By DEBORAH NICOL & TERESSA ELLIOTT

ro·mance (rō-mặns´) A motion picture depicting a love affair, an ardent, soulful emotional attachment, or a strong but sometimes short-lived fascination or enthusiasm between two individuals

Shakespeare in Love [Buena Vista]

"People were surprised when "Shakespeare in Love" won the Best Picture Oscar, but not because it's a bad film but because it wasn't a "significant" film (watchers instead thought that Spielberg had it locked up and so "Saving Private Ryan" would sail in on his coattails). The film is actually a sweet romance with, naturally, a bit of Shakespeare thrown in -- a sort of Harlequin romance for intellectuals. Joseph Fiennes plays the young playwright Will Shakespeare with Best Actress winner Gwyneth Paltrow as his muse. Judith Dench won Best Supporting Actress for her eight-minute turn as Queen Elizabeth and the performances are indeed excellent. But the real winner is the script -- witty, intelligent, with Shakespeare references to spare. The DVD extras include deleted scenes and interesting commentaries by director John Madden and (a separate one) by the cast and crew -- although the latter is sometimes difficult to follow because of overlapping comments. - TE

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Moonstruck [MGM]

"La bella luna! The moon brings the woman to the man. Capice?" Ah, how simple love is when the moon is full in Brooklyn. And for Loretta Castorini, when the timing is wrong and she has given up all hope. After the loss of her first husband, Loretta (played triumphantly by Cher in alternate turns as disengaged from love and passionately renewed) settles into a marriage proposal for lack of any better offers. As her fiancé runs off to tend to his mother's death bed in Italy, she seeks out his estranged brother in order to invite him to the wedding. It is at this inopportune encounter that she finds true love in the form of Nicolas Cage's once-hardened Ronny Cammareri. Norman Jewison's masterpiece focuses not only on the twosomes of love, but more importantly, the families that result from these couplings. At the heart of it all, there will always be la familia. This Oscar-winning film (Cher for actress, Olympia Dukakis for supporting actress, and John Patrick Shanley for screenplay) package includes a small booklet, and though unfortunately a pan-and-scan DVD, it does include audio commentary by the writer, director, and female lead. - DN

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Sense and Sensibility [Columbia]

It was one of those Jane Austen adaptations that seemed to be everywhere in the 90s. But it won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, however, and it was written by star Emma Thompson. A good, straightforward adaptation, "Sense and Sensibility" stars Thompson and Kate Winslet as two sisters without great fortunes who find love in 1800's England. The extras include commentaries by Thompson, the director Ang Lee and two of the producers. They also include deleted scenes that are actually first-class -- usually you watch deleted scenes and understand why they were deleted, but here they are as pleasant as the rest of this wonderful film. - TE

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