My best romantic movies

Clarck Gable and Vivien Leigh in their pre and post civil war romantic drama. The costume, the background, the actors, and the director himself,--everything in one and perfect place. Of course, it's my grandparents' era and I love it too.

Somewhere in Time is a film likened to a classic Gone with the Wind style--one of a few films which prevents them from ever becoming dated.

I was merely a teen when I watched this film. Yet, it is still witin me. When someone left you words of endearment like "Come back to me" and a beautiful pocket-watch, wouldn't you be mystified?

Richard ( the late Christopher Reeve) is a neophyte playwright attending his first ever premier when a mysterious old woman enters into the scene whilst fans are congratulating him on the success of his play. The woman places her hands on Richard saying: "Come back to me" then disappears. Baffled, Richard discoveres that she left something behind him to hold onto his hands--a beautiful turn-of-the century- pocket-watch.

Believing that this woman has something do to with his life, he decides to investigates and finds her name as "Elise" (Jane Seymour), a famous actress at her time in 1912.

Soon Richard wakes up from exhaustive dreams and sees her Jane Seymour standing with a look of 'deja vu'.

Just watched this film again last night, and I'm still captivaed and maybe this time with a bit of surrealism in me. The film is more of a capsule-of-the-moment on how timeless and rare true love can be and how quickly it can be taken from us.

Twenty years later, it is now a legend because there's really nothing else you can compare to it. Oh, if you have seen Kate and Leopold or Titanic, you'll possibly be more objective when giving a rating to this movie. Somehow this one stays with you...and somewhere...time is just there waiting for us.

The movie is far beyond watching it or listening to the music. We live in a collecting society, where the ancient urge to own little pieces of a story can be indulged on a fantastic scale. Together Jack and Rose form a pair of polar opposites, male and female, poor and rich. Jack stands for freedom, no boundaries, not accepting the limits imposed by society. At the beginning of the film, Rose is aligned, against her will, with society's conventions, encouraged by her own mother's grasping will to marry the dark prince of society.
Later, when the ship goes down, Jack gives her the vital knowledge of how to survive by staying out of the water as long as possible and swimming away from the suction of the sinking ship. Watching this movie --my heart goes on and on.

Casablanca is an old-fashioned, black-and-white film which even today, viewers are deeply moved and touched by the scenes. It's a film about the solidarity within a chaotic struggle for political power, not the thriving modern metropolis but an exotic hotbed of spies, black marketeers, refugees and Gestapo men where "everybody goes to Rick's."

Casablanca can be enjoyed apolitically and as a nolstalgic love story.

Many fans of Casablanca love the film's deceptively simple dialogue, and the flick's score, by Max Steiner, has become a trademark, especially the piano solo "As Time Goes By" performed by Dooley.

Presiding over Rick's Cafe Americain is Humphrey Bogart, who makes a difficult sacrifice, giving up the chance to be with the woman (Ingrid Bergman) he loves. Her sudden reappearance at Rick's tests the tortured Rick's loyalty to the limit. Their melancholic looks and gestures grip viewers more than those in any other movie of the time, making it easy to admire this classic masterpiece for its amorous, heroic, and poetic elements alone.

One of the most famous tag lines in this movie:
Rick: "Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Viewers today may not realize that Bogart was the second choice for this film, after Ronald Reagan, to play Rick

Directed by Michael Curtiz and produced in the US in 1942 by Hal Wallis, Casablanca is the ultimate cult movie.

A classic and remarkable movie. Robert's portrayal of a dedicated journalist has been an encouragement to others in similar situations. Yes, I don't fear for my career.

This is La Streisand's show from opening to end credits. If you love Barbara, you'll love this flick, especially when she sings 'Papa, Can You Hear Me?' with full emotive expression. This film is her long-cherished adaptation of Isaac Basheviis Singer's short story, 'Yentl, The Yeshiva Boy.' As well as directing and starring, she produced, and she is the only person who gets to sing, despite the presence of renowned musical star Patinkin.

Yentl (Streisand) is a young woman who wants nothing more than to study the Talmud, something forbidden to women. When her father dies, she cuts off her hair and convinces a Jewish school that she is a man so she can satisfy her hunger for knowledge. Things get complicated, however, when she becomes close to fellow student Avigdor (Mandy Patinkin), eventually falling in love with him, although she can not reveal her true self as she would then be expelled. Avigdor is in love with Hadass (Amy Irving), but religious law forbids him from marrying her.

