Finding Neverland (2004)

After his latest play is a flop, London playwright J.M. Barrie (Johnny Depp) casts about for inspiration. His attentiveness and whimsical spirit takes up with widow Sylvia (Kate Winslet) and her four boys. Amidst grief over their father's death and their mother's worsening illness, he teaches them to be playful and to find their muse, even as he searches anew for his own. High society, meanwhile, is forbiddingly acid-tongued about the relationship, especially Barrie's status-conscious wife (who lives a separate life in the same house) and Sylvia's imposing mother. Finally, inspired by the child within him and his affection for the fatherless boys, Barrie writes and produces Peter Pan. Its premiere succeeds only because at the last minute, Barrie smuggles in 25 orphans, whose laughter inoculates the stuffiest of crowds with childlike mirth. Four stars.

Lost in Translation (2003)

Bob Harris (Bill Murray) is a tired has-been actor traveling to Japan to do lucrative liquor commercials, who meets Charlotte (Scarlett Johannson), the neglected young wife of a traveling entertainment photographer. The tentative magnetism of two lonely Americans amidst the poetry and cacophany of Japanese urban culture is as poignant as their on-screen chemistry is subtle. Murray's facial nuances revel in a taut tenderness and his ironic sense of humor strokes even as it picks at the edges of the ragged tapestry that is international business travel. These two clearly need each other, if only for the time of their stay, yet the relationship is always appropriate. The key line is when Charlotte asks Bob, "Does it get easier?" Bob answers, "No. Yes. It gets easier. The more you know who you are and what you want, the less you let things upset you." Four stars.