Before Sunrise - 1995 & Before Sunset - 2004

Experience the most interesting double-feature with these two films.   Begin with Before Sunrise and be introduced to Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) who meet on a train in Europe, and wind up spending one romantic evening together in Vienna, Austria.   The dialogue is wonderful (it's before texting when you can actually see the emotions in people's faces).   Follow-up Before Sunrise with Before Sunset when the same couple meets almost ten years later.   One won't be sorry with these films...but be sure it is screened alone or with a 'special someone'.   You have to really listen to all of the fantastic words they share.   This is the ideal romantic drama.

Before Sunrise was inspired by a woman that the director, Richard Linklater, met in a toy shop in Philadelphia in 1989.  They walked around the city together, conversing deep into the night.  Originally, in the screenplay, who the two people were and the city they spend time in was vague.  Linklater realized that because the film is so much a dialogue between a man and a woman he knew that it was important to have a strong woman co-writer. He chose Kim Krizan, who had small roles in his two previous films Slacker and Dazed and Confused.  According to Linklater, he "loved the way her mind worked" - a constant stream of confident and intelligent ideas.

In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Peter Rainer wrote, "It's an attempt to make a mainstream youth movie with a bit more feeling and mysteriousness than most, and, in this, it succeeds".