Playing by Heart

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Summary: An insightful, warm and often funny look at relationships.
Review: This perfect date movie carefully reveals and entwines six separate stories. The characters are well drawn and the acting is solid throughout. Unlike many movies with large character rosters and/or overlapping story lines, this one is easy to follow. An added touch is the mystery of how the stories are related. Given the film's modest box-office take, the studio's marketing department should have stuck with the original, much more relevant and intriguing title - "Dancing About Architecture". A top-notch effort, worth seeing for Angelina Jolie's knockout performance alone.

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Summary: a must have for any gillian anderson fan
Review: a great relationsip movie exploring different kinds of relationships and couples with a lot of layers. how the movie combines the stories is awesome.

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Summary: An excellent film.
Review: I originally went to see Playing By Heart simply to see my favorite actress Gillian Anderson, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it a witty and touching work. The script is inspired, and all the actors and actresses become their parts so well that you can't help but identify with each of them. I highly recommend Playing By Heart to everyone interested in seeing a lovely movie about couples and falling in love.

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Summary: Enjoyable and Funny
Review: I really enjoyed the movie, it is not one of the best in the world, but it merits a good rating. Sean Connery gives an amazing preformance. For all you X-Files fans: this is your chance to see Gillian Anderson in a major role outside of Scully. This movie is for anyone who likes to watch realistic, funny and sad movies.

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Summary: This movie is the best movie ever made!
Review: It was such a good movie because of the pretty Gillian Anderson. One thing that I like about her is she is a good romodel for younger kids to look up to!!!

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Summary: Talking about love is.........
Review: When most movies boast of an "all-star cast," what they usually mean is 2, maybe 3 big name actors + a bunch of people you've never heard of. Not so with this film. With the likes of Dennis Quaid, Sean Connery, Madeline Stowe, Gillian Anderson and Angelina Jolie, this one truly lives up to the promise of having a celebrity-filled cast. They could have funded the first manned mission to Mars with the payroll of this movie. Even better, these are all cream-of-the-crop actors, as opposed to being big-name pseudo actors (like Keanu Reeves, for instance).

The story is about 3 sisters (Stowe, Anderson & Jolie), all of whom experience various troubles regarding men. Stowe's character is involved in a passionless marriage; the only way she can feel alive & vibrant is by engaging in a lascivious sexual arrangement with a fellow apartment tenant.

Anderson plays the sister "in the middle" who has been burned by men in her past & is apprehensive and more than a little bit reluctant to "play the field" again.

Jolie's persona, meanwhile, just plain can't seem to find the right guy. She goes thru frequent romances, but never finds a worthwhile partner to hang on to.

In the meantime, their parents are having their own marital troubles. Closing in on their 40th wedding anniversary, they cannot help but summon up ghosts of past lovers.

The tale is presented in a very different way than any other film I have ever seen. We see the characters deal with their individual struggles, then their stories are woven together at the end. This is a fascinating "angle" by which to detail the narrative.

The film is very well done & all of the acting performances, as expected with this ensemble, are impeccable. Jolie, in particular, stands out. The acting job she delivers is magnificent; I become a bigger & bigger fan of her's each movie I see her in. This is one of the best "date" movies I have ever seen; funny, yet emotionally poignant. Sometimes, it's best to play by heart.

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Summary: The best romantic movie ever!
Review: I love this movie. I love everything about it! The all-star cast is truly made up of "all-stars" in the field of acting. Sean Connery, Gena Rowlands, Angelina Jolie, Ryan Phillippe, Jon Stewart, Gillian Anderson, Ellen Burstyn, Anthony Edwards, Jay Mohr, Dennis Quaid, and the many others that I'm forgetting all give great performances. I also enjoy the way the film focuses on the individual lives, then pieces them together at the end.

Offering so many different perspectives on romance, Playing by Heart is sure to touch everyone in some way. With both single and married couples, those afraid to love and those desperately seeking love, this movie appeals to a wide audience.

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Summary: IT`S A MUST ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS
Review: .....and the screenplay is wonderful as are the actors. There are no fancy camera-angles or MTV editing of high speed(compared to Moulin Rouge and William Shakespeare`s Romeo+Juliet - classics in their own right), but the camera let the protagonists do their jobs and they do it admirably... Not that every character is of importance; I prefer Connery, Rowlands, Jolie and Philippe; but we all have our favorites... It`s a movie that few people would find dull, boring or just bad.... It`s a low-key masterpiece:-)

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Summary: Sweet and heart-warming . . .
Review: This unique film about love and circumstance is a light but powerful film with an all-star cast.

Gillian Anderson ("The X-Files"), Angelina Jolie ("Girl, Interrupted," "Gone in 60 Seconds"), and Madeleine Stowe ("12 Monkeys," "The Last of the Mohicans") star as three sisters with completely different lives and personalities. Sean Connery and Gena Rowlands ("The Mighty") play their parents. The film also contains a hilarious performance by Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," and great performances by Ryan Phillipe ("The Way of the Gun," "Cruel Intentions") and Dennis Quaid ("Frequency," "Inner Space").

"Playing by Heart" is a real treat, and I don't even like romantic comedies. But this is more of a story of chance and fate than anything else, with some really interesting characters and touching revelations.

A real winner, in my opinion.

The DVD itself is pretty plain, but that's okay. I bought it for the movie, not for special features.

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Summary: Talking About Love
Review: "Talking about love is like dancing about architecture."

This quote is only one of the perceptive and witty barbs that the characters of "Playing By Heart" utter, and despite it, they talk a lot about love. Unlike most movies like this though, these characters have something fresh and fascinating to say. "Playing By Heart" is a sadly underappreciated gem of a movie with a great script and a cast that is almost too good to believe. That said, the movie lacks a focus that draws everything together (other than the foreseeable denoument).

We meet several groups of characters who are all exploring different aspects of love. Sean Connery and Gena Rowlands, whose subltle acting is a marvel to behold, play an old married couple whose marriage is facing old obstacles. Connery is dying, and Rowlands confronts him about a supposed infidelity twenty-five years before. Gillian Anderson plays a stony theatre director who finds love in the unlikely person of a pre-"Daily Show" Jon Stewart, while Dennis Quaid and Madeline Stowe are both exploring ways to live outside of their unsatisfactory marriages. There is sensitive, quiet acting in the persons of Ellen Burstyn and Jay Mohr. Burstyn plays Mohr's mother, who is staying by her son's bedside as he dies of AIDS. I only wish there had been more of them.

But most astounding of all is the story of two young clubbers played flawlessly by Angelina Jolie and Ryan Phillippe. The two actors are so real and raw that you can't help but be sucked in by their story, and ultimately their emotional openness makes you cry. I wanted to see an entire movie based on Jolie and Phillippe, they were that good. And in a cast like this one, that's an accomplishment.

"Playing By Heart" is wonderfully acted. It's the only movie where you can have Ellen Burstyn, Gillian Anderson, Angelina Jolie, Ryan Phillippe, Sean Connery, Gena Rowlands, Jon Stewart, Jay Mohr, Dennis Quaid, Anthony Edwards, and Madeline Stowe share the same screen. Even Patricia Clarkson makes a brief appearance. The script is wonderfully witty and the directing is very good. Although it ultimately fails to form a definite whole, its bundle of loose threads is fascinating to watch.