Mike Newell

Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts), an Oakland State University Ph.D. student, is hired as an Art History instructor at Wellesley College for the 1953/54 school year. She is not an obvious choice as Wellesley is an exclusive upper crust institution where its faculty, students and alumni generally look down upon "State" universities. President Jocelyn Carr (Marian Seldes) runs Wellesley, the most conservation institution in the United States. Katherine intends to complete her PhD and is on probation at Wellesley for the first year. Katherine quickly learns that her paper credentials do affect how her students treat her. She also learns that the students are book smart, but do not know how to think for themselves. Their parents and the school administration foster a predetermined path in life for the girls, namely, to stick to traditional mores and thoughts, with the primary goal of marrying into a good family. Betty Warren (Kirsten Dunst), Joan (Julia Stiles), Giselle Levy (Maggie Gyllenhaal), Susan Delacorte (Laura Allen) & Connie (Ginnifer Goodwin) are Katherine's students in her art class & have read the entire books before the first class. They imply that Katherine can't impart any more knowledge & rudely leave her class. Amanda (Juliet Stevenson) & Nancy (Marcia Gay Harden) are Kath's apartment mates as she chose not to live in the college dorm due to its no male visitor rules. Nancy teaches speech, elocution and poise. Amanda is the College nurse and is a lesbian. Her companion was a teacher at the college who taught biology and has recently died. Bill Dunbar (Dominic West) is a fellow teacher at the college and has a reputation of sleeping with his students. Betty writes editorials in the school newspaper and has an out-sized influence on forming popular opinion on critical topics. There are pockets of free thinking among faculty and the students, but those thoughts and associated actions are generally quashed by the overall tone of the school. Katherine decides to instill into her students her own beliefs of what is important in learning. She starts her next class by bringing topics and images from art history that are not in the prescribed books and encourages debate on their relative merits and demerits. Betty is ultra conservative & looks down upon any thoughts of women's liberation. Giselle is an erotic woman. Giselle is willing to accept that woman like Katherine can choose to have a life without a husband and a family, but Betty is unwilling to accept the possibility that any woman would want a career over a family. Giselle agrees with Katherine that a woman's only role is not to oversee the advancement of her husband. Amanda is the school nurse & distributes contraceptives. Betty finds out, writes an article & gets Amanda fired via her mother (Donna Mitchell) who is the president of alumni association. Kath finds that Joan has ambitions to go to Yale for Law but is willing to sacrifice all for marriage. She encourages Joan to apply. Joan has a rich family boyfriend named Tommy (Topher Grace). Betty meanwhile sees Joan as her lifelong friend, getting married to rich families & raising kids in adjacent houses. Beth tells Joan that her fiance Spencer are good friends, and that Tommy is looking for an engagement ring for Joan. Meanwhile, Kath notices that Giselle is trying to get close to Bill Dunbar. In reality they had a falling out as Bill moved on to other conquests. Giselle gets jealous when she sees Dunbar making a love for Katherine. Giselle begs Dunbar to take her back, but he refuses and moves on. Betty gets married to Spencer Jones (Jordan Bridges) while in school. As Betty leaves for her honeymoon the mood in the class improves as they start to appreciate other perspectives. Joan tells her she has been accepted to Yale & Betty is furious. Kath's boyfriend Paul (John Slattery) is visiting her over Christmas & she makes him sleep on the sofa due to Nancy's stupid house rules. Paul proposes to Kath, but she refuses. Betty misses 6 classes due to her honeymoon & Kath threaten to fail her. Betty threatens consequences if she fails her. Betty tells Kath not to disrespect their traditions, just because she is subversive, while Kath wants her not to disrespect the class just because she is married. In her next editorial, Betty takes the shot at Katherine & says she is threatening the established marriage values & traditions at Wesley by encouraging girls to forsake marriage for their other ambitions in life. Kath is hurt that she is being criticized for training tomorrow's leaders & not their wives. Katherine makes the students realize that the smartest girls in the country are being trained not to think for themselves in the name of tradition. She demonstrates how all contemporary art is designed to berate any free-thinking woman and idolize the ones who are wiling to sacrifice their lives at the altar of marriage. Dunbar makes Kath realize that changes take time and that she needs to allow the college to catch up with her thinking. Dunbar calls her the Mona Lisa, for her smile. Kath has sex with Dunbar. As the news of this affair spreads, Kath is judged by Nancy. Connie is dating Charlie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), Betty's cousin. Connie is from a normal family & not filthy rich like Betty. Betty manipulates Connie into believing that she was Charlie's mistress as he was already seeing a rich girl. Connie stops meeting Charlie & later she finds out that Charlie had no girl friend at that time & Betty just didn't want Connie as part of her family. Connie reconciles with Charlie. Then Kath finds that even though Joan was accepted into Yale, that she would get married to Tommy & give up on Yale. Joan says to Kath that this was her choice. Joan says that not every housewife is a sellout of her dreams and ambitions. Betty criticizes Giselle for being a prostitute (for sleeping with Dunbar earlier and now having an affair with yet another older married man) but is hiding her own pain of her husband having an affair with another woman (Giselle saw Spencer in town with another girl in his arms). Giselle hugs Betty and she completely breaks down in her arms. At the year end, enrollments for Kath's class for next year are the highest for any faculty. So, the board of directors extend their offer of employment to Kath conditionally to her accepting that she would only teach the prescribed syllabus & submit her class plans in advance for review & change, with Betty as her strongest supporter. Kath meets Bill's friend Stan and finds that Bill has never been to Europe (Bill had claimed he was an Italian) and had lied to her about everything. Kath breaks up with Bill. By the end of the year, Kath's class fully accepts Kath & even discussed art in its true form. Betty files for divorce & gets an apartment with Giselle. Kath quits college & leaves for Europe.

