In no specific order...
1. Love Actually (2003): Although set during Christmas fever, this film provides a handful of love snapshots that pack an emotional punch heavy enough to have you nuzzling closer to your significant other, mustering up the courage to spill your heart out in front of your crush, or both!
2. Lars and the Real Girl (2007): A good V-Day movie with Ryan Gosling that isn't The Notebook? Yes. This film is touching and genuine, and will make you jealous of a mannequin.
Some movies need but an open mind and open arms to achieve something memorable. While The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a flighty and, at times, lost example of one, it is indeed one of those films.
Crafted by co-writer/director Terry Gilliam, whose noticeably French-influenced style of filmmaking makes him particularly interesting to keep track of, Parnassus will keep you as confused and insecure as its subject matter: a traveling sideshow headed by the immortal Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer).
The only thing consistent about the film is its inconsistency, caused perhaps by the death of its lead (Heath Ledger, as the sideshow's newcomer, Tony) mid-shoot, which resulted in a complete retooling and the casting of Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell as Tony's other selves; but to shrug off what becomes the film's critical feature—an askew universe that ties both the characters and viewers into knots—as a mere happenstance would be a nearsighted and lacking departure.
Recipe for When in Rome: Take 1 bland, expressionless leading lady, 1 male counterpart so average it hurts, a handful of trite, obnoxious supporting characters, mix them all together in a bowl of exploitative, sexist, depressing, repressing and suppressing ideology, and send it to hell to bake for 91 minutes. Congratulations director Mark Steven Johnson, it came out perfectly!
More disgusting and disturbing a film than any torture-porn out there, When in Rome is a vile retreat into gender stereotypes and male worship, a film that stitches together every one-dimensional character, every flat, overplayed joke, and every pig-headed idea of love that the movies have ever provided us into something truly terrible.
Beth (Kristen Bell) is a working girl who just can't seem to get love right. In Rome for her sister's wedding, Beth steals a variety of coins from a magical fountain in spite of romance and happy-endings, unknowingly cursing those whose coins were picked to fall in love with her.
