Director: Ang Lee

Writer: Jane Austen (novel), Emma Thompson (screenplay)

Cast: Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Tom Wilkinson, James Fleet, Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, Gemma Jones, Greg Wise, Robert Hardy, Ian Brimble

Synopsis: Emma Thompson scores a double bull's-eye with this marvelous adaptation of Jane Austen's novel. Not only does Thompson turn in a strong (and gently humorous) performance as one of the Dashwood sisters, the one with "sense", she also wrote the witty, wise screenplay.

Austen's tale of 19th-century manners and morals provides a large cast with a feast of possibilities, notably Kate Winslet, in her pre-Titanic flowering, as Thompson's deeply romantic sister. Winslet attracts the wooing of shy Alan Rickman and dashing Greg Wise, while Thompson must endure an incredibly roundabout courtship with Hugh Grant, here in fine and funny form. All of this is doled out with the usual eye-filling English countryside and handsome costumes, yet the film always seems to be about the careful interior lives of its characters.

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