Moonlight and Valentino (1995)

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

A Young English professor (Elizabeth Perkins) loses her husband while an anxiety ridden best friend (Whoopi Goldberg), a quirky younger sister (Gwenyth Paltrow), and an attached ex-stepmother (Kathleen Turner) help her come to terms with life and love. First lead role I've seen Perkins take charge, Gwenyth in a new light a role that made me love her even more, Goldberg in the same light as Boys on The Side (1996), and Kathleen Turner pulls off a successful business mother vying for the affection of a daughter that doesn't belong to her, a beautiful thing. Joining the cast are a few of films sexiest men Jeremy Sisto and Jon Bon Jovi. Definitely worth the watch!

You know you're watching an awful Movie when After it's over you say to yourself, "Wow, and the best part of that was Jon Bon Jovi's performance!" Even though i had snuck into the cinema(something me and my mates did a lot in the mid 90's), I still felt like demanding my money back afterwards! i knew i wasn't enjoying the movie when i started to long for the thespian skills of Pauly Shore. I remember going to see this movie like it was yesterday and the bad taste still clings to the back of my throat like the memory of a romance that went sour.

I saw this film shortly before watching In Her Shoes with Toni Collette and Cameron Diaz. There are a lot of similarities between the two films. They both have great casts and good acting. They both have stock characters of sisters who are very different, an offensive stepmother, a woman friend/confidant, an emotionally unavailable father, a dead mother and a surprise lover. Both films have the characters experience life-changing realizations and both films suffer from a kind of 'love conquers all' sentimentality. They both add a little titillation with Cameron Diaz in black underwear and a partial back shot of Gwyneth Paltrow naked.Both films seem contrived, as if the writers of the works the films are based on did market research and said, "Ok, there's a market for stories about relationships between women, so I'm going to write about two sisters with an offensive stepmother…" In other words, instead of the drama emerging from the truth of the relationship, the relationship is invented to fit the dramatic situation. It seems forced, the characters don't seem real, the relationships are unbelievable.The resolution of the tensions between the characters is simplistic with simple apologies completely whisking away years of acrimony leaving everyone feeling warm and fuzzy ever after. It's just not real. Romantic fantasy.The characters in In Her Shoes are a little more overblown than Moonlight & Valentino, especially the stepmother part. Sydelle Feller, in In Her Shoes is so evil that it is difficult to believe that the father would stay with her, or even marry her in the first place. Kathleen Turner at least shows some emotional vulnerability as the stepmother in Moonlight & Valentino.If you liked Moonlight & Valentino you will probably like In Her Shoes as well. Enjoyable performances in both, in fact, the actors bring depth to their parts that goes way beyond the contrived sentimentality of the scripts.

"Moonlight..." is a slightly massaged and sanitized but insightful and warm look at a woman (Perkins) coping with grief with help from a distaff trio of family/friends. A beautifully crafted piece of work at all levels, this dialogue-intensive film spares us much of the usual mourning melodrama and gets right into the healing process with humor, charm, and sensitivity while exploring the principal's relationships and not lingering too long on the central grief issue. Overall, an entertaining piece which, IMHO, was scored too low by IMDB.com users because of the male side of the jury. Recommended for more mature audiences... and Ebert, wake up and smell the roses.