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Enchanted April (1991)
: :This lovely, 1991 adaptation of Elizabeth Von Arnim's novel has a superb cast and a tone so mellow you can feel your pulse get slower. Josie Lawrence and Miranda Richardson play a pair of unhappily married women who rent an Italian villa for a month, sharing the rent with a crusty Englishwoman (Joan Plowright) and a lonely aristocrat (Polly Walker). Sun, rest, sinking into the green grass for long naps--they all have a soulful effect on the quartet, and then on the men in their ...
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101 Dalmatians
: essential video:It's hard to know who thought it would be a good idea to make a live-action version of Disney's animated classic. The one bright notion anyone had was casting Glenn Close as Disney über-villainess Cruella de Vil; her flashing eyes and angular features are a perfect match and do credit to what is one of the most indelible animated characters Disney has ever created. The story remains essentially the same, focusing on Cruella's plot to kidnap the puppies of a young married couple ...
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Photographing Fairies
: :The true story of two English children who claimed they photographed fairies in 1917 produced two different movies in the late 1990s. Not as well-known as the earnest family drama FairyTale: A True Story, the English-made Photographing Fairies takes a much more adult angle on the incident. The film follows not the children, but Charles Castle (Toby Stephens), a young photographer who loses his beloved wife on their honeymoon. A shell of a man through World War I, Castle rediscovers faith when he is convinced ...
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Ideal Husband (1999)
: :For truly clever dialogue and a smartly structured plot, you can't go wrong with Oscar Wilde. Wilde's play An Ideal Husband is not his best known, but this film adaptation has all the wit you could ask for and a cast with the chops to deliver it: Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth, Oscar and Lucinda), Julianne Moore (Short Cuts, Boogie Nights), Minnie Driver (Grosse Pointe Blank, Big Night), Jeremy Northam (The Winslow Boy, Emma), and especially Rupert Everett (My Best Friend's Wedding, A Midsummer Night's Dream), who ...
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How Many Miles to Babylon
: :For truly clever dialogue and a smartly structured plot, you can't go wrong with Oscar Wilde. Wilde's play An Ideal Husband is not his best known, but this film adaptation has all the wit you could ask for and a cast with the chops to deliver it: Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth, Oscar and Lucinda), Julianne Moore (Short Cuts, Boogie Nights), Minnie Driver (Grosse Pointe Blank, Big Night), Jeremy Northam (The Winslow Boy, Emma), and especially Rupert Everett (My Best Friend's Wedding, A Midsummer Night's Dream), who ...
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Emma (1997)
: :Similar to the equally excellent Valmont, this version of Jane Austen's classic novel had the misfortune of following a sumptuous big-star version with Gwyneth Paltrow, which was released the summer before. And, just as 1989's Valmont suffered comparisons with Dangerous Liaisons, inevitably these Emmas were held up next to one another. This delicious Emma concerns a young woman of financial substance (Kate Beckinsale), who fancies herself a matchmaker, especially with shy Miss Harriet Smith (Samantha Morton, who also appears in A&E's Jane Eyre). In Emma's ...
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Fish Called Wanda
: essential video:Kevin Kline took home an Oscar for his performance as a self-absorbed lothario who prepares for lovemaking by drinking in his own 'manly' musk, but it would be hard to single him out as the best thing about the film. The fact is, the entire cast of this hilarious comedy is perfect: John Cleese as the conservative barrister defending a member of sexy Jamie Lee Curtis's gang, Ms. Curtis as the conniving crook out to grab the haul for herself, and Michael Palin ...
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Moll Flanders (2pc) (Mobile Masterpiece Theatre)
: :This energetic, sardonic, and richly funny adaptation of Daniel Defoe's classic novel is completely unlike what you might expect from genteel Masterpiece Theatre. The heroine, Moll Flanders (Alex Kingston), after being born in prison, wends her way through the top and bottom of 18th-century English society, has five husbands (including a roguish highwayman who becomes the love of her life), many lovers (male and female), travels to America and back again, and in general discovers all that is cruel and sweet in life. Kingston tears ...
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Mansfield Park
: :In 1983, the BBC made this 261-minute miniseries from Jane Austen's novel Mansfield Park. Austen explores the well-tread theme of class distinction and the triumph of love, but Fanny Price (Sylvestra Le Touzel) is an original Austen creation. Fanny, from a large and poor family, is taken into the home of her wealthy uncle and aunt, the stoic Sir Thomas Bertram (Bernard Hepton) and the childlike Lady Bertram (Angela Pleasence, daughter of actor Donald). Also residing at the posh Bertram mansion are the oldest son, ...
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Fish Called Wanda
: essential video:Kevin Kline took home an Oscar for his performance as a self-absorbed lothario who prepares for lovemaking by drinking in his own 'manly' musk, but it would be hard to single him out as the best thing about the film. The fact is, the entire cast of this hilarious comedy is perfect: John Cleese as the conservative barrister defending a member of sexy Jamie Lee Curtis's gang, Ms. Curtis as the conniving crook out to grab the haul for herself, and Michael Palin ...
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