Film

Same Time, Next Year

A filmed Broadway two-hander: Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn play strangers who begin a one-weekend-a-year affair that outlasts fashions, wars, and their own marriages. Told in five leaps forward, it's really a comedy about how much a person can change while their heart stays exactly where it was. Talky, tender, funny in a wistful way — for people who like actors more than plot.

TMDb rating6.5

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When Harry Met Sally...1989

The gold standard for two people talking their way through years of a relationship, with the same mix of wit, warmth and low-key ache that makes the hotel-room dinners here work so well.

But It's a will-they-won't-they, not a secret-affair story, so the moral texture is much gentler.

When Harry Met Sally... poster

Before Sunset2004

A couple reunites after nine years apart and talks in real time — the closest thing to watching Alda and Burstyn's annual check-ins, minus the hotel room and the guilt.

But You'll want to have seen Before Sunrise first, and it's a slighter, quieter film without this one's decades of scope.

Before Sunset poster

The Way We Were1973no page yet

Streisand and Redford as mismatched lovers pulled apart and back together across a turbulent American decade — same bittersweet arithmetic of love that survives despite the odds.

But It's played straighter and sadder, with less of the comic relief that keeps this one afloat.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Groundhog Day1993

Same engine — a fixed, repeating meeting point used to track how a person changes over time — reworked as broad American comedy instead of bittersweet romance.

Bill Murray relives the same day until he becomes someone worth loving — a comedy that uses ritualized repetition, exactly like this film's annual reunion, to measure a person's slow moral change.

But It's fantasy-comedy with a magic premise, nothing like the grounded realism of an actual affair.

Groundhog Day poster
More like this (8)

Brief Encounter1945

The original tasteful adultery drama — two married strangers, stolen hours, crushing English restraint. If you want the guilt turned up and the jokes turned down, start here.

But Its emotional register is buttoned-up 1940s British; nothing here is played for laughs.

Brief Encounter poster

Shirley Valentine1989no page yet

Another stage-to-screen character piece about a marriage examined mid-life, this one from the wife's side, funny and finally quite moving about wanting more than routine.

But It's a solo showcase rather than a duet, so you lose the back-and-forth chemistry that carries this film.

Two for the Road1967

Finney and Hepburn's marriage told out of order across several road trips — same trick of using scattered years to show how two people keep becoming different versions of themselves.

But The nonlinear editing takes some getting used to, and it's more cynical about marriage than romantic.

Two for the Road poster

45 Years2015

A quieter, colder cousin — a long marriage cracked open by one piece of news, with the same interest in how much of a relationship rests on what's unsaid.

But There's none of the warmth or comedy here; it's a slow, devastating chamber piece.

45 Years poster

Annie Hall1977

Another relationship tracked across years with a comic voice that keeps threatening to break your heart — the same trick of finding jokes inside real sadness.

But Its jumpy, fourth-wall-breaking style is much more restless and self-conscious than this film's steady structure.

Annie Hall poster

Barefoot in the Park1967no page yet

A Neil Simon stage adaptation about newlyweds figuring out marriage in one apartment — good company if you like the theatrical rhythm and the sense of watching a play breathe on screen.

But It's a young marriage comedy with none of the melancholy or decades of hindsight this film builds toward.

Scenes from a Marriage2021

The same structural idea — snapshots of one relationship separated by years — pushed into a much longer, harsher, more serious register, and onto television instead of into a cinema.

Bergman's Swedish miniseries visits a couple in scattered scenes across years, stripping away everything but two people talking themselves toward the truth about their marriage.

But It's unsparing, subtitled, and built to unsettle — there's little of the comfort or comedy that makes this film such easy company.

Scenes from a Marriage poster

Letter from an Unknown Woman1948no page yet

An older, sadder version of the same premise — years measured out in stolen meetings — with the comedy stripped away to reveal how bleak the arrangement can look from the other angle.

Max Ophüls' aching melodrama follows a woman's devotion to one man across decades of glimpses and near-misses — the same idea of a life shaped by brief, recurring encounters, done as tragedy.

But There's no comic relief here at all; it's a doomed, one-sided love story from classic Hollywood's more operatic register.

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