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On “Fantasy Island,” the weird-wonderful ABC series that aired from 1977 to 1984, fantasies were to die for. In the new horror film “Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island,” fantasies are to die in.First, a look back. On the series, guests traveled to the bucolic Pacific Ocean location to find a lost love, be a playboy or live out some elaborately produced dreamscape that ended in an uplifting life lesson. They were welcomed by the island’s mysterious overseer, Mr. Roarke (played by the dashing actor Ricardo Montalbán), who had godlike powers to predict outcomes and turn back time. His sidekick, Tattoo (Hervé Villechaize), provided aggressively sexist comic relief.“Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island,” directed by Jeff Wadlow and now in theaters, reimagines the lush title isle as a playground of terrors. The place is again overseen by Mr. Roarke (Michael Peña), but this time he has more nefarious plans for his guests, including fantasies of torture and revenge from the grave.Unlike the recent horror movie reboot of “The Banana Splits Adventure Hour,” a children’s TV show, it’s easy to imagine “Fantasy Island” as a horror property. The fantasies depicted were encyclopedic in their macabre scope, including murder, séances, ghost hunts, telekinesis, black magic, Nazis, lycanthropy and a visit by Jack the Ripper.For horror fans, “Fantasy Island” remains an oasis of scares told in the style of old-school, family-friendly Hollywood horror. Here are five creepy story lines from the fifth and sixth seasons of the original series, now streaming on Crackle. Spoilers ahead!SEASON FIVE (1981-82)‘The Lady and the Monster’Horror Genres: MonstersDr. Carla Frankenstein (Lynda Day George), a genetic researcher, visits a reconstruction of Baron von Frankenstein’s castle and learns that he was real when she meets Frankenstein’s monster (William Smith), who has lived there for 150 years. She and the monster become friends, and thwart a plan by bumbling spies from a competing genetic laboratory to kidnap and turn the creature into a sideshow attraction. Carla leaves the island knowing that in Mr. Roarke’s hands the monster will care for his chickens in peace.‘The Ghost’s Story’Horror Genre: Spirits, cursesAmanda (Tanya Roberts), a Baltimore secretary, has a fantasy to win the $100,000 offered to the person who can stay two hours in a haunted manor. Undeterred by screaming skulls that accost her inside the mansion, Amanda meets Timothy (Dack Rambo), a handsome 18th-century ghost who has haunted the home since his admiral father cursed him for fleeing a duel. Winning the prize money, Amanda gives Timothy a handsome makeover. Mr. Roarke summons Timothy’s dead father and they reconcile, lifting the curse. Timothy is made human and, forgetting he was once a spirit, leaves the island with Amanda.‘Night of the Tormented Soul’Horror Genres: Haunted houses, creepy kidsShipwrecked as children, Jason and Beth (Stephen Shortridge and Dianne Kay) were raised by their uncle, Richard Martinique (Richard Anderson). Their fantasy is to learn what happened the night their uncle and his housekeeper, Blanche (Elinor Donahue), were murdered. At their uncle’s creepy mansion, the ghosts of Richard and Blanche re-enact the fateful night when Blanche accidentally shoots and kills Richard after he laughs when she tells him she loves him. In her haste to protect the children from seeing the body, she falls to her death. Mr. Roarke appears and tells Blanche that Richard actually loved her back, and the two ghosts make peace and disappear arm in arm. Then, Mr. Roarke reveals that Jason and Beth are not siblings after all, and they express their own love for each other.SEASON SIX (1982-83)‘The Devil Stick’Horror genres: Plagues, witchcraftCarl’s fantasy is to find Ally (Crystal Bernard), a young woman who disappeared soon after they met. When he (Dean Butler) finds her in a small town on Fantasy Island, she urges him to leave. It turns out that a witch who was burned at the stake put a spell on Ally’s family and the only way to break it is to put an arrow through Carl’s heart. When Mr. Roarke diverts an arrow that someone shoots at Carl, it plunges into a monument that spews plague-healing water. (It’s a long story.) The curse lifted, Carl and Ally become lovers.‘Island of Horrors’Horror Genres: Zombies, mind controlErica (Gayle Hunnicutt) travels to a small island in search of her fiancé, Richard (Christopher Connelly), who she suspects is in the nefarious hands of his scientist partner, Lewis (Randolph Mantooth). On the island, she escapes from a barefoot warlock who summons zombies with a flash of light from his forehead. Mr. Roarke reveals that Lewis controls Richard’s mind and practices “a black art that turns its victims into the walking dead.” Erica breaks Lewis’s spell by applying a rare salt, found only on Fantasy Island, to Richard’s lips. Erica and Richard leave the island again a couple. More

