New York, I Love You

New York, I Love You takes the wrinkle-free, easy-travel concept first executed in the 2007 Gallic compilation Paris, je t’aime to a new city and styles itself like a themed issue of The New York Times Magazine. Here, a procession of hip filmmakers (from Allen Hughes to Shekhar Kapur) present intertwined vignettes about love, romance, and/or sex, all starring hip actors (from Ethan Hawke to Julie Christie), each set in a hip neighborhood (from Soho to the Upper West Side, with one outer-borough stop in Brighton Beach). In this rarefied NYC, every street is beautiful no matter how chaotic (Fatih Akin directs in Chinatown), and every body is beautiful no matter how frail (Eli Wallach and Cloris Leachman steal the show as old Brooklynites). Tourists may notice that the film’s New Yorkers are all straight, and mostly white. But they’ll want to sightsee, especially when Bradley Cooper hooks up with Drea de Matteo, Chris Cooper and Robin Wright Penn flirt madly, and, in Brett Ratner’s nicely raunchy sketch, Anton Yelchin gets lucky with a wheelchair-bound Olivia Thirlby. These tales are as highly designed as fashion layouts. But they’re as relaxing to thumb through as those NYT Magazine trend pieces about how chopsticks are the new forks, or how Eva Amurri is the new Christina Ricci – both of whom also wander through this Gotham travelogue. – Lisa Schwartzbaum, Entertainment Weekly