Mystic Pizza (Released in 1988) - A coming of age movie - Starring Annabeth Gish, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon and Lili Taylor

Released in 1988, Mystic Pizza is a coming of age film directed by Donald Pitrie. The movie follows the life of 3 girls, in the short span of time between high school and college. Even though life after high school and the movies made on it are more than a dozen, Mystic Pizza captures the spirit of anticipation and finding oneself so as to prepare for life ahead, with complete ease.
The 3 girls who steal the spotlight in the movie are 2 Portuguese-American sisters and friends, Kat and Daisy (played by Annabeth Gish and Julia Roberts), and their friend Jojo (played by Lili Taylor). The movie opens in a small resort town by the name of Mystic, Connecticut. We start the movie to find Jojo leaving her fiancé - Bill, (played by Vincent D’Onofrio) at the altar. She gets back with Bill, but is not ready to commit to marriage. Bill however puts his foot down and decides he does not believe in sex before marriage, leaving Jojo in a conundrum about whether her feelings are truly deep or just superficial.
Jojo, and Kat and Daisy are all shown to be working at a Pizzeria run by Leona, (played by Conchata Farrell) who is famous for her secret sauce. Meanwhile, Kat and Daisy may be sisters, but are quite opposite in every regard. While Kat has aspirations of perusing astronomy and will be going to Yale on a partial scholarship in the fall, Daisy is more laid back and wants to find love, through any means possible. Kat is the apple of her mother’s eye, while Daisy is more the black sheep.
Each of the girls gets their “temporary” Mr. Right only to have love blow up in their faces. While Kat maybe goal oriented, she is also naïve when it comes to love and idealism. She goes to babysit for 30 year old Tim (played by William Moses) an Anglo-American Yale graduate. Kat is mighty impressed by him, and starts to take a fancy to him, even though she knows he has a wife and child. She convinces herself that he would leave his wife.




Kat and Tim have intellectual conversations and both are impressed by the other, their idealism gradually turning to “love”, as Tim starts taking a liking to her, more because she is young and fresh, than because of her intellect. Meanwhile, Daisy is out one evening with her friends for a few drinks, when in walks Mr. Right. She is immediately attracted to his rich bad boy attitude, all the more, when he throws bulls eyes on the dart board after tequila shots. They start talking and she starts dating him.
The movie follows the 3 girls in their budding romance over a few months. Each love story turns sour, and teaches the girls a hard lesson. But, instead of making it preachy and overdramatic, the movie seems light and effortless. It does not try to force a point across but subtly keeps moving ahead. With the help of their “love interests”, the girls discover a lot about themselves and what they want in life. Rather than being a movie about girls in love, the movie is about how these girls discover their standards for love through the mistakes they make.
It is interesting to watch Annabeth Gish, Julia Roberts and Lili Taylor work their magic in the movie. Even though the setting is that of a small resort town, the characters created are smart and react in wonderfully unexpected ways. The movie is refreshing and well executed, not leaving room for clichés.  While Mystic Pizza did not do very well in the box office when it released, it started getting a sort of cult following over the years, with a lot of other movies, sitcoms and songs making references to Mystic Pizza.

Closer (Released in 2004) - A romantic drama - Starring Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen

Based on an award winning play of the same name, Closer is a romantic drama film directed by Mike Nicholas. The movie and the play are both modern day tragic versions of Mozart’s play Cosi fan tutte. With 4 central characters, played by Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen, the movie received many awards and accolades including Oscar nominations and Golden Globe wins. The movie plot follows the lives of 4 adults-Dan (played by Jude Law), Alice (played by Natalie Portman), Anna (played by Julia Roberts) and Larry (played by Clive Owen). The story outlines their relationships and the fascination they feel towards the game of “love”. They do not have any real love for their respective partners, and confess to cheating not because they feel guilty of it, but more so to hurt the other person. The story follows their “attempts” at sincere truthful relationships.
The movie starts with Dan and Alice walking across each other and catching each other’s eye. Harmless flirting follows, only to result in Alice getting knocked over by a taxi right in front of Dan. He rushes to help her and from there on, begins their relationship. Alice is shown to be a stripper from New York, who has come to England to get away from that life, and Dan is a struggling British Author. Cut to a year later, Dan has now written a book based on Alice, and has begun straying from their relationship. He meets Anna who is photographing Dan and his novel for publicity. He then goes about trying to convince Anna to get involved with him; she however turns down his advances after being confronted by Alice, who breaks down in front of Anna telling her she knows what Dan has been trying to do. Anna photographs Alice’s break down, to use it in her gallery opening later.




Some more time passes and Dan, who has been trying in vain to get Anna out of his head, now pretends to be her and starts a conversation online with a man named Larry. He makes Larry turn up at a place he knows Anna to frequent. Larry and Anna meet and Anna tells Larry he has been made a fool of, and that the man who must have hooked them up is Dan. Sometime later, Larry meets Alice at Anna’s photo exhibition. He recognizes her from one of the photos on the wall and knows she is with Dan. At the same venue, Dan convinces Anna to have an affair with him, in spite of both of them already having partners. She agrees, but half way through this affair, Larry and Anna marry. What follows is Dan’s and Anna’s submission of guilt to their respective partners.
Both couples break up as a result of this. Alice goes back to being a stripper, where she meets Larry. She goes by another name and no matter how many times Larry asks Alice her real name, she maintains that it is Jane Jones. Larry by then is all for revenge, he decides to get back at Dan, by making both - his present and ex-partner cheat on him. The end is all rather confusing, with total loss on all sides with regards to love and relationships. But, it leaves us wondering how much of their real selves did the four of them give in their respective relationships? Especially at the very end, when Dan is shown to be crossing the very street he did in the beginning of the movie, and he happens to see a name on a tile  dedicated to “Alice Ayers” who had saved 3 kids at the cost of her own life. And when Alice returns to the U.S, her passport shows her name as Jane Rachel Jones.  
It helps that all 4 speak articulately and enunciate well, especially in an era where actors tend to garble their dialogues. While they may be trying their hand at love and failing miserably (what with all the deception going around their private lives), their appearances and attitudes are sharp and classy. The movie is unique in its own way, especially in today’s insincere times. What makes it unique is how the characters go about pretending to be in love and talking about love, when they truly do not know what that is. Neither do they understand each other, nor do they understand who they are or what they want.