Perfect cast and a good story

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Loretta Castorini once tried living in a romantic comedy, but her husband was hit and killed by a bus. Cher's delivery of this revelation renders it almost an afterthought, like the deflated punchline of a poor joke. She's been raised to marry young and for children, and when she defies this natural order and does so for love, the universe sent along a bus to crush her dreams (and her late husband). The opening scenes of Moonstruck detail how detached and impervious she is to the typical attractions of the genre. Loretta is a tight-lipped, business-first accountant, pretty but aging, and a pragmatist at heart. When her boyfriend Johnny obliterates every last convention of proposing, she reacts with deadpan precision as if it was another tax return to file (see how she rattles off her sins at confession, and slips her infidelity in there). Why tempt the gods a second time? New York is a city where strange and magical things can happen, and with 'That's Amore' opening the film, the most Italian song in English ever, serenading the moon-lit skyline, we more than expect it. The interiors of the Castorini home are brought to life with a warm palette, enlarged in an eccentric, sitcom way, with each piece of wooden furniture or rustic appliance telling a whole story in itself. The rooms are cramped and possess an eternal, lived-in quality about them so we see exactly how the family traditions are retained, and how they can squeeze several generations into the same building at once. They stage confrontations around the breakfast and dinner table, with dialogue like questioning jabs at lifestyle choices, and well- meaning intentions going awry. At Christmas, the full moon beckons and these characters come to life. Nicholas Cage enters in a role that no one, not even Loretta, could expect or begin to explain. Cage is infamous for his eccentric wildness, and as he recounts his tale it begins to overcome the facts. It turns out that Johnny ordered a loaf of bread, and in the ensuing distraction Ronny lost not only his hand but also his girl. It's supposed to be tragedy, but Cage renders it a comedy, crying dramatically for a knife to end his life, asking us not to question the bizarre line of thinking that led him to blame his brother. The wooden hand is the cherry on top, revealed in a delirious monologue so deliciously full of irony and self-imposed gravitas that only Cage could ever pull it off, but also make it funny. Later as he tries to persuade Loretta into his bed again, he gives a speech so vehemently trying to subvert conventional romance it doesn't realise it's drowning in clichés. Cage splutters and staggers so often we realise he is making it up as he goes, and finishes with a desperate flourish: "GET. IN. MY. BED!". The way he so obviously reaches into the (shallow) depths of his soul will have even the hardest-hearted cynic giggling. Soon the stiff accountant is tossed out the window and diving into bed with her fiance's brother. The soundtrack assists this shift, transforming an indifferent city into one of love and mystery. Listen to how Hyman's flutes and trumpets twist curiously as Loretta shops for something to wear to the opera, and how its inklings of mischief suggest something a little more sexy than her usual costume. Later he uses a sax heavy mood piece as she prepares next to the crackling fireplace, an atmosphere ripped straight from an old-fashioned noir, Loretta shedding her skin to reveal a newer woman. The film's most luminous moment comes when the pair join hands at the opera, and her tears melt away the last of her resistance. Jewison never orientates us with a wide shot, so the moon looms in the background of the stage, casting the same magical spell over the audience as it does to the city, blasting through windows and blinds, making night like day and old men twenty five. The one person immune to this trance is Rose. Dukakis is a great casting because we can immediately see how Loretta retains the same long, angular nose, lean face and no-nonsense approach. While the whole city is under the moon's spell, she's dining alone and searching for answers to her husband's affair. She encounters a regular of the story, and the way the professor switches from preying on young college students to her is so smooth and full of charm that anyone but Rose would have fallen for it. But she knows herself quite clearly. Her character is intricate without ever upsetting the balance of the film - she believes her husband might have a good reason for his disappearances, but won't simply toss aside the decades of marriage when he doesn't. Jewison depicts some of that Cosmo charm with the same peculiar humour that he affords to the whole cast. We see his pitch about different types of metal piping, and the passion in his gestures and insistence on the best material for his customers, and then swings the camera around in a later scene to reveal how he utilises the same showmanship to woo his mistress. In Moonstruck, Jewison takes a strange phrase and diffuses it into the lives of a New Yorker family with uncanny results. Grown men turn into sex-crazed werewolves, old couples are re-energised, and new relationships are grafted. Do we dare question why a man with a wooden hand would work all day in front of an oven? No, because the story is beyond the mere logic of the ordinary and everyday. In the morning-after of the miracle, Loretta skips in her heels and kicks cans, and the opera pipes up to accompany her street waltz although there is no singer in sight, because she is moonstruck. And along the way, we witness how funny and tricky the trials and tribulations of love can be.

