High Fidelity

Rob Gordon owns a Chicago record store called Championship Vinyl, where he spends his days with two employees, the reserved Dick and the loud, opinionated Barry. The three share an encyclopedic knowledge of popular music and a habit of ranking songs and moments into top-five lists. When Rob's girlfriend Laura ends their relationship, he is thrown into an examination of his romantic history, revisiting the breakups that shaped him in an effort to understand what keeps going wrong. Set largely in the shop and moving between past and present, the film comes from Nick Hornby's 1995 novel of the same name.

Stephen Frears directed; the screenplay was written by John Cusack with D.V. DeVincentis and Steve Pink. Cusack also produced and stars as Rob. The cast includes Iben Hjejle as Laura, Todd Louiso and Jack Black as the shop's two clerks, plus Lisa Bonet and Catherine Zeta-Jones. The film was Frears's tenth in a directorial career that would run to twenty-three features; it followed The Hi-Lo Country and preceded Fail Safe.

Made for roughly 30 million dollars, it took in about 47 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.4 from around 199,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.1 from a much smaller base, while critics rated it 7.9 across 165 reviews — warmer than either audience measure.