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Our favorite romance films

Our favorite romance films

To celebrate the release of our forthcoming Romance and Comedy Award 2023 we have put together a small list of our favorite romantic films that we think all writers should watch.

The list isn’t intended to be comprehensive, and these aren’t categorically the best the genre has to offer! But they are our favorites, and there are important lessons for writers to learn from all of them…


1. DOCTOR ZHIVAGO
David Lean was on a roll by the time he came to make DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, having just made BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA – and it shows. The bleak wastes of Russia make for a beautiful backdrop, but center stage is a sweeping love story that carries us through the brutality of the country’s political turmoil of the early 20th century. This film is the very definition of the term “epic”. At over three hours long, it shows that if you make the human elements of your story strong enough, it’s still enough to keep an audience engaged for however long.

2. ROMEO + JULIET
There was no way we could compile this list without mentioning the original pair of star-crossed lovers – it was just a question of which version! Special mention goes to the 1968 version, but it’s Baz Luhrmann’s modern re-imagining which gets our vote. The beginning of the film is too hectic, but once the lovers meet it becomes a sumptuous, tragic tale full of stolen moments and forbidden love.The original script was written by some guy called Shakespeare, who seems to have been pretty good at his job: he fills the story with passion, jokes, despair, tragedy and revenge all in one go.

3. ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND
Memories of a failed romance can be painful – and that’s why Joel and Clementine choose to have theirs erased in Charlie Kaufman’s Oscar-winning script. Like much of Kaufman’s work, it’s a mind-bending concept (literally, in this case), but it’s also a touching exploration of love, loss, and the nature of heartache. Jim Carrey turns in a surprisingly subtle and understated performance that suits him, while Kate Winslet picked up her fourth Oscar nomination for hers, but ultimately it’s the script that powers this beautifully poignant film.

4. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
The first animated film to be nominated for Best Picture, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is either a film about Stockholm Syndrome or how true love looks beyond mere appearances – but we choose to believe the latter. With fantastic animation, catchy songs, and a tale as old as time, this is the perfect example of how to tell a fairytale romance. Just don’t get us started on the live-action remake, which turned the Beast into a jerk and featured a bit too much auto-tune.

5. HER
Okay, so here’s a bit of a strange one: a man falls in love with the operating system on his computer – and it falls in love with him in return. Another winner of the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, writer-director Spike Jonze takes his unique premise and weaves a touching story about the nature of human relationships… despite one half of the central relationship not being human. But then, that’s part of the reason why it works. It’s an insightful look into the psychology and emotion of love, demonstrating both its vulnerability and its boundlessness.


SPECIAL MENTION: TITANIC
James Cameron’s epic is the gold standard for a lot of people, even if it’s a bit overwrought in our opinion. Its impact and technical achievements can’t be ignored, though.

SPECIAL MENTION: 4 minutes of UP
The “Married Life” segment of Pixar’s UP brings all but the hardiest to tears, charting the entire marriage of Carl and Ellie without a single word being said. Frankly, we’d have included it in our list if it were a film in its own right, but since it’s just a small part of one, it’ll have to make do with a special mention instead.


So there you have it – our favorite romance films. We don’t claim that they’re the best, but they’re the ones that have touched us the most and we think that all writers can learn something from them!

What would make your list? Let us know by getting in touch on Twitter or Facebook!

Oscars 2019: What we learned

Oscars 2019: What we learned

Whatever you think about the Oscars, there’s always something to be learned from them. Last night was no exception: there was the usual number of sure-fire wins mixed with a few shocks that leave us scratching our heads. Here’s our take on what happened at the Oscars 2019…

