If I was impressed by the degree to which Julie Delpy showed the ugly side of the city of lights in 2 Days in Paris, then perhaps the only problem I ultimately had with Ethan Hawke’s tale of the complexities of love was that he kinda takes the same notion a little too far. I lost count of the number of times I changed sides during this movie’s first hour – both the guy and the girl alternating between gratingly annoying yet somehow perfectly understandable behaviour. For a good time, too, I couldn’t shake the thought that the movie would’ve been much better had it been made in the time of Reality Bites and Before Sunrise etc, with Hawke himself as the angry young man – rather than portraying that young man’s father slightly awkwardly as he does here – perhaps Winona Ryder or even Julie Delpy again in the role of the young woman.

It’s a very angry, angsty movie that will probably annoy a lot of people. There seems to me to be a lot of the self-absorbed Hawke we see in his Reality Bites character here – a character smart but one who’s really good wasting those smarts. And I’m not sure about the ending. But ultimately, I liked all the philosophical stuff that gets brought up around this character. Laura Linney’s couple of small scenes are stunning, “You are going to die. Relatively soon! So you have just two choices in life: you can deal with things badly, and be miserable, or you can deal with them well and be happy!”; and Ethan Hawke’s primary scene as the father at the end is a highlight too … “I don’t know what that says about me; but you bein’ here today, that says a hell of a lot about you.”

It’ll be better a second time around when I know what to expect. Seen alongside Delpy’s movie, it clearly lacks the warmth and humour, but in its own way it’s still a great thematic follow-up to the Linklater movies.

“Hey. This man’s talking about fascist vaginas.”

I was really looking forward to seeing this, especially as I ultimately did alongside Ethan Hawke’s The Hottest State. Especially in that context, it’s kind of hard to talk about this movie in particular without comparing it to Richard Linklater’s Delpy/Hawke starrers Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, and I’ll admit that my biggest fear about 2 Days in Paris was that it would, if anything, be too much like that masterful pair.

The similarities are absolutely there. Julie Delpy – who writes, directs, stars, edits, composes, probably caters – is very focused on relationships; on the little things that are actually big things that make and break them.

But what won me over and eventually utterly slayed me here was the humour. I don’t think I’ve laughed louder at a movie all year. Marion’s character’s father – played by Delpy’s father – keying the cars parked on the Paris curb; the strange man on the Metro and the way Adam Goldberg attempts to stare him out; the poor American tourists at the end; the “fairy” in the fast food restaurant.

What it comes down to is the final scene where Delpy realises (in her character and literally on film) that moment in a relationship where “you can’t face another break up, and you love their sneezes more than anyone else’s kisses.” It’s so corny in a way, but these two characters are every bit as believable as Jesse and Celine were in Linklater’s movies, and it works beautifully. I was astonished by how tolerable and even sympathetic Adam Goldberg turned out to be – his frustration at not being able to understand the French language is all at once annoying, funny, and sad. Delpy is able to show warts and all both male and female “sides” of the story (not a me thing to say, I know – but I don’t know, Delpy does it in a way that’s somehow acceptable to me, it all comes from individual character rather than for the sake of it), and her ability to portray Marion’s nastier side so nakedly is truly admirable. Definitely one I’ll revisit just as much as the Jesse/Celine story, and if you’re a Paris nut like me I’m sure you’ll love it too.

In short, this movie is everything I expected and more (incidentally, I apologise to the universe for not getting around to watching it sooner). Sure, the “more” is sometimes a little unnecessary – I really think the movie would work better at 90 minutes than 2 hours, and I can think of specific arrondissements that could be taken out (the Bob Hoskins one springs most immediately to mind, and the Alfonso Cuarón one is surprisingly forgettable too) ... then, you wouldn’t get the sense of completeness the movie has. For the very few times my attention slipped, though, there is an abundance of wonder that will take many more viewings to take in – just as the city itself requires more than one visit. The Tom Tykwer and Coen Brothers segments are really worth watching it for alone – but the biggest surprise is saved for the end, in the shockingly beautiful vignette by Alexander Payne, whose work has never really previously grabbed me as much as it has others. I’ll have a lot more to say about this movie in the future.

There’s not much left to say about this movie, and I’m surprised I’ve not reviewed it before. It’s visually among the most beautiful movies ever made. Audrey Tautou is like Hepburn brought back to life. The predominantly piano-based score by Yann Tiersen goes up there with Michael Nyman’s The Piano and Ennio Morricone’s Once Upon a Time in America on the “why the eff didn’t they even get nominated for an Oscar??”

