The English Patient

Anthony Minghella's lavish adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's novel is the sort of movie that people lament isn't made anymore: a sweeping romantic adventure in the tradition of DOCTOR ZHIVAGO and OUT OF AFRICA. Set mostly during World War II, but moving skillfully between related narratives in North Africa and Italy, it tells the story of the great love of Almasy (Ralph Fiennes), a Hungarian explorer, and a recently married painter, Katharine (Kristin Scott Thomas). Interwoven with flashbacks of the couple's increasingly passionate and ill-fated affair are scenes in which Hana (Juliette Binoche), a French-Canadian nurse in a ruined monastery in Tuscany, cares for an...