Ben Schwartz, the actor and comedian, dunked the ball without looking at the joystick. “This is just like muscle memory,” he said.On a frosty Monday afternoon, Mr. Schwartz had sneaked away from publicity rounds for an hour of arcade games at Barcade in the East Village of Manhattan. A few day drinkers slouched on bar stools, but Mr. Schwartz, 38, had the run of the machines.“Playing video games by myself makes me happy,” he said.Raised in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, he spent much of his childhood hunched over a controller. On weekends, he and friends would go to the local Nathan’s, spending the day playing arcade games and scarfing hot dogs. Did it impress girls? “Are you crazy?” Mr. Schwartz said. “Almost nothing I did impressed anyone.”Then his parents bought a Super Nintendo and he could play video games at home. “I was, like, addicted,” he said. “I loved it so much.” He still loves it.“Mom, can I have quarters?” he asked, turning to his publicist.Mr. Schwartz, who won an Emmy for co-writing Hugh Jackman’s opening number at the 2009 Oscars, wore a polka-dotted shirt buttoned to the neck and basketball-print socks under spotless white Nikes.An urban Peter Pan, he specializes in portraying young men who can’t or won’t grow up. He played the incorrigible rich kid Jean-Ralphio in the sitcom “Parks and Recreation,” and a pushy spin doctor in the management consultant drama “House of Lies.” A popular voice actor, he also plays characters in “Duck Tales” and “Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”He has also voiced a video game character, Skidmark, a blue snail in the game Turbo: Super Stunt Squad, as well as the title character in the movie “Sonic the Hedgehog,” adapted from the Sega game. “Nobody cares about my face,” he said.Grinning and pale, like a friendly ghost with good hair, he arrived a few minutes after noon and toured Barcade in search of the Sonic game. When the first trailer for “Sonic” was released last year, fans reacted to the character’s design with horror, singling out the teeth (so many!) and the legs (so disproportionately long!). Sonic 2.0 looks more cartoonish, like the original arcade game. “The newer design fits better,” Mr. Schwartz said. “It looks way more like me.”The bar didn’t have Sonic so he began with a 1980s arcade game called Tapper, in which the player is a bartender serving beer to thirsty patrons. “This I have history with,” he said.Eyes glittering with reflected pixels, he began slinging frosty mugs, first in a saloon and then in a stadium, nailing the bonus round. “I can’t tell if it’s embarrassing for me to be very good at this,” he said. As the game progressed, the pixelated customers grew more demanding. “It is probably not teaching kids good values,” he said. Having whiffed the second bonus round, he walked away with several lives remaining.“As a kid I never would have left a quarter in the machine,” he said. “Sacrilege. Truly sacrilege.”Onscreen, Mr. Schwartz often plays characters who project a boundless and mostly undeserved confidence. But when it comes to arcade games, the prowess is real. Growing up, he devoted himself to a game until he mastered it, which Mr. Schwartz, a former psychology and anthropology double major, blames on mild strain of obsessive-compulsive disorder. “When I start something, I really want to finish, which has helped me in writing and stuff,” he said.After graduating from Union College (he wore a Super Nintendo controller over his gown), he worked as a page on the “Late Show With David Letterman” and as an intern at the Upright Citizens Brigade so he could afford to take improv classes. He spent his free time writing jokes, 10 per day, which were mostly rejected.These days, he still writes, acts and improvises. In 2018, he joined comedic forces with Thomas Middleditch, the geeky star of “Silicon Valley,” and created a two-man improvisational show. “We played Carnegie Hall,” he said. “Crazy.”Bounding to the back of the bar, he sped through a round of the driving game Championship Sprint, battled Street Fighter: The Movie, and ventured inside the pinball game Alice Cooper’s Nightmare Castle. “You’re a regular ghostbuster, aren’t you?” the game said, as Mr. Schwartz scored a multiball.He bypassed Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker (“Can’t separate the art from the artist,” he said) and instead applied himself to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time. He played as Leonardo, the character he voices, defeating foot soldiers as he marauded through a dystopian New York. “Before Giuliani,” Mr. Schwartz said.His assistant brought a cup of green tea and he left Leonardo to his travails. “We have unlimited coins,” he said, a little wistfully. “We could go forever.”With his hour nearly up, he attempted a few levels of The Simpsons, playing as Homer, mashing the buttons with impossible speed. “Imagine being able to play your favorite character from your favorite show,” he said, as Homer stole a hot dog from a small child. “Like imagine you could play Elizabeth Moss from ‘Handmaid’s Tale.’”For his final game, he put a quarter into NBA Jam, playing as Anthony Mason alongside Patrick Ewing. “He’s on my socks,” Mr. Schwartz said proudly, as he maneuvered his players up and down the court effortlessly, swooshing three-pointers. “I still got it. After all these years, maybe this is what I’m born to do, and the other stuff had just been wasting time.” More