All that said, I have to admit that for some reason the second half of the movie has disappointed me both this and the last time I saw it. I don’t know exactly why that is, possibly just a personal mood thing. Whatever the reason, I do tend to tune out over the last half hour, but it remains one of my all-time favourites because the startling glimmers of beauty – like Amélie guiding the blind man through the streets of Paris, her disruption of the mean old grocer’s day, her goldfish gazing up at her from the stream, the simply wonderful opening sequence of her as a young girl – are so frequent and mesmerizing, it’s impossible not to fall in love again every time. I’m gonna be harsh here and give it 4 stars but on a better day and for most people with a heart it’d be an easy 5.

What? I haven’t reviewed this one yet?!?

This is one of my all-time favourite movies. This viewing was the original theatrical cut, and though I prefer the longer “bootleg” / “Untitled” cut, there’s barely any difference except the length. It’s just, if you love the movie, you just don’t want it to end: that’s why I think the longer cut is better. This movie is pure love to me.

I’m guessing I first watched this movie in 2003 (it certainly wasn’t last year but I remember thinking at the time ‘why has it taken me so long to see this?’) and the biggest reason for my love of it is how much it changed my love of music. In a way, the movie acted for me the same way Zooey Deschanel as William Miller’s sister does for him when he is a young boy – dropping a handful of hints about what rocks, hints that lead to a whole journey of personal and musical discovery. “One day, you’ll be cool,” she tells the 11-year-old in flat-on, talk to the camera close-up before she leaves, one of my favourite shots of this or any movie. If only all of us could have such a big sister. When she reappears at the end, the relief is so palpable. Zooey Deschanel must be onscreen for less than 10 minutes of the movie but she makes a hell of an impression.

I love how real the movie comes across. Of course it’s all partly Cameron Crowe’s autobiography, but even the little things like character names etc come across as very authentic. After first viewing the movie I was entirely convinced that there really was a band called Stillwater back in the Seventies (there actually was, apparently, but they weren’t anything like the Stillwater in the movie).

But most of all, my love of this movie is down to two things – the blending of Nancy Wilson’s score and Kate Hudson’s performance as Penny Lane. When both are working together, like when Penny first meets Russell Hammond, and when she asks William “What … kind of beer?”, and when she’s dancing alone in a post-concert empty hall; this movie touches me like nothing else but love itself. I want to be with these people, I want to sit on that bus and sing “Tiny Dancer”, I want Frances McDormand to be my overconcerned mom, Zooey Deschanel to be my offbeat big sis, I want to be around these people who say things like, “If you ever get lonely, just go the record store and visit your friends.” This movie is as much a part of my life as any movie will ever be, I love it.

I guess I’m watching this now to try and get the foul taste of Moodysson’s latest Hole in My Heart out of my mind. This one has a happy ending, I recall, it will therefore make me happy. Weird thing is, coming back to it after Hole and the similarly shattering Lilya 4-Ever, in addition to the very disturbing short movie, “Talk,” included as an extra on this new Region 2 DVD (annoyingly only available in the Lukas Moodysson box set), I couldn’t help focusing in on the more negative aspects of this movie now. Gee, thanks, Lukas.

It’s still a lot more fun to watch, though. For better or worse, it probably paints the most realistic portrait of teenagers ever seen in the movies: at once beautiful, pathetic, and inconsequential. The soundtrack is excellent and the two leads are perfect for each other.

An all-time favourite that never lets me down, yet I don’t know what to say about it. It’s the ultimate romance-gone-too-far-gone-sour movie. I don’t think Kate Winslet has ever been better; I almost want to say the same for director Peter Jackson; and Melanie Lynskey is great in everything she does. The combo of Peter Dasent’s score and Mario Lanza songs make for one of the best soundtracks, and the visual effects, while a little on the low budget side, are somehow perfect for the young girls’ fantasy world. I don’t think beautiful and disturbing have ever been so close.

I really hope Quentin Tarantino lets some more of his scripts go out to other directors in the future, because the few examples we have of other directors dealing with his work, including this one, are really quite interesting. I remember reading an interview with Tarantino where somebody had asked him something along the lines of, “When are you gonna do a romance movie?” and he was like, “I did romance, I did True Romance!” It seems with each subsequent Tarantino movie, you can go back to this one and it seems more and more non-Tarantino-esque. Everything about this movie, including the remaining dialogue from his original script, seems to be striving for cuteness. From the Badlands like opening with Hans Zimmer’s imitation of the music and Patricia Arquette’s Southern drawl voiceover, to the repetition of the theme over dreamy close-ups of the characters as they have heartfelt revelations… even in the final shoot-out, feathers rain down on the blood… it all comes to a head I guess with the napkin on which Alabama (Arquette) scrawls “You’re so Cool!” It’s an extremely romantic movie in its own right, never mind “for a Tarantino movie…” This really is genuinely, so Cool!