BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Paul_message I've rarely watched a movie that has had such a negative effect on my enjoyment of it in the last five minutes as this one did. Everything else about this was an absolute delight to me. I thought Lucy and George were cast perfectly and the actors played them with beautiful subtlety of emotion. The scenes of Italy were visually gorgeous. Thoroughly enjoyable until an utterly stupefying ending that was as unnecessary as it was nonsensical. You could literally cut out the last five minutes or so of the movie after the two lovers have gone to sleep in their hotel room and everything makes intuitive and emotional sense. For me It achieved with natural grace what too many movies only contrive to, yet instead of fading to the credits they tack on an ill fitting ending scenario that wearily negates everything that has happened in a way that is neither believable or logical. Did they change directors at the last minute? Was he just having a bad day on that shoot? I guess I'll never know. Perhaps a recut? It would be an easy one to do; snip off a little bit at the end from an otherwise great film and re-release it the way it should be.

alcorcrisan I should start perhaps by mentioning that I'm quite fond of the James Ivory movies, including the one by the same title. And still, I find this much more faithful to the original book. It better reflects the spirit of the writer and the age. It has an aura of authenticity, a natural flow and a je ne sais quoi that have made it quite endearing to me from the very beginning. The names in the cast are perhaps lesser known than those in the other version, and it is precisely the reason why I find them better suited to this television / cinematographic adaptation. They seem to be natural human beings, and not the caricatures thereof, as some of their counterparts in the more famous version. Other reviewers have been rather critical of the final few minutes in the film. I would be inclined to be much more tolerant, as the new ending, although perhaps questionable in itself, is yet so respectful of the spirit of the author in his novel that I tend to welcome it.

martha Stephens I think Elaine Cassidy is extraordinary in this film. I saw this version before the earlier version, and perhaps that's one reason I have felt that no other Lucy Honeychurch could ever be as fully engaged -- and engaging -- in this role as Cassidy is. She has wonderful timing and intricate variety of expression for showing us what a character is feeling. She looks the part exactly! Her scene with Timothy Spall (George's father) in the cottage near the end of the film is mesmerizing, a great duet, one could say, between two actors of genius! The careful pacing of the director and every detail of speech and demeanor is perfect. I hope this scene in particular will become known to more and more people who can appreciate its artistry. The whole cast is wonderful, and I feel we see three especially powerful performers in Cassidy, Spall, and a magnificently confused Charlotte! (A woman named Sophie Thompson, I believe; even Maggie Smith is not her equal in this role.) I feel the early scene in the pension is beautifully composed and full of interest, the humor delicious. I'm not so sure about the flash forward in the opening of the film, nor the ending, which casts a pall of sadness over the story which is not right for it. Lucy's run to the swimming hole is thrilling, but the fast cut to a certain later scene may have more to do with male fantasy (as to the directors of the film) than anything else. Considering, altogether, Cassidy's deep impersonation of Miss Honeychurch. I wish I could see this actor in other serious and artistic films. The 2005 mini-series Fingersmith can still be seen, and that, too, is a remarkable show, full of careful, expressive faces and images somewhat like certain French films of old. Cassidy personifies the strange and interesting character Maud Lilly to perfection! She seems to live her characters every step of the way, and so we live them with her -- simply the mark of a great actor, perhaps. I'm sure she's fine all through the current series The Paradise, but I can't get much involved in so confused a narrative as that. For those in London I'm sure it is good to see this actress on stage in Turgenev and other plays. On the whole, I'm not sure this is a wonderful world for film actors, especially women actors, in these days of violence in movies, cops and robbers galore, ugly intrigue — as if this is all of human life that's worth portraying. E. M. Forster knew otherwise, as did Dickens, i. e., and most of our other great writers. I expect Elaine Cassidy also has this knowledge and will persevere in finding roles that have meaning for her. ##

Sam Sloan First off I didn't really like the movie much. There wasn't much story in it though the introduction piqued my interest and made me expect something much better. After seeing the ending I wondered if there might be a second part because it ended so abruptly and so poorly. But what really upset me was the story's historical ignorance and it was a huge one. Consider that the story begins in Florence, Italy in 1922. Are you OK with that? Ten years later she finds herself in Florence with an Italian man she met when the story first began - 1922. Near this last scene we see the man the woman in the story married lying dead on some battlefield which would have happened certainly after 1922 and before 1932. She even tells the Italian she lost her husband in the war. What war was England involved in between 1922 and 1932? By the looks of the battlefield, it looks like the trenches of WWI but that war ended in 1918, right? Perhaps in the editing phase of the movie, whoever entered the date 1922 meant to enter 1912 instead? 1922 it couldn't have been. The movie was pretty bad anyway, so I suppose it really doesn't matter.