Joan Plowright

[7] Steve Martin and Queen Latifah star in this farcical comedy about a prison escapee who elbows her way into an uptight lawyer’s life so he can help her overturn her wrongful conviction. Most of the laughs in Bringing Down the House come from the black/white culture clash, as Latifah tries to make Martin ‘cool’ and Martin tries to help Latifah pass through racist white …

[7] During the opening credits of this Roland Joffé (The Mission, Vatel) version of The Scarlet Letter, a certain snippet of text appeared that allowed me to forgive quite a lot of the nonsense that would follow. The text read: “Based Loosely on the Novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne”. Loosely. So what the hell — why not have the American Indians rescue Hester from the gallows? …

[8] In pre-World War II Florence, a group of elitist British dames and a garish American art collector take in a small boy and raise him. When Britain and America enter the war several years later, the young man returns the favor by looking after the women when they’re interned by the Italian police — and helping to smuggle one of them out of the …

[9] Lawrence Kasdan (The Big Chill, Grand Canyon) directs this dark comedy based on the true story of a woman who tried to kill her husband after learning he had cheated on her. Kevin Kline and Tracey Ullman star as the husband and wife, pizza parlor owners whose love is strong enough to endure anything — even poisoning and two gunshot wounds! River Phoenix plays …