Love Actually

With its soundtrack stockpiled with songs of romance and Christmas, and a screenplay by the man who wrote Bridget Jones's Diary, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Notting Hill, this feels less like a brand-new movie than a greatest-hits compendium. It delivers precisely what you'd expect from hopeful romantic Richard Curtis and does so in spades: He serves this time as not only writer, but also director, which means we're presented with the unadulterated, undiluted, unabashed Curtis -- nearly a dozen couples instead of one, upping the love quotient to guarantee a holiday movie that plays in the multiplex till Valentine's Day. It's a series of vignettes featuring dozens of players guaranteed to send my mother directly to the theater on opening day: Hugh Grant as the British prime minister, Liam Neeson as a widower, Colin Firth as a cuckold, Alan Rickman as a would-be adulterer, Emma Thompson as a put-upon mom, Laura Linney as a put-upon sister, and other young comers. Did I mention that this will make a bloody fortune?