  • The big news of the night was the surprise win of GREEN BOOK for Best Picture. This may not have been the most competitive year for this category, but stacked up against films like BLACKKKLANSMAN and ROMA, it’s still not what we expected. Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times even went so far as to call it “the worse best Picture winner since Crash“. Ouch. But the main thing to take from this? ROMA might have been the favorite on the night (rather than THE FAVOURITE… okay, it’s a bit confusing) but the Academy isn’t ready to give highest honors to a Netflix film just yet. The big studios continue to guard their territory.
  • Spike Lee finally has an Oscar, winning Best Adapted Screenplay for BLACKKKLANSMAN. When it comes to films about race, the Oscars have generally favored less hard-edged material than Lee makes, so at first glance, this looks like it could indicate a shift for film’s biggest awards ceremony. However, that’s all kind of cancelled out because…
  • The winner for Best Original Screenplay also went to GREEN BOOK, which has come in for a lot of criticism for perpetuating the “white savior” trope and couldn’t be more of an opposite to BLACKKKLANSMAN if it tried. Take a look at that article from Chang and you’ll see why it’s so confusing that the two screenplay awards went to these two films. On the one hand, a film that takes an intense, no-holds barred look at racism – on the other, a film that deals with it through a feel-good story. One thing is clear – Hollywood still hasn’t figured out how it wants to deal with this kind of subject matter.
  • Away from the main controversies, superhero stories are starting to gain some traction at awards ceremonies to go with their popular appeal, with BLACK PANTHER picking up three awards and SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE winning Best Animated Feature. This is where the real money is right now – and it looks like there’s even the possibility of picking up some nice shiny awards to go with it.
  • On a similar note, BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY took home four awards. Even though the only big one here was for Rami Malek’s performance as Freddie Mercury, it’s a surprise to see a film that got mixed reviews from critics fare so well at the Oscars. Is the Academy really becoming more democratized to reflect popular opinion? We’ll have to wait and see how next year unfolds…

From a screenwriting perspective, the main thing here is the confusion of seeing two totally contrasting films take home the awards for Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay. Here at WriteMovies, we’ll be keeping a close eye on this, with several of our past winners – such as BLACKOUT.COM by Ruben Bush III dealing with this kind of subject matter.

The Oscars 2019 may not have had the drama of the wrong winner being announced for Best Picture like a couple of years ago, but they’ve certainly given us a lot of food for thought…

Why Hollywood is ready for subtle storytelling at last. Part 2: MANCHESTER BY THE SEA’s complex Protagonist

Why Hollywood is ready for subtle storytelling at last. Part 2: MANCHESTER BY THE SEA’s complex Protagonist

We delve into what MANCHESTER BY THE SEA storytelling and narrative techniques were implemented to make this film a subtle success.

Spoilers alert… this article will discuss the outcomes of the story in order to demonstrate how and why it works.

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA tells the story of a withdrawn and passive protagonist, Lee Chandler, portrayed by Casey Affleck. The writer/director Kenneth Lonergan deliberately creates a narrative in which the protagonist resists positive growth and development. This is an important rejection on mainstream Hollywood storytelling gurus, who emphasize that change in the protagonist needs to be the driving force of the narrative – that the protagonist must strive towards a personal goal to earn our empathy as an audience. But it certainly isn’t, in the Manchester by the Sea storytelling!

In fact, this protagonist is so set against positive growth, that when presented with attractive women hitting on him, he doesn’t even acknowledge their advances, and starts fights with random guys instead at whatever bar he’s getting drunk at. It’s hard to imagine a writer rejecting the mantra of ‘positive character growth’ more vividly. The driving force of the story is Lee unwillingly forced to become a father figure again, when his brother dies and he is made custodian for his nephew. Normally, this would form the platform for a feel-good movie. Not here – Lee never willingly ‘accepts the call to action’, however many opportunities the story gives him.

It is a long time before the audience is given a reason for why Lee has become so averse to happiness and positive growth. We learn that he (accidentally) started a fire which killed his children. We even see his estranged wife moving on – she is now pregnant to her new partner. At the climax, she even tries to help Lee move on, but his decision is expressed by the line “I can’t beat it.”

Lee lets his demons, guilt and rage at himself consume him. The nearest thing we get to personal and positive progress is his final decision to move away from his nephew again, but this time to get a sofa-bed in his new apartment, so that his nephew can visit sometimes. A feel-good movie would have played out this story arc in a completely different way, and would have provided many more notable plot developments along the way to force and test his progress.

In conventional stories about men accepting forms of custody over children – such as THREE MEN AND A BABY or ABOUT A BOY (or even the upcoming adaptation of Stephen King book, THE DARK TOWER film), the presence of a child and unexpected custodianship creates a catalyst for transforming a progressive character into an empathetic protagonist. Lee, in a similar scenario, never adjusts to it and fails to find his own catalyst for personal growth – the sort of plot convention that we would normally expect to find in a screen telling of a story like this.

