This is not one movie but a lot of short films. I'm not sure, but I think some of the short films have two or more parts, with the first part shown earlier in the movie and another part of the film shown later. In the credits, each short film has two sets of its own credits, one showing the actors, writer and director, and the other showing other information. For some odd reason the writer is shown twice.From what I can tell, most or all the actors do a good job and the short films are well-written. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them could be Oscar-nominated as short films on their own. I didn't see any credits before I saw the movie, so I didn't recognize most of the actors, but there are lots of big names. There are many different styles of music, most of which I enjoyed. At the prom I was pleasantly surprised to hear sophisticated ballroom dance music, followed by the junk the kids actually enjoy. I did enjoy watching them dance to the so-called music.This is not for the whole family, though some individual films might be. I heard the sound go out a number of times.My favorites were the one where the high school student is set up with a date to prom with by a pharmacist, and the one where Cloris Leachman and Eli Wallach play a bickering couple walking through the city to the beach on their 63rd anniversary. The prom date storyline includes an unpleasant surprise for the boy when he meets the girl, an awkward encounter with the girl he was going out with (played by Blake Lively), and an unexpected ending to the story.I will try to describe the other stories that I remember. In a scene where everything is orange, Ben follows a beautiful girl played by Rachel Bilson to a bar and tries to pick her up. She is sweet and nice to him, but then Garry walks in. He is married but she is his mistress. He is also a skilled pickpocket. Later, the girl shows up in the blonde wig from her photo. I'm not sure it's Ben who was playing basketball with some guys from the 'hood, but the girl and the man have a pleasant encounter. The second story is pleasant and well-done, with everything blue or brown. A Hasidic Jewish woman is about to get married and she conducts a business transaction with a Jain man. They each talk about their culture and negotiate over the price of whatever is being sold. After that, we see the wedding with no dialogue or even audio other than music, with lots of men with beards and hats. The bride and groom seem to be enjoying themselves. The Jain man is shown driving somewhere but I'm not sure we ever see him again.There is a story where a white girl born in Mali gets in a Haitian driver's cab. They have a nice conversation. Then they are joined by another man. A composer of music for anime meets a girl online. She is sweet but he has never seen her. Finally they meet, and I recognize the distinctive face of Christina Ricci. Another scene in a restaurant is orange, but I'm not sure what happens. A young woman on the subway is narrating her story, but we only hear her talking. There is a man she will meet later.A retired opera singer moves into a nice hotel. The young foreign- born bellhop is disabled but determined to his job. They have several nice conversations before a mysterious white light appears outside the window. Another older hotel employee seems to say everything the younger man said. An artist who wasn't born in the United States but looks like Jay Leno if he didn't bother to shave wants to paint a beautiful Chinese woman, but she is hesitant. The woman's boss is very strict and doesn't seem to care about her. There is some interesting Chinese music and a surprise at the end. Also in Chinatown, a white woman brings in her sexiest clothes to be dry-cleaned. The dry-cleaner seems uncomfortable with the situation, but at least they are speaking Cantonese and the older man can't understand them, right? We see him later in a nice scene with a middle-aged but attractive woman smoking outside a restaurant. This one  has a surprise ending.In a park, two white women see a Hispanic man with a white girl at a fountain. They compliment him on what a good job he does as a "manny". Then the man returns the girl to her mother, where we find out things are not as they seem.     This is all that I can remember, but there are a couple of other stories that didn't make enough sense for me to understand.This is a worthwhile film. You are sure to find something you enjoy.

