Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams share one of many soulful, doleful moments in The Time Traveler's Wife
My friend and neighbor, the filmmaker Alan Wade, has a provocative explanation for why Titanic struck such a strong and reverberant chord with hundreds of millions of moviegoers, especially women: the hero dies. O.K., that breaks a cardinal rule of movie romance: that the lovers kiss happily at the final fadeout. Most examples of the genre end with that rosy image, in part because their makers are reluctant to bum out their audience. James Cameron must have been tempted to end his film with Leonardo DiCaprio's Jack surviving the ship's sinking and enjoying a...
