She's the One is actor-writer-director Edward Burns' second film, following the widely acclaimed The Brothers McMullen. Given a slightly larger budget to play with ($3m as against his debut project's $25,000), Burns revisits much the same territory-love and sibling rivalry within a New York Irish-American family-but rather more expansively. This time, too, he can run to a few stars-in-the-making (Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Aniston, and John Mahoney from Frasier) to jazz up his cast of relative unknowns. Burns himself plays Mickey, a cab-driver in the Big Apple, with Mike McGlone as his yuppie stockbroker brother, and Maxine Bahns as Hope, the girl Mickey falls for and impulsively marries, much to the romantic delight of Francis' neglected wife Renee (Aniston). Francis, meanwhile, is having a clandestine affair with Heather (Diaz), Mike's former girlfriend-something Mike has yet to learn. Dispensing flawed wisdom and generally muddying the waters yet further is the lads' blunt-spoken father (Mahoney). Plotwise that's about it. Burns relies on his appealing cast and some amiably barbed repartee to hold our interest in what's essentially a dialogue-driven movie. He makes shrewd and sometimes unexpected use of his New York locations, too-it's a fair bet most people's mental image of Brooklyn wouldn't include a waterfront fishing community. This is a good-natured, slightly old-fashioned movie whose benevolent view of the battle of the sexes (where the women are invariably smarter than the men) never digs too deep or hits too hard. [+]

The Holiday As a pleasant dose of holiday cheer, The Holiday is a lovable love story with all the Christmas trimmings. In the capable hands of writer-director Nancy Meyers (making her first romantic comedy since Something's Gotta Give), it all begins when two successful yet unhappy women connect through a home-swapping website, and decide to trade houses for the Christmas holiday in a mutual effort to forget their man troubles. Iris (Kate Winslet) is a London-based journalist who lives in a picture-postcard cottage in Surrey, and Amanda (Cameron Diaz) owns a movie-trailer production company (leading her to cutely imagine most of her life as a "coming attraction") and lives in a posh mansion in Beverly Hills. Iris is heartbroken from unrequited love with a cad of a colleague (Rufus Sewell), and Amanda has just broken up with her cheating boyfriend (Edward Burns), so their home-swapping offers mutual downtime to reassess their love lives. This being a Nancy Meyers movie (where everything is fabulously decorated and romantic wish-fulfillment is virtually guaranteed), Amanda hooks up with Iris's charming brother Graham (Jude Law), and Iris is unexpectedly smitten with Miles (Jack Black), a super-nice film composer on the downside of a failing relationship. -Jeff Shannon Love Actually With no fewer than eight couples vying for our attention, Love Actually is like the Boston Marathon of romantic comedies, and everybody wins. Having mastered the genre as the writer of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Bridget Jones's Diary, it appears that first-time director Richard Curtis is just like his screenplays: He just wants to be loved, and he'll go to absurdly appealing lengths to win our affection. With Love Actually, Curtis orchestrates a minor miracle of romantic choreography, guiding a brilliant cast of stars and newcomers as they careen toward love and holiday cheer in London, among them the Prime Minister (Hugh Grant) who's smitten with his caterer; a widower (Liam Neeson) whose young son nurses the ultimate schoolboy crush; a writer (Colin Firth) who falls for his Portuguese housekeeper; a devoted wife and mother (Emma Thompson) coping with her potentially unfaithful husband (Alan Rickman); and a lovelorn American (Laura Linney) who's desperately attracted to a colleague. There's more-too much more-as Curtis wraps his Christmas gift with enough happy endings to sweeten a dozen other movies. That he pulls it off so entertainingly is undeniably impressive; that he does it so shamelessly suggests that his writing fares better with other, less ingratiating directors. [+]

Doris Day was nearing her popular zenith, and Jack Lemmon just hitting his stride, when they teamed up for It Happened to Jane, a small-town comedy in the Capra vein. Doris is a widowed mom whose Maine lobster business is snarled by railroad tycoon Ernie Kovacs (hiding behind a skullcap and a huge cigar), the "meanest man in America. " Her lawsuit against him, aided by lawyer-suitor Lemmon, gains national headlines. This is a curious movie: crucial scenes seem to have been left unwritten, while sequences involving Cub Scouts and an oddly impassioned Town Hall Meeting go on endlessly. Director Richard Quine was making some fun movies around this time (Bell, Book, and Candle), but the fizz is only intermittent here, mostly provided by Lemmon's jack-in-the-box youthfulness. Doris sings a couple of tunes and brings her downhome tomboy routine to New York City, where the movie employs some of the quaint TV personalities of the day. -Robert Horton.