LONDON — When we first see him, Mr. Knightley is completely naked. Later, Emma Woodhouse warms her exposed backside by a roaring fire. In the couple’s climactic romantic scene, blood gushes from Emma’s nose.In moments like these, the new film adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Emma,” which opens in British theaters on Friday, seems like a bold departure from its restrained source.The list of names involved in the film is a directory of buzzy millennial talent, suggesting a 21st-century take on the 1815 novel. And the trailer echoes recent spiky, comic period dramas like “The Favourite.” But this new version of Austen’s frequently adapted work is, in fact, a rather faithful and straightforward adaptation.With a screenplay by the novelist Eleanor Catton, the youngest winner of the Booker Prize, this is the feature film debut for Autumn de Wilde, who’s previously shot an album cover for The White Stripes and a music video for Florence and the Machine. The soundtrack is by Isobel Waller-Bridge, who also wrote the ecclesiastical choral score for the second season of her sister Phoebe’s show “Fleabag.”Recent period literary adaptations like Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women” and Armando Iannucci’s “The Personal History of David Copperfield” have refreshed their source material by playing with structure and casting a knowing, modern eye over the social constraints of their settings. The characters in them move and speak in ways that seem natural today.In contrast, this “Emma” unfolds chronologically, with familiar emotional beats and a neat, happy ending. Much of the dialogue is lifted straight from the book, and the period manners remain.Injecting a modern spirit into this adaptation “wasn’t the first consideration, actually,” Catton said in a telephone interview from her native New Zealand.“When I read ‘Emma’, I find it endlessly relatable,” she said. It was “so lively and so intimate, and it feels so fresh,” she added, that reappraising it through a contemporary lens felt unnecessary: “It doesn’t at all feel like a book that’s 200 years old.”In a recent interview in London, de Wilde, the director, agreed: “A great story’s a great story,” she said. “My goal was never to modernize, but only to humanize.”Adapting a work as well-known as “Emma,” however, has its own challenges. During the wave of Austen adaptations in the mid-90s, dubbed “Austenmania,” there were no fewer than three feature-length takes on the novel: a cinematic release starring Gwyneth Paltrow, a TV film starring Kate Beckinsale, and Amy Heckerling’s high school movie “Clueless.” When a television version aired in Britain in 2009, a critic in The Guardian wondered whether “we need another ‘Emma’ at all.” How do you make a 2020 iteration stand out?Catton insisted that there has so far been no “iconic period adaptation” of the novel. “We hope that this will be a contender,” she added. (She disliked the Paltrow version, she said, “for a number of reasons,” including the “misogynistic” treatment of Toni Collette’s character.) The new movie’s sense of humor and de Wilde’s “heightened style and absurdist aesthetic” set this “Emma” apart from the rest, she added.It’s true that this heavily stylized “Emma” looks different from its predecessors, with sumptuous pastels, bursts of bright color, and center-framed shots, reminiscent of Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette” or Wes Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”Emma wears a number of modern-looking accessories, from dangly red earrings to a chunky green necklace. Her home is piled high with fabrics, flowers, china and cakes.“There’s a misconception that everything from that period already looked antique,” de Wilde said. “But color was actually how you showed your wealth. It was very important to me to establish Emma’s place in society by the use of color.”The actress Anya Taylor-Joy, who brought a dark streak to the doe-eyed innocents she played in “The Witch” and “Thoroughbreds,” foregrounds Emma’s objectionable qualities — after all, this is the heroine Austen said “no one but myself will much like.”Taylor-Joy’s Emma is poised and quietly scheming: Eyebrows arched, her glassy eyes swivel around the room, scrutinizing her company. She is a vain, manipulative snob. When it suits her, she can be charming, but, to the poor spinster, Mrs. Bates, she is coldly polite at best, and, at worst, openly derisive.It seems fitting that this Emma is allowed to be a little nastier, at a time when unlikable, self-absorbed, privileged women are being celebrated onscreen.“There would be no ‘Fleabag’ without ‘Emma’!” Catton said. “It’s a story about someone realizing how self-centered they are,” which felt as urgent in 2020 “as it was in any age of history,” she added.Then there’s the nudity, and the nosebleed. “I’ve thought a lot about how much the body interfered with some of the most romantic moments of my life,” de Wilde said. “I love the comedy of fighting your body. And a nosebleed is so exposing.”“It was important to me that Emma seems almost inhuman at the beginning, and then becomes human,” de Wilde said. “We were also human in 1814.” More

