Directed by Nick Cassavetes (son of the inimitable John Cassavetes) and starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, The Notebook offers all the components of an epic love story: beautiful young protagonists are madly in love but kept apart by social differences; steamy love scenes; and tear-jerking tragedy. Based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks, the story is set in the 1940s yet told in present time by an elderly man (James Garner) to a fellow nursing home patient (Gena Rowlands, the director’s mother).