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Like Gray’s other films (Little Odessa, The Yards, We Own the Night), this one has an almost operatic quality, and even utilizes opera on the sound track. Two Lovers is infused with cinematic homages, as well, some more obvious than others. (Vertigo is clearly an influence.)

I can’t imagine two actors who could inhabit the leading roles better than Phoenix and Paltrow, and they are ably supported by Shaw and Isabella Rossellini—who, I have to admit, wouldn’t have been my first choice to play a Jewish mother. But, like everything else in the movie, she hits just the right notes.

141. WAKING THE DEAD

(2000)

Directed by Keith Gordon

Screenplay by Robert Dillon

Based on the novel by Scott Spencer

Actors:

BILLY CRUDUP

JENNIFER CONNELLY

HAL HOLBROOK

MOLLY PARKER

JANET MCTEER

PAUL HIPP

SANDRA OH

LAWRENCE DANE

ED HARRIS

If you were an active moviegoer in the early 1980s, you may remember Keith Gordon as the youthful star of such films as Dressed to Kill and Christine; he also played the young Joe Gideon in flashback scenes of Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz. Later that decade he fulfilled a longtime ambition to direct, piloting his own adaptation of Robert Cormier’s novel The Chocolate War. Since then he has brought his unique sensibilities to a handful of finely tuned dramas including A Midnight Clear, Mother Night, and my favorite, Waking the Dead.

Reviews were mixed for this ambitious film, which demands that the viewer make a leap of faith. I was willing to do so and was amply rewarded…but then I’ve always been a sucker for films that integrate fantastic and/or mystical elements into an everyday narrative.

The action moves back and forth in time, setting its story in motion during the early 1970s. Billy Crudup plays a straight-arrow Coast Guard officer who’s on a fast track to a political career when he meets an idealistic Jennifer Connelly. She goads him about his “easy” life and easier choices, and while they never quite see eye to eye politically they do fall in love.

But their relationship is star crossed, as we learn from latter-day scenes in which Crudup is now running for Congress, backed by a Chicago politico (Hal Holbrook) and engaged to his niece. Yet he cannot get over his passion for Connelly and won’t let go of the chance of seeing her again, even if logic says that isn’t possible.

I won’t reveal the story’s many twists and turns, except to say that they unfold against a credible backdrop of college-age idealism and backroom politics. Because Crudup and Connelly are so well cast and believable, we root for them and want their love to survive somehow. (Please note that the film is based on a novel by Scott Spencer, who also wrote Endless Love, another story of obsession.)

As a former actor Gordon makes a special connection with his cast. I once told Jennifer Connelly how much I liked this film and she revealed that it meant so much to her that she went through an actual mourning process when shooting was completed.

Waking the Dead offers a highly charged, emotional experience that speaks to one’s heart more than one’s mind—yet it never sacrifices intelligence for the sake of sentiment. That’s why I admire it so much.

142. THE WEATHER MAN

(2005)

Directed by Gore Verbinski

Screenplay by Steven Conrad

Actors:

NICOLAS CAGE

MICHAEL CAINE

HOPE DAVIS

MICHAEL RISPOLI

NICHOLAS HOULT

GEMMENNE DE LA PEÑA

GIL BELLOWS

JUDITH MCCONNELL

When a studio is in doubt about a film’s marketability, they will invariably sell it as a comedy, even if it isn’t. Thus good movies are torpedoed by their own advertising campaigns.

The Weather Man is a bittersweet, even melancholy, rumination about the American dream of success. Because it has a recurring gag in which angry people hurl food and drinks at Nicolas Cage on the street, that was the dominant visual “message” in all of its previews and commercials. It made a smart film look dumb, thereby keeping intelligent moviegoers away while failing to win over