Hot Thriller, Cool Romance‘The Thomas Crown Affair’ | YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, iTunes, VuduMake sure you watch the 1968 version, not the 1999 remake. While the newer film is fine enough, the original is a textbook example of classic Hollywood at its sexiest. Steve McQueen plays a millionaire who robs banks for fun, and Faye Dunaway is the insurance investigator on his tail. There is something downright intoxicating about the two stars’ charisma, and their chemistry feels as inexorable as tectonic plates moving toward each other. When they engage in a game of chess — a real one, though the metaphorical aspect is also there — you might have to fan yourself. Michel Legrand’s alternately lush and driving score is a gem of its own. ELISABETH VINCENTELLIGet Rich, or Fall in Love Trying‘Atlantic City’ | YouTube, Amazon Prime, Google Play, Vudu, iTunes, HuluWhen Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon appeared in Louis Malle’s 1980 heartbreaker, he was almost twice her age. Yet after his rueful character, a small-time hood named Lou, takes a shine to Sally (Sarandon), a struggling oyster-bar waitress, their connection develops a melancholy magic. Blending romance and crime caper, Malle has crafted a dreamy, atmospheric study of a man, and a city, in decline, and Lancaster plays him with so much tattered heart that we easily understand Sally’s surrender to Lou’s quiet courtship. Watching him spy on her each night as she stands gloriously naked in her kitchen window, rubbing lemons on her skin to banish the odor of a job she detests, there is something innocent and inoffensive in his peeking. To him, she represents all he has lost — and all he might yet salvage. JEANNETTE CATSOULISWatch and Weep‘Brief Encounter’ | Amazon Prime Video, iTunesIt’s not a spoiler to say that the love affair in “Brief Encounter” does not last: The title is pretty clear on that point. Yet you will hope against hope that Laura (Celia Johnson) and Alec (Trevor Howard) somehow find a way to end up together. The enduring appeal of David Lean’s 1945 romantic masterpiece lies in the push and pull between two people’s mutual attraction and their sense of honor and duty. (They are both married to other people.) The film gently suggests the all-encompassing power of love with characters who maintain a stiff upper lip. Slight gestures and sideways glances resonate like deflagrations of unabashed desire in this context, and the effect is devastatingly emotional. ELISABETH VINCENTELLISweetheart Scares‘My Bloody Valentine’ | Shudder, Crackle, YouTube, Amazon Prime, Google Play, Vudu, iTunesThis Valentine’s Day, do like many horror fans do: Fire up the streaming service Shudder and snuggle up with your boo. Start with “My Bloody Valentine,” a 1981 Canadian slasher film about a mining town besieged on Valentine’s Day by a killer with a pickax. It’s gory and deranged, but also a strangely nostalgic slasher classic. Follow that with the new Shudder podcast “Horror Noire: Uncut,” a fascinating six-episode valentine to African-American film buffs’ love-hate romance with horror cinema, based on Shudder’s acclaimed 2019 documentary. The podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts and other platforms. ERIK PIEPENBURGSweet Bromance, Dude‘Dude, Where’s My Car?’ | YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, Amazon Prime Video, Cinemax“Dude, where’s my car?” “Where’s your car, dude?” Were more romantic words ever spoken? Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott still make a dynamic couple in this 20-year-old stoner comedy that takes repetition to a place of absurdist enlightenment. The premise is simple: Two friends, Jesse and Chester, wake up and can’t remember the night before, including the whereabouts of said car. Yes, much of the laughs come from a puerile place, but there’s some genuine heart amid the gags. And the chemistry between these bros is palatable, from their shirtless tussle while trying to figure out what the new tattoos on their backs say to a one-upmanship showdown they have with Fabio that results in Jesse and Chester making out with each other. Sweet! MEKADO MURPHYI Have an Hour, and I Want to Swoon-Cry‘San Junipero’ (‘Black Mirror’ Season 3) | NetflixThe British series “Black Mirror” is famously bleak, but the Season 3 episode “San Junipero” has what passes as a happy ending in the show’s universe. Make no mistake, though: Tears will flow, prompted