Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Bergorks If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Desertman84 Stanley & Iris is a romantic drama that features two big stars in Jane Fonda and Robert De Niro. The screenplay by Harriet Frank, Jr. and Irving Ravetch is loosely based on the novel Union Street by Pat Barker.Swoosie Kurtz,Martha Plimpton,Harley Cross and Jamey Sheridan co- star to play key supporting roles. This movie is about an odd love story between a widow and an illiterate.It was directed by Martin Ritt. In this socially conscious drama with romantic overtones, Iris is a working mother with a job at a large commercial bakery who is still getting over the death of her husband, though her circumstances don't give her much time to grieve. She's sharing her house with her two children, Kelly and Richard; her unemployed sister, Sharon; and her thuggish brother-in-law. The tensions at home become even greater when the teen-aged Kelly announces that she's pregnant. One of the few bright spots in Iris' life is her blossoming friendship with Stanley, a nice guy who works in the bakery's cafeteria. However, Iris starts noticing a few odd things about Stanley and it slowly dawns on her that he can't read. When the boss figures this out, Stanley loses his job which is an especially troubling development, as Stanley has just had to put his father in a retirement home. Homeless and out of work, Stanley turns to Iris with a special request which is he'd like her to teach him how to read.The elements are in place but they don't add up to great drama in this well-meant effort to personalize the plight of illiterate people.But nevertheless,it's as honest and direct and entertaining as the considerable talents of everyone involved can make it.There is also a good supporting cast here, and Fonda is effective in her role. But it's DeNiro who shines with a very affecting performance, as well as a natural chemistry with Fonda.That is why this movie with many flaws is a harmless little romance that's elevated by the charisma of its two stars.

Rachel Wood If I had not read Pat Barker's 'Union Street' before seeing this film, I would have liked it. Unfortuntately this is not the case. It is actually my kind of film, it is well made, and in no way do I want to say otherwise, but as an adaptation, it fails from every angle.The harrowing novel about the reality of living in a northern England working-class area grabbed hold of my heartstrings and refused to let go for weeks after I had finished. I was put through tears, repulsion, shock, anger, sympathy and misery when reading about the women of Union Street. Excellent. A novel that at times I felt I could not read any more of, but I novel I simply couldn't put down. Depressing yes, but utterly gripping.The film. Oh dear. Hollywood took Barker's truth and reality, and showered a layer of sweet icing sugar over the top of it. A beautiful film, an inspiring soundtrack, excellent performances, a tale of hope and romance...yes. An adaptation of 'Union Street'...no.The women of Union Street and their stories are condensed into Fonda's character, their stories are touched on, but many are discarded. I accept that some of Barker's tales are sensitive issues and are too horrific for mass viewing, and that a film with around 7 leading protagonists just isn't practical, but the content is not my main issue. The essence and the real gut of the novel is lost - darkness and rain, broken windows covered with cardboard, and the graphically described stench of poverty is replaced with sunshine, pretty houses, and a twinkling William's score.If you enjoyed the film for its positivity and hope in the face of 'reality', I advise that you hesitate to read the book without first preparing yourself for something more like 'Schindler's List'...but without the happy ending.

