Feel you should take a trip somewhere this summer, but would rather vegetate on your sofa like the couch potato that you are?  Don’t feel guilty! Be like me and try a trip to the Land of  Sappy & Sentimental just for a good laugh or cry.  Here are some movies that take you there in a jiffy, and if you check them out here at the library, these “sentimental journeys” won’t cost you a dime!

Room with a View

A young woman’s escorted trip to Italy leads to her first kiss, an experience that eventually allows her to burst free from the repression of British upper class manners and mores. The scenery and music are wonderful in this film, and it is chocked full of stars—Daniel Day Lewis, Maggie Smith, Helena Bonham Carter, and Judi Dench!

Enchanted April

Two proper, middle-class English women, bored with their lives and their passionless husbands, spend a month on vacation in a medieval villa on the Italian Riviera. The idyllic hideaway holds a special magic and hopes reawaken as they find ways to live and love that have long eluded them.  Alfred Molina, Miranda Richardson, and Joan Plowright create unforgettable characters in this movie.

Night of the Iguana

A film in black & white that will captivate you.  A defrocked, alcoholic, American minister becomes a tour guide, and while travelling in Mexico with a bus-load of school teachers and their 18-year old charge, becomes entangled with the girl, with a woman of eloquence and wisdom, and with an earthy and beautiful former love. The boozing cleric is none other than Richard Burton, and the ladies who set him straight are Sue Lyon, Deborah Kerr, and Ava Gardner.

Under the Tuscan Sun

A third sojourn to Italy where, while on vacation, a just-divorced writer buys a villa in Tuscany on a whim, hoping it will be the start of a change for the better in her life. Along the way she finds that sometimes what seems like a mistake is really a blessing.  Diane Lane is the writer and Sandra Oh is her loyal, but bewildered friend.

Sideways

A pair of friends take a road trip through California wine country to celebrate Jack’s final bachelor days. They indulge in a mid-life crisis consisting of wine, women and a yearning for the past, but they eventually collide with reality. Thomas Hayden Church is Jack, Paul Giamatti is his friend, Pinot Noir is the wine, and Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh are the women.