Drama > Hallstrom, Lasse Drama

Chocolat

Advantages: Excellent acting, unusual
Disadvantages: Some may find it very dull

Chocolat was a really bizzare movie, quite simply. The basic plot is as follows; a woman and her young daughter move in to a small, highly religious French town. She opens up a small chocolate shop there, much to the outrage of the church goes as she has decided to do so during Lent. Though people are curious about her and her chocolate, the people are wary of trying any out of fear of what the rest of the town will think. The woman, Vianne, eventually ...
...who is being beaten by her husband. Vianne manages to convince Josephine to leave him, and she runs away to live in Vianne's house and help her make her chocolate. Throughout the movie various other characters find help from Vianne, much to the outrage of the church. What finally tips them over the edge is the arrival of a group of Irish travellers. The church - and therefore the rest of the town - are determined to get rid of the travellers, and ...

hi_nicola 01.01.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Chocolat (DVD)

The Cider House does Rule

Advantages: beautifully and delicately written
Disadvantages: michael caine's maine accent

..."the cider house rules" for the first time the other night. I must say that my early and initial reactions to the film were "why is Michael Caine not a cockney? He sounds silly" and "surely they could have gotten someone else other than Peter Parker to play Homer?". These fairly plausible questions and thoughts were soon extinguished and deemed pedantoic when i was soon drawn into this delicately steady story of an emotionally immune orphan and his ...
...to prevent it from happening. The story tells of one child, named Homer, who didn't have much luck as an orphan; his first foster parents didn't know how to cope with such an unusually quiet baby whilst his second batch of foster parents beat him. In the end, Dr Larch took it upon himself to keep him at the orphanage and to make him "useful", as he puts it - he trains him to be a doctor. Years go by and baby Homer becomes a youthful pre-spiderman ...

jamiebecks 17.06.2009 · Read full review
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Review of The Cider House Rules (DVD)

Things could be worse but could this be better?

Advantages: Beautiful, touching, sensitive, funny, tragic, sad, charming....
Disadvantages: None

...strength to carry on. My Opinion --------------- It is sobering to think that Lasse Hallström started his career directing Abba videos before he went on to his more well known successes in American cinema. However even though his American films have received great acclaim “My Life as a Dog” remains, as Hallström admits in the interview on this DVD, his most resonant work. There have been many films about childhood and coming of age but to me ...
...I had a smile on my face (or a tear in my eye) most of the way through. This is in my opinion a truly remarkable film. It is difficult to describe why it is such a gem. It is beautiful, sensitive, funny, tragic, poignant, nostalgic, charming – I could go on... It has wonderfully engaging characters, an off-beat storyline and some really unforgettable scenes. The acting is excellent, particularly that of Anton Glanzelius as Ingemar with his cheeky ...

buzios 11.10.2004 · Read full review
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Review of My Life As A Dog (DVD)

'A broken man can heal'

Advantages: Beautifully shot, subtle storyline
Disadvantages: Some will find it too slow and possibly self-indulgent

...people that just melt into the background; no-one notices he's there until they have no choice. Craving love, he seeks it with the first woman that comes his way - hedonistic Petal, who has no feelings for anyone but herself. When she leaves him, selling their daughter, Bunny, to an illegal adoption organisation, he is devastated. Fortunately, Bunny is returned to him, but Petal dies in a car accident. Then Quoyle's aunt Agnis comes into his life ...
...a similar background. Is this the beginning of a new life for him and his daughter? Kevin Spacey plays Quoyle, in a role that is very different from his usual, tending towards the over-confident, roles. Perhaps because of this, I think this is his best role. Bullied by his father as a child, Quoyle is a shy man, desperate to find a soul-mate, but lacking the social skills to chose one; instead he ends up with a woman who abuses him physically and ...

sunmeilan 07.04.2008 · Read full review
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Review of The Shipping News (DVD)

Revenge is a dish best taken cold

Advantages: Much better than I expected
Disadvantages: There's nothing special about it

My mum and sister have completely different tastes in films to me. They like nothing better than to sit down with a mushy rom-com, whereas I tend to go for thrillers and horror. At a recent visit to my parents, I felt like watching a film, so had to choose from a selection of what looked like hideous, vomit-inducing romances. I picked this one purely because it was one I hadn't heard of and it starred Dennis Quaid, who I generally think of as a good ...
...film, so perhaps for this reason, I actually quite enjoyed it. Grace is a happily married woman with a successful career and a young daughter. Or at least she thinks. One day while out driving around town, she spots her husband Eddie kissing another woman. It soon becomes clear that he has been a serial cheater and that some of the women he was seeing were Grace's friends. Feeling that she has been made a total fool of, she takes her daughter and ...

sunmeilan 20.11.2006 · Read full review
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Review of Something To Talk About (DVD)