erik-185 This is a complex film that explores the effects of Fordist and Taylorist modes of industrial capitalist production on human relations. There are constant references to assembly line production, where workers are treated as cogs in a machine, overseen by managers wielding clipboards, controlling how much hair the workers leave exposed, and firing workers (Stanley) who meet all criteria (as his supervisor says, are always on time, are hard workers, do good work) but who may in some unspecified future make a mistake. This system destroys families - Stanley has to send his father to a nursing home (where he quickly dies) after Stanley loses his job. Iris' daughter is a single teen mother who drops out of high school to take a job in the plant. References are made to the fact that now, with declining wages, both partners need to work, the implication being that there's nobody left at home to care for the kids. Iris' husband is dead from an illness, and with the multiple references in the film about the costs of medical care, the viewer must wonder if he might have lived with better and more costly care. Iris' brother in law gets abusive after yet another unsuccessful day at the unemployment office when his wife yells at him for buying a beer with her savings instead of leaving it for her face lift and/or teeth job (even the working class with no stake in conventional bourgeois notions of perfection and beauty buy into them). The one reference to race in the film is through a black factory line worker whose husband is in jail (presumably, he's also black, and black men suffer disproportionally high incarceration rates). She remarks that he, like her, "is doing time" - her family is composed of a prisoner and a wage slave.Stanley, however, still believes in human relations and is therefore for most of the film outside of the system of Fordist capitalism. He cares for his father in spite of the fact that it was his father's traveling salesman job that resulted in his illiteracy - he has not yet reduced human relations to a purely instrumental contract, as Iris' brother in law does (suggesting that he "married the wrong sister"). He does not, as Iris says, conform to the work-eat-sleep routine of everyone else; rather, he uses technology and the techniques of industrial production in an artisanal and creative way, in a sort of Bauhaus ideal. This was the dream of early modernists and 1920's socialists (such as the Bauhaus) - to use technology to provide for all basic needs, allowing for more free time for creative human work and fuller human relations. He is also outside of traditional gender relations. He cooks, he cleans, he cares for his family, and he knows how to iron. Iris, on the other hand, lives in a traditionally male role - she's a factory worker, the mains source of income for her (extended) family, and she brings Stanley into the public realm, traditionally off-limits to women. By teaching him to read and write, she gives him access to the world of knowledge, also traditionally gendered male.Literacy here is used as a metaphor for the (traditionally masculine) public realm and the systems of circulation (monetary, vehicular, cultural) that enable participation in the public realm. Without this access, Stanley is feminized - the jobs open to him are cooking and cleaning. He is excluded from all regular circulations, unable to participate in the monetary (can't open a bank account), in the vehicular (can't get a driver's license, can't ride the bus), and in the social (he asks if he exists if he can't write his name).After learning to read, he grabs books on auto repair, farming, and spirituality (the Bible). The Word of God is therefore relativized, placed on the same value plane as how-to books. In fact, organized religion in general is only very occasionally present - the Bible also appears on a dresser as the camera pans to find Stanley and Iris having sex. It is, however, acknowledged as a moral force - Iris, clearly a character devoted to living a "good" life, mentions at the beginning of the film that her rosary was among the objects lost in a purse snatching.Once able to read, he enters the system and lands a managerial position with a health care plan, a car, and a house, taking his place at the head of the family, the breadwinner. Presumably, he's an industrial designer, dreaming up products that will require others enduring the drudgery of the assembly line to produce. This ending, probably the only bit of conventional Hollywood in the film, is so incongruous with all that has come before that I at least wonder if it wasn't forced in by some Studio exec suddenly worried about the lack of a feel-good ending and its potential effect on the bottom line.Now that, according to the pundits, we've comfortably moved on to post-industrial capitalism, the film also has a slightly nostalgic feel, as though we needed the historical distance to really analyze what happened during that period. Nevertheless, it's highly recommended - at least if you want to exercise your brain. Disregard the ending, and it's close to a perfect 10.

chinasyndrome "Stanley & Iris" is a quietly beautiful, poignant and simple film. There's no Bree Daniels or Jimmy Conway to be found here, just two regular people dealing with life's obstacles and finding each other along the way. As one would expect, Jane Fonda and Robert De Niro are wonderful as the title characters (can you think of any two greater actors of the last thirty years?), and the script is quite affecting. If you're looking for explosions, car chases, coarse language or raunchy sex, look elsewhere. "Stanley & Iris" the polar opposite of a huge Hollywood blockbuster, and I love it for that. Pure human emotion is the core of the story. It's all here... grief, hope, shame, fear, but most of all, love. This film will stay with you long after viewing.