack Nicholson) who improves his personality at the urging of his gay neighbor (Greg Kinnear) and a waitress (Helen Hunt) who inspires his best behavior, this is one of the sharpest Hollywood comedies of the 1990s. Nicholson could play his role in his sleep (the Oscar he won should have gone to Robert Duvall for The Apostle), but his mischievous persona is precisely necessary to give heart to his seemingly heartless character, who is of all things a successful romance novelist. As a single mom with a chronically asthmatic young son, Hunt gives the film its conscience and integrity (along with plenty of wry humor), and she also won an Oscar for her wonderful performance. Greg Kinnear had to settle for an Oscar nomination (while cowriter-director James L. Brooks was inexplicably snubbed by Oscar that year), but his work was also singled out in the film's near-unanimous chorus of critical praise. It's questionable whether a romance between Hunt and the much older Nicholson is entirely believable, but this movie's smart enough--and charmingly funny enough--to make it seem endearingly possible. --Jeff Shannon