These are approximately a dozen stories taking place in NYC. Some of them are interconnected. There are some good, some bad and some indifferent.1. Hayden Christensen is a thief flirting with Rachel Bilson. That's a scary acting duo. The arrival of Andy García does not necessarily save it.2. Natalie Portman is a religious Jewish buyer who is about to get married and Irrfan Khan is an Indian seller. This is an unusual and fascinating pairing. These are the interesting stuff that makes this movie worthwhile.3. Orlando Bloom is a composer talking to lovely Christina Ricci on the phone who is urging him to finish his work. This is one of those indifferent ones. Exactly how interesting is somebody talking on the phone? 4. Ethan Hawke flirts with Maggie Q after lighting her cigarette. She turns out to be a prostitute. OMG. Ethan Hawke is doing 'Before Sunrise' except a bit edgier and sexually provocative.5. After Anton Yelchin got stood up for prom by Blake Lively, James Caan sets him up with his daughter Olivia Thirlby except she's in a wheelchair. They end up having sex. This is a good one with a fun ending.6. Bradley Cooper and Drea de Matteo are meeting up for a date and we hear their interior monologues. This idea is more interesting on the pages than on the screen.7. Gimpy Shia LaBeouf helps Julie Christie settle into her hotel room. Shia's father John Hurt works at the front desk. It's a bit too desperate to be artistic.8. Carlos Acosta is caring for little girl Taylor Geare as he brings her to Jacinda Barrett. People assume he's a manny. I like the locations but the unknown relationship isn't as interesting as writer/director Natalie Portman hopes. After all, Jeff Goldblum had a black kid when he faced dinosaurs.9. Painter Ugur Yücel buys from herbalist Shu Qi. He asks her out but dies before the date.10. Robin Wright Penn starts talking to stranger Chris Cooper on the street while having a smoke but are they strangers? This could be more but they don't even fully use the time that they're given.11. Eva Amurri is arguing with boyfriend Justin Bartha and he decides to spontaneously buy a trip to Rome.12. Eli Wallach and Cloris Leachman are an elderly couple. Two veterans doing aimless conversations while on a very long walk.Emilie Ohana is a video artist who pops up from time to time.

When I first I heard of this movie, I thought it would be lighthearted "Sunday afternoon entertainment", such as "Valentine's day". Though I always had great admiration for some of the participants in this project, my expectations weren't high. But I was wrong. And I'm really glad I was wrong, because watching it was a very special experience.Some of the segments made me smile, some almost drove me to tears and one even left me with deep feeling of uneasiness. The point is all of them evoke emotions in viewer. If you expect some epic drama or a movie with strong social message, you may get disappointed, but if you would like to watch warm and inspiring little movie about everyday people, their love, hopes, dreams and struggles, you're in the right place. I personally found some characters easier to relate to, than the others, but there's no doubt that each and every one of them was well written (and portrayed as well). You may not know their past or entire story, but aspects of their life presented in a five minutes or so, say a lot about them.In modern cinematography unfortunately isn't usual to find a movie that represents human soul with all its layers and little details, because the most beautiful messages should not be presented through special effects, nor received by eyesight only. They should be received by heart itself and this movie succeeded in sending such message.

The producers of "Paris, je t'aime" bring us "New York, I Love You", another collection of short films ostensibly revolving around a city, in this case New York. The film was marketed as a ode to romance, love and the Big Apple. In reality it says little about either love or New York city. What it instead seems to conjure up is the world of early film noir. Jules Dassin's "The Naked City", which ended with he line "there are eight million stories in the Naked City", seems to be the unconscious springboard, "New York, I Love You" treating us to a kind of romanticised, cutesy fetishizing of alienation, lonely hearts and fickle human collection amidst a cold, impersonal, urban backdrop. And so the film is best when it's contrasting the yearnings of New Yorkans with a more existential ambivalence. Humans yearn, the city doesn't care. And as love and fantasy depend on a certain amount of anonymity – you as spectator write or project your yearnings upon an object – the vignette-heavy style of "New York, I Love You", which doesn't allow us to learn much about its characters, itself exploits a kind of romantic anonymity.While most anthology films suffer from conflicting moods and styles, "New York, I Love You" has some semblance of unity. It differs from its predecessor in that its short films, each by a different director and each revolving around a different set of characters, are loosely tied together rather than exist separately. The result is a kind of Robert Altman styled portmanteau or mosaic, the stories smoothly overlapping and bleeding into one another. Like Altman's films, the impression is that of a wandering camera or disembodied narrator teasing out different characters and eavesdropping on bits of plot. It's also one of the few New York films to portray the city as being heavily class divided, multi ethnic and inhabited by a rainbow of age groups.If "New York, I Love You" works well as a whole, its actual individual short stories are a mixed bag. Shekhar Kapur serves up the nice tale of a bellhop and a retired opera singer, Joshua Marston gives us a glimpse at a bickering old couple (Eli Wallach and Cloris Leachman) and several other vignettes give us snippets of SoHo, and various interesting Chinese, Indian and Jewish locals. Many of the other films, however, are either overly cutesy or pretentious.8/10 - Worth one viewing.