The subtlety of storytelling carries this film. Whereas Affleck’s performance as Lee is praised for portraying seething rage below his character’s actions, in practical terms all of these behaviors are mostly shown implicitly not explicitly. And they are played out in unexpected scenarios, rather than directly confronting issue head on like conventional stories would do.

Acclaim for MANCHESTER & criticism from some audiences against it are two sides of same coin – mainstream audience members may find this film slow and actionless compared to what they are used to, but these are the same qualities that critics and the Academy have been keen to back. Cinema has been dominated by so much heavy-handed, on-the-nose storytelling, for example in the endless succession of superhero movies, that it has left critics and pros hungry for a new, realistic, refreshing approach to storytelling, and that is something MANCHESTER BY THE SEA provides.

Next up – The ARRIVAL of subtlety in sci-fi!

 

Exclusive to WriteMovies – To syndicate this content for your own publication, contact ian (at) writemovies dot-com.

© WriteMovies 2017

Example Studio Consulting: MOONLIGHT Script

Example Studio Consulting: MOONLIGHT Script

An example script consultancy on a reading of MOONLIGHT script, winner of Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay at the 2017 Oscars.

“This screenplay is beautifully written, the central theme elegantly expressed in an almost poetic style…” Extracts from a script report by our trainee Edward Smith, based on a reading of the MOONLIGHT script.

This example report was completed by Edward Smith as part of his internship with us, which has recently been successfully completed.

To see the full industry-standard format we use for Studio Coverage, purchase The Confidential Studio Manual to get the inside track on how the industry will really assess and process your script (CLICK HERE)!

WRITEMOVIES STORY DEPARTMENT COVERAGE

 

TITLE: MOONLIGHT                                    LOCALE: Miami, Atlanta

AUTHOR: Barry Jenkins                             SETTING: Urban U.S.

PERIOD: Present                                            FORM: SP

PRODUCER: N/A                                          BUDGET: Low

SYNOPSIS

This screenplay is divided into three chapters, each focusing on a different stage of the protagonist’s life and titled after the name he is currently using; in the first part, aged twelve, he goes by the name LITTLE. Chased by a gang of bullies, he takes refuge in an abandoned crackhouse, where he is found by the drug dealer, JUAN. Little spends the night with Juan and his girlfriend, TERESA, and starts to become close to them because his own mother, PAULA, is neglectful of him.

When Juan discovers Paula doing drugs, they argue about raising Little, with Paula implying that he is gay. That night, having been confronted by Paula, Little goes to speak to Juan, asking him what the word “faggot” means and whether he is himself gay. Juan reassures him, but is then forced to admit, to his shame, that he is a drug dealer and that he has sold Paula drugs.

In the second chapter, the protagonist, now sixteen-years-old, goes by his real name, CHIRON. In the intervening years, Juan has died and Paula has become even more abusive, but Chiron still regularly visits Teresa. He is now struggling with his attraction to his friend, KEVIN, while also still coping with bullies – particularly his classmate, TERRELL…

COMMENTS:

This screenplay is beautifully written, the central theme elegantly expressed in an almost poetic style. It deals with an oft-overlooked issue, studying what it is like to be a gay black man, charting the struggles the protagonist faces in establishing his own identity in a culture that is hostile to his sexuality; this is dealt with both delicately and realistically thanks to the high quality of the writing…

By portraying three distinct stages of Chiron’s life, we are able to see the intricacies of his situation and better understand how he develops as a character. He is forced to change because of the physical and emotional abuse he suffers, with very few nurturing figures to help him. From being a gentle, vulnerable child, he violently lashes out against his bullies and eventually reinvents himself as a drug dealer to hide who he truly is. In the end, he is only able to come to terms with his sexuality because of Kevin’s influence, bringing him full circle back to his true self after all the challenges he has faced.

Each chapter also has its own, miniature three act structure. For example, the first chapter has an inciting incident when Little meets Juan; the first act sees them become attached to one another, the second develops their relationship, and the third deals with the conversation between them when Little asks about being gay. Similarly, the other two chapters also have a three act structure, allowing each one to stand on its own as an independent story – albeit strengthened and given context by the others.

To see the full industry-standard format we use for Studio Coverage, purchase The Confidential Studio Manual to get the inside track on how the industry will really assess and process your script (CLICK HERE)!

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