by a love that defies time, space, physical reality and even death itself. Mackenzie Davis’s shy, nerdy Yorkie finds herself pulled into the orbit of Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s extroverted, magnetic Kelly. The story jumps around the space-time continuum but is mostly set in 1987 America — if only, you may suspect, so it could put Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is a Place on Earth” and Robbie Nevil’s “C’est la Vie” to memorable use. While technology tends to be a nihilistic force in the series, it comes to the aid of love in “San Junipero.” Imagine that. ELISABETH VINCENTELLILove From Beyond the Grave‘Atlantics’ | NetflixIn Mati Diop’s feature debut, two lovers, Ada (Mama Sané) and Souleiman (Ibrahima Traoré), are separated by forces beyond their control. Although Ada is betrothed to a wealthy man, Omar (Babacar Sylla), her affections remain with Souleiman, a suave but less prosperous suitor who leaves their coastal town in Senegal in hopes of finding steady work in Spain. Strange things begin to happen back in Senegal after Souleiman is feared dead, including a mysterious fire that disrupts Ada’s wedding celebration. Diop and the cinematographer Claire Mathon (who also worked on “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” back in theaters this week) frame Ada and Souleiman’s enduring love as an epic romance, a passion that reverberates through Fatima Al Qadiri’s haunting score. MONICA CASTILLOLove at Work‘Eames: The Architect and the Painter’ | Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV, iTunesIt all started with a chair. When Charles Eames met Ray Kaiser, they were both at the height of their fields (architecture for him, abstract art for her). In his love letters, he dreamed of a future together. He destroyed her letters. After all, he was married, with a daughter. Yet their connection sparked a professional partnership that helped define design and consumer culture. The film paints the picture of a love rooted in work and a shared joy in making things. Which is to say it manages to make the business of furniture and experimental filmmaking seem terribly romantic. Charles and Ray, who eventually married, are seen smiling together in archival photos from the 1940s, ’50s and beyond, look like a pair of delightful, delighted oddballs, fussing over designs that would eventually make their way into homes across the country. Their bond flourishes as they find success, is buffeted by industry criticism, the era’s sexism, and even infidelity. Still, they forged ahead, leaving their mark on just about everything they touched. #Goals. KWAME OPAMLove Triangle: What Could Go Wrong?‘Broadcast News’ | Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google PlayOne of the great love-triangle movies of all time, James L. Brooks’s comedy-drama (set in the world of network television news) finds Holly Hunter, in her breakthrough role, as a high-strung producer torn between two potential partners: Albert Brooks (as a reporter with a great mind but no physical spark) and William Hurt (as the hotshot new anchor with a killer bod and an empty head). They’re all playing recognizable types, and dig the expected laughs out of those personalities (and their interpersonal dynamics). But Brooks’s witty, sophisticated screenplay doesn’t treat them like stock characters; these people are all both likable and deeply flawed, and the film’s refreshing lack of clear choices makes Hunter’s romantic predicament all the more poignant. JASON BAILEYBollywood Romance‘Jodhaa Akbar’ | NetflixSome love stories end in weddings; others begin with one. In the Bollywood historical romance “Jodhaa Akbar,” the Mughal emperor Akbar marries the Hindu princess Jodhaa as part of a peace arrangement with the king of a rival province. Jodhaa resents being used as a political pawn and forced into a stranger’s home, but Akbar’s acceptance of her independence and religion slowly wins her over. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Hrithik Roshan are resplendently charismatic as the lead royals: the scene in which, armed with swords, they duel it out to resolve a lover’s quarrel is one of the sexiest moments ever committed to screen. The director Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s knack for swooning romance and political intrigue — and the stunningly designed set — make the film worth every minute of its three-and-a-half-hour run time. DEVIKA GIRISHAn Ever-After That’s Actually Dreamy‘The Thin Man’ | YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, iTunes, Google Play, VuduWho ever said marriage killed romance? Not Nick and Nora Charles, for whom life is a euphoric succession of dry martinis and drier banter, seasoned with a little detective action here and there. The first (and best) in what would become a successful franchise, “The Thin Man” (1934) is Hollywood screwball comedy at its most sophisticated: Everybody looks great in evening wear, cracks wise, and downs staggering amounts of alcohol while keeping their wits about them. But the key to the movie’s enduring appeal is its portrayal of an enviably liberated modern couple, played by William Powell and Myrna Loy. Partners in crime-solving and sly sex appeal, Nick and Nora don’t just love each other — they absolutely delight in each other’s company. ELISABETH VINCENTELLIWhy Fight Destiny?