About Time (2014)

Writer/director Richard Curtis (“Love Actually”) gives the time travel genre a romantic jolt with “About Time,” a comedy drama that would leave a Terminator wet eyed. On his 21^st birthday, gawky Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) learns from his dad (Bill Nighy) that the men in his family can time travel. How so? Never explained. (What about the women, eh?) What is important is that Tim cannot pop Hitler or meet Van Gogh. He only can travel within his own lifetime. Indifferent to wealth or fame, Tim wants to fall in love. That he does with art geek Mary (Rachel McAdams), who shares a first name with Tim’s mother, a factoid our boy awkwardly share every time they meet. I do mean “every time” as Tim replays meeting Mary on repeat until it’s perfect, a fantasy every human likely plays out in their mind. In a move that’s on the sleeve and quite welcome for it, Curtis tips that fantasy is wasteful: Enjoy the moment, be it awkward, soggy, messy, or glorious. Perfectly ordinary, Gleeson and McAdams are a delight together. Some of the funniest bits are the side roads, especially Tim feeding a forgetful VIP actor his lines from off stage. A-

His Girl Friday (1940)

The perfect romantic screwball. Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell are NYC journalists with the love they have for getting the latest story surpassed only by their love for each other. Odd then that they -– Grant is editor Walter Burns, Russell is reporter Hildy Johnson -– cannot stand each other and were quite recently married. Not enough room in a marriage when the third and fourth partners are outsize egos. The plot is beside the point against dialogue that demands instant replay as every rounded machine-gunned line pops one after the other and on top of one another, leaving the viewer spellbound. But here goes: Hildy returns to the newsroom that is her church and busts in on Burns’ office, declaring her intent to quit and marry an insurance salesman from Albany (Ralph Bellamy), which in newspeak equals marrying a scarecrow from Kansas. Burns has one ace up his sleeve: A sizzling murder trail he knows Johnson won’t refuse. The rest is marvelous. The puns and name drops (“Archie Leech!”) crash the fourth wall, a shout to the audience that no matter how much fun they’re having watching, the actors had more fun playing it. A+

The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)

This is rare: A remake smarter and cooler than the original. John McTiernan’s takes on 1968’s “The Thomas Crown Affair” starred Steve McQueen and Faye Dunanway and spun on a bank-robber billionaire. Here, Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo -- at the height of their stardom -– are in the spotlight with an art museum theft as the central plot device. Great change up. Brosnan is a Wall Street master who has grown bored with acquisitions and the back-slapping hoopla of taking other people’s money. But he loves oil and canvas, and a thrill. So he takes a Monet from New York’s Met. In broad daylight. During a giddy fun sideshow to a full-on robbery he orchestrated. Russo is the insurance investigator who care shit about art, but only the chase. She knows Crown did the theft, and he knows that she knows. Is the art the thing here? No. It's two bored powerful people who finally found the one who makes them tick. “Crown” is smart, damn sexy, and funny, with an insider streak that plays on the stars’ wattage, New York ego, and the prior film with Dunaway playing a wink-wink role. Brosnan and Russo are perfectly matched. B+