Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Rosie Searle 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.

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.

vinyjunkie I saw this movie many years ago (I think in the theater) and remembered really enjoying it. After watching it again, I still really liked the story. There's not really much to say about this movie other than the fact that it is extremely solid. Everything about it is good and it's hard to find many flaws at all in this film. Perfectly cast and well-acted, the story, emotion, score, acting...it was all right on, especially the script and performance by Michael Caine, both of which won Oscars. It's a really relaxing movie with beautiful scenery and soundtrack. Overall, this is a touching movie that I recommend to everyone.

Hitchcoc This film takes a premise and lets its characters move in and out of it along the way. Each of the characters is fully developed and has baggage and ambitions. Nothing is black and white. That's the strength of John Irving, who gave us Gary, and has not stopped since. In this film, which takes place on an apple orchard, we have people coming and going. Some are there to be protected. Others are there because of the promise of an abortion. However, life keeps going on around them. War come and goes. People are whole, then disabled or fragmented. I'd forgotten that Toby Maguire appeared in this film as the protagonist. He is quite marvelous in it, with a simple innocence and a past that is humbling. Also, one can bank on Michael Caine to deliver the goods. I'm sure some will see this film as painful, but so is life. Life brings smiles and life brings grimaces. Life brings joys and life brings pain. A fine film made from a fine book.

MartinHafer "The Cider House Rules" is a very well-crafted film. The acting is generally quite good, the music terrific and the story interesting...though also depressing as can be and a bit repellent. The story is set in two places--at a god-awful orphanage and at an orchard nearby.When the story begins, you learn from the Doctor (Michael Caine) that little Homer was adopted and returned twice...and so the Doctor has raised him himself and taught this teen to be a doctor. And so, in this world of "makin' your own rules", he has the young man deliver babies and even observe abortions...though Homer thinks abortions are wrong. Of course, you KNOW that this will come back to haunt him later...after he leaves the orphanage to inexplicably become an apple-picker. Dying kids who cannot breathe, abortions, abandoned babies, incest and murder---this film is the ultimate in awfulness. Enjoyable it clearly is not...though the film did win two Oscars. One, oddly, was for Michael Caine. While I love Caine, in this film his accent was just bizarre...yet he got the award. I assume it was like John Wayne's win for "True Grit"...not one of his best performances but given more for his body of work than anything else. I could see the film's technical merits but found it about as enjoyable as chewing on glass.

Armand more than a movie, it is a beautiful meeting between a good cast and a good novel. the Irving universe is, step by step, resurrected with admirable grace and the performances are really seductive. a film about choices and verdicts, with powerful flavor of South and with gentle demonstrations of clever solutions for transform a story in more than a beautiful one but, maybe, memorable. one of films who represents a must see for the delicate force of image, subject, acting. it is an useful tool for reflection about world and its rules. romance and drama in right proportions, it is source of special mark who reminds old things, who resurrect new emotions.