Movie Reviews for A Room With a View (Two-Disc Special Edition)

A Room With a View (Two-Disc Special Edition)

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Movie Reviews of A Room With a View (Two-Disc Special Edition)

Movie Review: A charming romantic movie
Summary: 5 Stars

I remember seeing this movie when it was first released. Of course something is lost viewing it on the small screen, but the wit and charm of the script still holds up. The cinematography is WONDERFUL, though, as I stated before, best seen on the big screen.

Movie Review: Room with a View
Summary: 5 Stars

This Merchant/Ivory film is spot-on faithful to Forsters's Novel. The casting is supurb second only to the settings both in Italy and England. Nothing but Charming throughout. Its one of my 5 all time favorite movies.

Movie Review: The view is slightly underwhelming...
Summary: 4 Stars

I say slightly because, as a whole, I liked this movie. The four stars should give that away. I'm giving it a B, verging on a B+. It has many elements that work, but when compared to the work for which I have vowed forever adoration of James Ivory (`The Remains of the Day' and `Howard's End') this film just didn't have everything I wanted. In the end I am blindsided by two ravishing performances (Bonham-Carter and Day-Lewis) and am delighted by a slew of nicely placed directorial touches (Ivory has such a tailored hand) but overall I find the film a tad lacking.

Ah, such is life.

The film revolves around the young Lucy Honeychurch who falls in love with a young man named George Emerson while on holiday with her cousin Charlotte in Italy. Charlotte is apposed to the match and rushes Lucy home before further steps can be taken. We then jump to Lucy, now engaged to the snobbish Cecil Vyse. When a house nearby needs renting out, who better to show up than George and his father. Things begin to get complicated when George becomes a family friend and Lucy's own mother and brother begin to express their dislike towards Cecil. Charlotte makes another appearance and further complicates matters for Lucy, who is struggling to find balance and attain her own happiness while abiding by her social obligations.

For me, there were elements here that just didn't work. At times the film felt stuffy and almost campy. I thought that the plaque cards used to `tell us what is going on' were distracting.

I also found some of the performances to be a tad off kilter. I love Maggie Smith, but I don't understand her Oscar nomination. Judi Dench has less screen time and yet manages to do MUCH more. Smith is just manic and clichéd here. Julian Sands annoyed me. He was trying far too hard to be the `pretty boy' that he came across as distastefully effeminate. That said, Dench, Bonham-Carter and Day-Lewis were all quite astonishing. I love the way that Dench uses her wit to create a character larger than her screen time calls for. She did this here as well as in `Shakespeare in Love' and even recently in `Nine'. Bonham-Carter carries this film on her shoulders, and she does so with a grace and beautifully believable confliction. Day-Lewis makes the biggest transformation (it took me forever to realize that was him). He really gets every one of Cecil's idiosyncrasies just right, being careful to create a man and not a caricature.

The films plot and story are nicely achieved if not a tad generic for this type of film (which is why I loved `The Remains of the Day' so much, being totally original while never taking away from the genre at all). Like I said, I like this movie, but it was not the slam-dunk I was expecting.

Movie Review: A classic of the romanic 19th century
Summary: 4 Stars

The Italian fight/death scene just wiped me out...
It is kind of hard to put it with a Jane Austin movie
or Charlotte Bronte, but that is the kind of British romance of manners that it seems to group with.
The Importance of Being Earnest is a farce on this sort of melodrama in literature that dominated the 19th century.
The acting Helena Bonham Carter as the foolish British girl who doesn't know love when it bites her is very good.
The filming, costuming and directing is nearly flawless.
I hadn't heard of this film and was very pleasantly surprised at getting such a gem.