By The Sea

Director: Dean W. Barnes

Fans of the magic realism found in books by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende will want to take a look at this cute but slight B film confection of fantasy and romance. Elena Aaron portrays Lena, a down-on-her-luck pastry chef who, after a string of horrendous misfortunes, finds herself working as a kitchen assistant in a beautiful seaside resort. Once in her new surroundings, she finds herself under the spell of two men—a kindly handyman (played by Robert Pemperton) and the ghost of a generation’s old baseball player. While some of the elements and plot points work better than the film on the whole as there are moments of pure cheese (both in dialogue and action), the film is nonetheless pleasant enough to curl up with on a rainy Saturday, even though those who know enough about magic realism will figure out the main mystery within the first half hour.