‘Crossing Delancey’ | Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google PlayOpposites attract, in spite of all attempts to stifle said attraction, in this bewitching 1988 romantic comedy from the director Joan Micklin Silver. Amy Irving stars as Izzy, a downtown woman who’s moved uptown and fancies herself a sophisticate. So she dismisses her grandmother’s attempt to find her a husband via a matchmaker — especially when the suitor is the neighborhood pickle vendor (Peter Riegert). “I don’t live down here, I live uptown,” she assures him, and refuses to admit her obvious attraction, because of the backward step a romance with him seems to represent. Susan Sandler’s complex screenplay (based on her play) hits the expected will-they-or-won’t-they rom-com beats, but underscores them with complicated dynamics of cultural assimilation; the result is an sparkling, dizzy New York romance in the “Moonstruck” tradition. JASON BAILEYRom-Com, French Style‘Heartbreaker’ | YouTube, Google Play, iTunes, Amazon Prime VideoThis French charmer may remind you of the romantic-caper style that flourished in Hollywood from the late 1950s to the mid-60s. It is so sneakily funny and charming that it can shoulder such references as “To Catch a Thief,” whose Riviera setting this 2010 film echoes. Alex (Romain Duris) has a very special profession: Anxious friends and parents pay him to break up mismatched couples by seducing the woman. Things go south after Alex is hired to wreck the impending nuptials of Juliette (Vanessa Paradis) and Jonathan (a pre-“Walking Dead” Andrew Lincoln), and he finds himself actually drawn to his target. As with the best rom-coms, the romance feels ineluctable, no matter how hard the two leads fight it — but what fun it is to watch Duris and Paradis spar. ELISABETH VINCENTELLIBad Romance‘The Souvenir’ | YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, Amazon Prime VideoThe best rule of love is to love yourself. It’s a lesson that the film student Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) learns the hard way as she falls under the spell of a dashing and charming older man, Anthony (Tom Burke). He’s not quite what he seems: As his drug addiction gradually strains the relationship, they engage in a vicious cycle of breakups and reconciliations. As much as this movie is about a bad romance, it’s also about what happens after Julie walks away. Based on her own youthful heartache, the director Joanna Hogg reimagines her experience in a gorgeous work of art, one that wrestles with the messy feelings of a toxic love affair. MONICA CASTILLOA Time for Sportsmance‘Bull Durham’ | YouTube, Google Play, Amazon Prime Video, iTunes, Vudu, Hulu‘Tin Cup’ | YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, iTunes, Google Play, VuduWith two sportsmance classics under their belt, the director Ron Shelton and his star, Kevin Costner, are the rightful masters of this subgenre. In “Bull Durham” (1988), Costner portrays a woeful Minor Leaguer courting baseball-crazy Susan Sarandon; in “Tin Cup” (1996), his self-sabotaging golfer becomes entangled with a psychologist played by Rene Russo. What’s great about these movies is that they show adults figuring things out, rather than, as has been the case with too many recent rom-coms, leaving characters stuck in arrested development. While the sports action can feel a little hokey — but then, that’s exactly how we like sports action — the human element has a wonderfully genuine lived-in quality. And, in “Bull Durham,” when Costner’s Crash lists “long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days” as one of the things he believes in — well, game over. ELISABETH VINCENTELLILove and Other Existential Puzzles‘Phoenix’ | Criterion Channel, YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, iTunes, Google Play‘Transit’ | Vudu, YouTube, Google Play, Amazon Prime VideoIn “Phoenix,” by the German director Christian Petzold, a Holocaust survivor, Nelly, is recruited by her husband — who fails to recognize her after her facial reconstruction surgery — to pretend to be his “dead” wife so he can obtain her inheritance. Nelly, clinging to the charade of the love that she’s lost forever, plays along with his “Vertigo”-esque scheme even after his betrayals become slowly evident. Keep the tissues handy for Petzold’s “Transit,” about a Jewish refugee in Marseilles who is mistaken for and then starts impersonating a dead writer, and becomes enamored with the writer’s wife. Shot in a seductive, minimalist style, both movies (strange doppelgängers of each other) beautifully capture the tragic desire to become someone else — someone new — through love. DEVIKA GIRISH More