Actor-director Griffin Dunne made his filmmaking debut with this ethically ambiguous and not-very-funny movie about a pair of jilted lovers (Meg Ryan and Matthew Broderick) who conspire to break up a relationship between their ex-sweethearts (Tchéky Karyo and Kelly Preston). Part classic screwball comedy, part nightmare along the lines of Martin Scorsese's After Hours (in which Dunne starred), part tribute to Hitchcock's Rear Window, Addicted to Love is all over the map and seriously hampered by the sheer, unwarranted nastiness aimed at the innocent characters played by Karyo and Preston. The DVD release includes production notes, original theatrical trailer, optional widescreen and standard formats, and optional French and Spanish soundtracks. -Tom Keogh, Amazon. com.

The premise is delicious: A young, by-the-book FBI agent (Colin Hanks) is given his new, highest-profile assignment yet-spying on his own mother (Meg Ryan). My Mom's New Boyfriend is a romantic comedy (long on both romance and comedy), giving Ryan her first film in a long time where she can take the laughs and run with them. Viewers will remember, with a grateful sigh, why she long reigned as the queen of American romantic comedy. Ryan plays Marty, devoted mom, who last saw her son, Henry (Hanks), three years ago when she was unhealthy, coarse, and overweight (looking like she might have borrowed Monica's fat suit from Friends). When Henry returns home from his secret op, fiancée (Selma Blair) in tow, Marty's still coarse, but has become a babe with a healthy libido ("Oh Henry, lighten up!" is Marty's oft-repeated refrain). Henry is horrified, but his girlfriend, Emily, is entranced. In fact, some of the film's best chemistry is between these two gifted actresses, as they spark and feed off each other's energy. When Marty takes up with the sultry Tommy (Antonio Banderas), Henry gets the ultimate "TMI" assignment: spying on his mom and her honey, suspected in an art theft ring. Hanks squirms convincingly, Banderas smoulders, and Ryan truly sparkles, unleashing her wacky side. If the plot has a few potholes, it doesn't matter because the cast is stellar and has such magnetism. [+]

Few films have defined a generation as The Graduate did. The alienation, the non-conformity, the intergenerational romance, the blissful Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack-they all served to lob a cultural grenade smack into the middle of 1967 America, ultimately making the film the third most profitable up to that time. Seen from a later perspective, its radical chic has dimmed a bit, yet it's still a joy to see Dustin Hoffman's bemused Benjamin and Anne Bancroft's deliciously decadent, sardonic Mrs. Robinson. The script by Buck Henry and Calder Willingham is still offbeat and dryly funny, and Mike Nichols, who won an Oscar for his direction, has just the right, light touch. -Anne Hurley, Amazon. com.

The Goodbye Girl is a bittersweet comedy about relationships and taking chances. Though it deals with the human condition, what most quickly comes to mind are those wickedly comedic scenes featuring Richard Dreyfuss in an Oscar-winning role. He plays a struggling actor with a sharp tongue who has sublet an apartment from single mom Marcia Mason, a divorcie with horrific taste in men, who are always running out on her. She is left high and dry once more, stuck sharing her apartment with Dreyfuss when he hasn't the heart to enforce his lease and toss out mother and daughter. Neil Simon's play shines under the direction of Herbert Ross as these two mismatched people find their contempt changing into mutual admiration. Quinn Cummings is more interesting than most precocious child stars; she seems brighter and her manner is prickly instead of cloying. Watch this film just for the scene in which Dreyfuss plays Richard III in an off-off-Broadway play. He lisps, he limps, he screams. It is the worst cinema you will ever see-and thoroughly hilarious. -Rochelle O'Gorman.