Christine Jones Movies

The storytelling device of the flashback gets an intense workout in this tragic coming-of-age drama. Mark Harmon stars as washed-up baseball player Billy Wyatt, who is shocked when he receives news that his childhood sweetheart and friend Katie Chandler (Jodie Foster) has committed suicide and left the disposal of her ashes to his judgment. Although Billy and Katie have not kept in touch through the years, he has always carried a torch for her, his first love. On his way home, Billy recalls his past associations with the free-spirited Katie: their first meeting, the time they made love, and conversations they had, mostly during summers at the New Jersey shore. Billy also remembers the adolescent mischief he got into with his best friend, Alan Appleby (played by Jonathan Silverman in the flashbacks, Harold Ramis in the present-day), like when each of them ended up sleeping with other's prom date. Billy finally decides to cast Katie's ashes to the wind in the place where they were happiest, by the seashore. Stealing Home was reportedly based on the real-life experiences of its writers, former Second City troupe members and WKRP in Cincinnati writers Steven Kampmann and Will Aldis. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

Woody Allen's romantic comedy of the Me Decade follows the up and down relationship of two mismatched New York neurotics. Jewish comedy writer Alvy Singer (Allen) ponders the modern quest for love and his past romance with tightly-wound WASP singer Annie Hall (Diane Keaton, née Diane Hall). The twice-divorced Alvy knows that it's not easy to find a mate when the options include pretentious New York intellectuals and lifestyle-obsessed Rolling Stone writers, but la-di-dah-ing Annie seems different. Along the rocky road of their coupling, Allen/Alvy weigh in on such topics as endless therapy, movies vs. TV, the absurdity of dating rituals, anti-Semitism, drugs, and, in one of the best set pieces, repressed Midwestern WASP insanity vs. crazy Brooklyn Jewish boisterousness. Annie wants to move to Los Angeles to find that fame that finally does in the relationship -- but not before Alvy gets in a few digs at vacuous, mantra-fixated California. Originally entitled Anhedonia (the inability to enjoy oneself), Annie Hall blended the slapstick and fantasy from such earlier Allen films as Sleeper (1973) and Bananas (1971) with the more autobiographical musings of his stand-up and written comedy, using an array of such movie techniques as talking heads, splitscreens, and subtitles. Within these gleeful formal experiments and sight gags, Allen and co-writer Marshall Brickman skewered 1970s solipsism, reversing the happy marriage of opposites found in classic screwball comedies. Hailed as Allen's most mature and personal film, Annie Hall beat out Star Wars for Best Picture and also won Oscars for Allen as director and writer and for Keaton as Best Actress; audiences enthusiastically responded to Allen's take on contemporary love and turned Keaton's rumpled menswear into a fashion trend. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi