Memory, Sorrow and Thorn by Tad Williams, too. And The Belgariad by David Eddings only falls short by the fact that the mentor makes it through the tale.
Heck, subtract the enemy wearing armor and make the love interest non-royalty and you’ve described Harry Potter.
After a murderer kills the pilot, a stewardess has to land a passenger plane – and succeeds.
It’s a Wonderful Life and…something else.
And here’s mine:
A fatherless girl who loves poetry and has spent most of her life caring for younger children is taken in by older people with no children of their own who send her to first the local school and then a high school quite a distance away, where she performs brilliantly scholastically and eventually earns a degree that allows her to become a teacher.
Anne of Green Gables, and…something else.
Movies: A group of aging baby boomers who were close friends in college get together for a weekend and try to rationalize their current comfortable lives with their more radical 60s era ideals. A few get a pick up game going somewhere in the middle.
Not sure if that is enough info.
A woman loves two men, one with a shady past who has come into possession of a valuable; she leaves on an airplane with the valuable and one of the men, the shady-past man left behind at the airport.
The Big Chill and Return of the Secaucus Seven
RealityChuck was correct for my clue. I’m still amazed that John Sayles did not sue for getting his movie ripped off.
Casablanca and A Fish Called Wanda?
(OK, “Wanda” kinda has to be forced into the hole…)
Groundhog Day, too, sort of. (A short term of one day!)
Yes, this was my intended solution.
A hardworking man who’s been pretending to be of the opposite sexual orientation ends the story by coming up with a simple plan to foil the opportunist out to exploit compromising information about a Senator’s wife.
Sorry I took so long to say, yes- Witness was essentially an updated version of John Wayne’s Angel and the Bad Man.
The difference being that cop Harrison Ford must leave the AMish and go back to fight crime in Philly, while John Wayne gives up his life as a gunfighter and becomes a Quaker farmer.
A socially disfunctional but skilled pilot is unexpectedly selected for a role in an elite fighter pilot program. After a dramatic death he becomes afraid to fly in combat. The story comes to a head with a desperate battle, where the enemy has the upper hand until our hero, previously kept away by his fear, enters the fray and defeats the enemy. He returns to a hero’s welcome, and then assumes a role teaching future pilots.
Here’s a hint: both films had the same director.
You only got one of them. “For Love of the Game” doesn’t exactly involve a *new *woman.
A mysterious man with magical powers convinces some utterly normal folk to embark on a world-saving quest. En route they meet a man who turns out to be a king, a king who must ultimately wrest his kingdom from its current insane ruler. They journey across a land populated by humans, dwarves and elves (and there are all of these in their company) but alas, part way through the tale, the mysterious magician falls from a high bridge while doing battle with an evil servant of the Big Bad Evil Enemy who threatens the world. Said magician is presumed dead, but comes back to the story later, very much alive.
As the unlikely heroes press on into the dark, forbidding country where dwells the BBEE, they are vexed by a small insane creature who once possessed the powerful artifact upon which hinges the fate of the world.
The good guys win in the end, destroying the supposedly immortal BBEE.
Tin Cup?
A scientifically inclined protagonist acquires superhuman powers after a lab accident involving an arthropod, which greatly complicates his incipient romance with the girl he loves.