FBI Agent Joe Pistone goes undercover and earns the confidence of Lefty Ruggiero, an aging hitman. As Joe moves deeper into the Mafia, his loyalties are put to the ultimate test.

The film follows the adventures of a group of friends through the eyes of Charles (Hugh Grant), a debonair but faux pas-prone Englishman, who is smitten with Carrie, an attractive American (Andie MacDowell), whom Charles repeatedly meets at weddings and at a funeral. The first wedding is that of Angus (Timothy Walker) and Laura (Sara Crowe), at which Charles is the best man. Charles and his collection of single friends wonder if they will ever get married. At this wedding, Charles meets Carrie for the first time and spends the night with her. Carrie teases him by pretending that, now they have been to bed together, they will also have to get married, which Charles endeavors to respond to before realizing she is joking. She then goes back home to America, observing that they may have missed an opportunity. The second wedding is that of Bernard (David Haig) and Lydia (Sophie Thompson), a couple who got together at the previous wedding. Rowan Atkinson makes his second appearance, this time as a fully-fledged but gaffe-prone priest conducting his first wedding ceremony through his connection as a friend of the family. Charles is happy to discover that Carrie is attending the wedding, until she introduces him to her fiance, Sir Hamish Banks (Corin Redgrave), a wealthy politician from Scotland. At the reception, Charles finds himself seated at a table with several ex-girlfriends who relate embarrassing stories about his inability to be discreet, and afterwards bumps into Henrietta (known among Charles' friends as "Duckface"), with whom he had a difficult relationship. As the evening wears on, Charles finds himself in an empty hotel suite watching Carrie and Hamish leave in a taxicab, only to be trapped in the bath after the newlyweds suddenly stumble into the room to have sex. After Charles awkwardly exits the room, Henrietta confronts him about his habit of "serial monogamy", telling him that he is afraid of letting anyone get too close to him. Shortly after this encounter, Charles runs into Carrie (without her fiance), and they end up spending another night together. A few months later, Charles receives an invitation to Carrie's wedding in Scotland. While shopping for a present in London he accidentally bumps into Carrie in a shop and ends up helping her select her wedding dress. Carrie also astonishes him with a list of her more than thirty sexual partners (he learns he is #32). He later tries to confess his love to her and hints that he would like to have a relationship with her. However, he says it rather lamely, and the confession obviously comes too late. The third wedding is that of Carrie and Hamish at a Scottish castle. Charles attends, depressed at the prospect of Carrie's marrying Hamish. As the reception gets under way, Gareth (Simon Callow) instructs his friends to go forth and seek potential mates; Fiona's brother, Tom (James Fleet), stumbles through an attempt to connect with the minister's wife, while Charles's flat mate, Scarlett (Charlotte Coleman), strikes up a conversation with a tall, attractive American named Chester. As Charles watches Carrie and Hamish dance as husband and wife, Charles's friend Fiona (Kristin Scott Thomas) deduces his feelings about Carrie. When Charles asks why Fiona is not married, she confesses that she has always loved Charles since they first met years ago. Charles is surprised and empathetic but does not seek her love. At the wedding, Gareth dies suddenly of a heart attack: Gareth's partner Matthew (John Hannah, in one of his first screen roles) is in another part of the room listening to the groom's toast when Gareth dies. The funeral is that of Gareth. At the funeral, Matthew recites the poem Funeral Blues ("Stop all the clocks...") by W. H. Auden, commemorating his relationship with Gareth. After the funeral, Charles and Tom have a discussion about whether hoping to find your "one true love" is just a futile effort, and ponder that, while their clique has always viewed themselves as proud-to-be-single, Gareth and Matthew had in fact been a "married" couple among them all the while. The fourth wedding takes place ten months later, and is that of Charles, who has decided to marry Henrietta. However, moments before the ceremony, Carrie arrives at the church and reveals to Charles that she and Hamish are no longer together. Charles has a crisis of confidence, which he reveals to his deaf brother David (David Bower). At the altar, when the vicar asks if anyone knows a reason why the couple should not marry, David asks Charles to translate for him, and says in sign language that he suspects the groom is having doubts and loves someone else. The vicar asks whether Charles does love someone else, and Charles replies, "I do." Henrietta punches Charles and the wedding is abruptly halted. Finally, Carrie visits Charles, who is recovering from the debacle, to check that he is OK and apologize for attending. Charles confesses that, while standing at the altar, he realized that for the first time in his life he totally and utterly loved one person, "and it wasn't the person standing next to me in the veil." Charles makes a proposal of lifelong commitment without marriage to Carrie, saying, "Do you think not being married to me might maybe be something you could consider doing for the rest of your life?" Carrie responds by saying, "I do." The song "Going to the Chapel" is then played as we see Henrietta marry a member of the guard, Scarlett marry Chester, David marry his girlfriend, Tom marry his distant cousin Deirdre (whom he met at Charles's wedding and instantly fell for), Matthew with a new partner (Duncan Kenworthy), Fiona marry Prince Charles (a joke), and Charles and Carrie with their son -- presumably not married.

A little league player named Chuck refuses to ever pitch again until nuclear weapons are disarmed. Basketball star "Amazing Grace" Smith follows the boy's example, and starts a trend. Chuck Murdock is an all American kid living in a sleepy town in Montana. He is the top pitcher of the little league team as well. After taking a tour of a nuclear silo, Chuck decides to quit playing little league until nuclear weapons are disarmed. Boston Celtic Amazing Grace Smith hears about Chuck's exploits, and decides to do the same thing. Amazing then moves to the young boy's town to live. More athletes follow suit as well. The town begins to hate Chuck and his family, and this makes Chuck's father angry. But can one kid's message make the world listen? —Pat McCurry <ccgrad97@aol.com>