What the Flick

Happy Valentine's Day out there. And what better way to celebrate than with a fun movie? 2007 already has a great romantic comedy in Music & Lyrics.

The key ingredients for a romantic comedy are obvious -- first of all, it should be funny. Not sour funny like some awful version of Along Comes Polly. Not mean bittersweet crazy-family funny like Rumor Has It. And certainly not nasty argument funny like The Break Up. Hmmm, looking back on all that, I'm thinking a short cut would be to say "not a movie with Jennifer Aniston," and just be done with it. Also, it should be romantic. Seems simple enough, and yet, there are so few good ones. But today we have Music & Lyrics, which is cute funny,...

Kate Winslet, so pretty and winning in the live-action shopping catalog known as The Holiday (with Cameron Diaz, Jude So-Fracking-Gorgeous Law, and Jack Black), really frumps herself up to play the disenchanted suburban housewife, Sarah, in Little Children, a role for which she's received an Oscar nomination as best actress (sorry, Kate, it's going to Helen). Which is kind of funny, because the guy she ends up commiserating with, Patrick Wilson, is like...

You know how sometimes you'll be walking around and remember something and think, "note to self: check out those shoes;" or "note to self: use some mascara," or whatever? Well, seeing NOTES ON A SCANDAL did that to me, so here goes: note to self, don't become a cat-loving, bath-taking, diary-writing, gold-star awarding, psycho-stalking crazy old lady teacher. Because if I did become that, there's no way I'd be anywhere near as convincing and scary as Judy Dench in ...