WHEN HARRY MET SALLY – Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan and one of my favorites, Bruno Kirby. Ya gotta love that guy. This movie explores the really important dating issues, and the importance of being friends with your lover, as well as truly loving your friends. This movie is so clever and funny, of course…having an orgasm in a deli is not my idea of subtle humor.  And Harry Connick Jr. Singing jazzy Christmas classics?  Too Yummy!
 

 

 

* THE PHILADELPHIA STORY - Katharine Hepburn at her best. This movie, based on a play that was written for Katharine features the best Katharine line: “ReALLy I do” and really shows how funny this woman can be. Like ANY other human being could realistically portray Tracy Lord.

 

{No offense to Grace Kelly, but High Society (the musical version of the same story) just doesn’t do it for me.}

                           

                               This version has it all, Cary Grant AND Jimmy Stewart.

 

 

Labyrinth - This silly, antiquated fantasy adventure starring David Bowie is so campy and cute…but I LOVE it. It started it all: it sparked and continued my love for the Jim Henson Creature Shop.  The special part about it? Every time some new technology comes up, it is the harbinger of my conversion. When I got a VCR, it was the first tape I bought. I resisted owning a CD player, but the very first CD I ever bought? The Labyrinth soundtrack. Ditto for the DVD player. The annoying part? I know all of the dialogue by heart.

 

 

beautiful girls – Natalie Portman’s second movie (I think). This movie is filled with men I could fall in love with. And a love-struck tragedy of Elizabethan proportions, not really, but the ice-rink conversation is VERY cleverly wrought, filled with allusions and lots of wry humor. WAY too cool for a 12 year-old. The little vignettes of the interactions of the men with their beautiful girls, are so touching. I like to describe this as the chick flick a guy could have written, should have written, even.

 

 

 

*playing by heart – this movie was a straight-to-video release that I had never heard of, until Trevor brought it home. Now, I don’t dislike Angelina Jolie, but I maintain that all her past roles have been slightly off. Her performance in this movie was realistic and touchable, and the gold lame hot pants? This time, they weren’t over the top. Plus, the intricacies of the story-line are such that I liked watching it, I loved listening to the dialogue roll off the actor’s lips.

 

This all-star cast had to have undertaken this film for the sheer joy of the script. Else it would have been super-marketed to all the masses, and I wouldn’t feel like it was my “little secret” that I am sharing with you.