Granted, this flick is not everyone's cup of tea, and many of my Flixster friends have avoided to watch it. Yet, looking at the other side of a coin, this story of a woman who yearns to study, who lives in a culture that says study is only for men then disguises herself as a man in order to get that education is a story of a strong woman who breaks the gender roles of her time, and a tangled love story. What was typically the male role has been blurred and practically obliterated as well as captures the essence of the Jewish woman's eternal struggle. It describes a woman's search for freedom and her discovery not only of love but of herself. My dear Barbra captures the character beautifully, the songs and the expression in her eyes and voice displaying clearly the feelings of a woman struggling for knowledge and love but torn between her desire to learn and the tradition of her religion.

As expected, the music and songs in Yentl received four Academy Award nominations, including two Best Songs. While David Watkin's photography is evocatively poetic, the film's pacing is overly reverential. Still, Streisand's voice very much remains her trademark.

romantic comedy--sweet and the taste lingers.

An era where no one dared to write about, but only one person--Jane Austen!

The value of womanhood re-evaluated.

Another Cinderella story, only with a big difference--time and place.

Love, war and death. That's what The English Patient is all about.

The English Patient is a cinematic epic that is rich in nuance, and yet poetic in its rendition of different locations and time periods.

Based on a novel by Michael Ondaatje, this flick dares to take an honest and raw look at emotion, plumbing the boundaries between love and death with sensitivity and nuance, deep feeling and powerful imagery.

The opening scenes establish the iconography of the film with a dream-like beauty, a shimmering, infinite landscape punctuated by carefully placed hieroglypths and ancient ruins. Reading between the lines, the imagery gives you more than what you have seen. It conjures deeper meaning, whether you see it as abstract, impressionism, semantics, surreal or just plain landscape. At first, these are as difficult to decipher as it is to recognize that the figure seated in front of Count Laszlo Almasy (Ralph Fiennes), in his flight across the desert, is his dead lover.

An unexpected plane crash transforms Laszlo into the disfigured English patient of the flick's title. Unable to move or to remember, his path leads him from the African desert to a bombed Tuscan monastery, where nurse Hana (Juliette Binoche) looks after him at the end of World War 2. As the count gradually recalls his great, though doomed, love affair, a second love story unfolds between Hana and an Indian soldier from the bomb-disposal squad.

The New York Times described this movie in 1996 as: dreamlike, nonlinear tale moves in much the same way, swooping gracefully from past to present, from one set of lovers to another, from the contours of the body to the topography of the desert sands.

Shakespeare in love is a fabulous comedy, full of drama, action, and witty dialogue, a costume piece which depicts the Elizabethan era but remains contemporary in pace and style.

The story takes place in London in the year 1593. William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes), an ambitious young poet, broods over his new play entitled Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Bride. He's under pressure, the theater manager is pounding on him and impatiently demands a final script. Until he meets the enchanting Viola (Gwyneth Paltrow).

Viola herself is mad about the theater, but gets the role of Romeo. She is disguised as a young man because women are not allowed to appear on the Elizabethan stage. Yet, gradually, the poet begins to see through the camouflage.

In a turbulent comedy of errors, Viola and Will end up as lovers. William overcomes his writer's block, art and love inspire each other, and the most beautiful verse flows from his pen, er, quill for the new play now called Romeo and Juliet.

Marcel Carne's Children of Paradise is uncommonly long (almost three hours) but an exceptional film. It is richly entertaining and intensely romantic evocation of an epoch.

The tale unfolds against a meticulously reconstructed setting of mid-19th century Paris. It tells of the doomed love between the famous mime Baptiste (Jean-Louis Barrault), and the beautiful courtesan named Garance (Arletty). Garance is loved by four men in this film, but she really only loves Baptiste. It's more of the bittersweet joy and sorrow of lovers--a classic story of love and loss.

The characters and the narrative skill are both admirable. The strength of the dialogue, the music and the majestic images created make this film a magnificent one. The costume and design reminds me of the old Moulin Rouge, with Paris as the best place to hold everything colourful and grandiose spectacularium.

It's not as great as Casablanca, but nevertheless, this film belongs in that same category.

This flick was described in 1945 as "a superlative dramatic and visual achievement of the French cinema." An ambition being realized at that time.