70Moonstruck (1987)
Written by John Patrick Shanley
Playwright John Patrick Shanley burst onto the Hollywood scene with his first screenplay, winning an Oscar and Writers Guild Award with a topsy-turvy love story between a strong-willed Bronx widow and the brutish, soulful brother of her fiancé. The comic opera about the inconvenience of true love plays out amid a gaggle of Italian family members who alternate between withering cynicism and high sentiment. Singling out the film’s sharp dialogue, Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote that “what Shanley causes Cher, Nicolas Cage, Vincent Gardenia, Olympia Dukakis and that whole fine cast to say sounds as if it had not been written at all but had flowed, tart but true, straight from the characters' souls.”
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