(Credit goes to IMDb) Loretta Castorini, a book keeper from Brooklyn, New York, finds herself in a difficult situation when she falls for the brother of the man she agreed to marry (the best friend of her late husband who died seven years previously).I'm one of the few that don't get it. Despite the wonderful cast, I never got the appeal of this movie. The style has always gotten on my nerves, and it's not my type of romance. I didn't laugh, didn't smile very much, and the enjoyment is nullified by Cher's annoying performance. I thought she overdid it, lacking chemistry with Cage. I'm a big Cage fan, but I didn't care for his performance here. Dukakis & Aiello add charm to their parts, and I thought they were more entertaining than Cher and Cage! Lots of people love it, so It's probably just me. I don't care for it.5.3/10

if i had to pick 2 films that i could only see for the rest of my life, this would be number one. number two would be All About Eve. i watch Moonstruck every time i run across it on TV. the writing is AMAZING, so many zingers AND memorable heartfelt real moments and the characters are so well written. the casting is perfect down to every last role - especially olympia dukakis and the great julie bovasso, who is such a wonderful new york character actress (i.e. john travolta's mother in Saturday night fever). sadly she is no longer with us. trivia note: she was known as an excellent voice coach for people who have to do NY accents.everything i've said above (save for the actors of course) can be applied to All ABout Eve!

Just like everyone is Irish when St. Patty's Day rolls around, everybody's Italian when it comes to watching this pleasant charmer, no matter if it's written by an Irish American, directed by a Canadian Jew, and stars the world's most famous Armenian-Native American.Loretta Castorini Clark (Cher) is not a lucky woman, it seems. Widowed by a freak bus accident, she wiles away the shank of her thirties as a self-employed accountant who lives with her aging family under the skyscrapers of the Big Apple. Just as she readies herself for a loveless marriage with the sweet-but-simple Johnny Cammarini (Danny Aiello), love strikes in the form of Johnny's bitter brother Ronny (Nicolas Cage). Can Loretta do the right thing, even if she doesn't quite know what that is?"Moonstruck" is a comedy that works in serious themes, like death, infidelity, faith, and hopelessness. Writer John Patrick Shanley operates with a deft hand and an ear for how people say what they really mean even when they try to say something else, like when Loretta's cheating father Cosmo (Vincent Gardinia, along with Cage one of the authentic Italian-American cast members) warns her against marriage because, well, he's cheap and doesn't want to pay for it.Seeing her ring from Johnny is just a pinky ring (Johnny wasn't prepared when he popped the question), Pop complains when she tells him it's temporary: "Everything is temporary! That don't excuse nothing!"Cher won an Oscar for her performance, which wasn't maybe the best of all performances that year but carries the film ably. I'm not a Cher fan myself, but it's hard not to admire the way she plays Loretta against expectations. She's quiet and subtle when you expect big and loud. Even late in the film, when she undergoes her expected transformation into a glamour queen, she doesn't go all diva about it."You look beautiful," Ronny tells her. "Your hair.""Yeah, I had it done," she says with a shrug.Cage is the other over-the-top actor here, but he succeeds with that by playing his part more for laughs. He blames Johnny for the loss of his hand and his fiancé, not that it's fair of him and he knows it. "I ain't no freakin' monument to justice," he exclaims.Cage's best work in the movie comes at the end, when he's not talking so much as listening in the background while the other characters have their big confessional moments at the breakfast table. That concluding scene is a showcase of fine comic acting and writing, which director Norman Jewison (another guy who liked to go big in other productions) plays very lightly and well, working the silences as much as the speeches to wry effect.Even the secondary performers, like Feodor Chaliapin as Cosmo's confused father, and Julie Bovasso and Louis Guss as Loretta's aunt and uncle, make their marks. This is a film about family that celebrates all its members.I don't quite buy a central premise of the film, that a man cheats on his wife because he's afraid of death, and feel some of the secondary scenes take up too much time, but there's a simple joy even in those scenes which sticks. Olympia Dukakis, the other Oscar-winner in the cast, has a great scene with Aiello which justifies his character's somewhat superfluous presence.To be in love is to die a little, but dying seems like a small price to pay for the pleasure of love. Such is the simple magical lesson on offer in "Moonstruck."