Doubt
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Movie Reviews of Doubt
Movie Review: Doubt is not a one way street
Summary: 5 Stars
While this year's Oscar batch may disappoint the box office, I find the level of the nominated movies quite outstanding. 'Doubt' is one of the excellent movies in the competition; it is a theater play put on the screen with the best cast that you could find for it. Streep and P.S.Hoffman and two more actresses are in the race for acting awards, and that is well deserved.
Streep is a self-righteous Catholic school principal in New York, a nun; she runs her shop by fear and mistrust. It is 1964. Hoffman is the parish priest, and he lives by different rules. She dislikes him for his kindness and for his popularity. He takes sugar with his tea! He writes with a ball-point pen! He is nice to people! He smokes!
She is out to catch him with something, anything, and instructs one of her underlings to watch specifically for odd behaviour. The young nun reports that she found one of her 12 y old students, the only black boy, an altar boy, visibly disturbed and smelling of alcohol, after a meeting with the priest.
Streep's character picks on this piece of incomplete information and blows it out of proportion. She goes head on for the confrontation, and of course nobody can win against the kind of allegations and suspicions that can grow out of it. The two lead actors carry the confrontation. A mediocre cast would have run the movie aground.
Movie Review: Certainty does not necessarily equal proof
Summary: 5 Stars
Sister Aloysius is the dragon lady principal, the no-nonsense taskmaster, and the moral absolutist of the Catholic school in this film. She terrifies the students and maintains strict order even at meals with the other sisters. Then, through a series of misunderstandings, misperceptions, and suspicions, she starts to have doubts about the behavior of Father Flynn, who has befriended the only black child in the school and has tried to defend him from the other kids.
Without revealing the specifics, I'll just say that Sister A. goes on a mission to destroy Flynn's career and record because she believes fervently that her own suspicions are somehow proof of wrongdoing on his part. Her manipulation of Sister James, whom she pressures, adds to the amount of damage she tries to inflict.
By the end, you will see how important it is to give others the benefit of the doubt when you truly do not have all the facts or even any evidence at all. By the time that lesson is learned, however, it might be too late for some of the parties involved.
At first I wasn't sure if Hoffman was up to the task of playing a priest, but he was in fine tune. Streep was fascinating and frightening to watch, while Amy Adams gave a nicely nuanced performance as Sister James.
Movie Review: Good Film. Streep blows me away.
Summary: 5 Stars
Oh this was one good movie; One wallop of a movie; I came fully prepared to hate Hoffman's character. But along the way, especially when he was talking to Sis James' character, I couldn't help but notice the fact that he had a soft gentle side; I may be wrong but as an African American woman, I just saw a sensitive kind hearted priest that tried to befriend a boy in his parish who happens to be black and caught his own hell in the movie. In the end, when Streep brought out her hand to Sister James, I was like she brought a trump card and fully expected to play it. When he told her he knew people, and she simply said, "You will lose" I was blown away by that. This is a nun in the Catholic church telling a priest that in spite of his statue and job, she will fight him if necessary. It was then that I felt that somehow this man was being falsely accused; I saw the emotions on the man's face and to me, I saw no guilt only pain. For a while I saw it, but to be honest, we will never know if she was right in her accusations. I can also see why Viola Davis' role was considered for an Oscar as well. You want to say, Lady wheres your head? but on the other hand, considering the fact that hes already catching his own hell at home, you have to say is this worth it? is it?Movie Review: No Doubt
Summary: 5 Stars
The play-turned-movie Doubt has no doubts as to why all four actors were acknowledged for their acting chops at the Oscars. Fallen into the hands of lesser performers, Doubt would have been long and draggy. However, the stellar cast headed by Meryl Streep with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis is superb.
From the very first scne where the no-nonsense and rigid Sister Aloysius Beauvier invokes fear in the kids attending Father Flynn's sermons, you know it will be one hell of a show. There's a lot of dialogue and at no time, you have clear evidence of the perpetrator's crime but the dramatic and extremely heated exchange between Streep and Hoffman in her office proves to us why Streep is one of the best actresses this century and why Hoffman won an Oscar a few years back. Amy Adams as Sister James is both precocious and perhaps the only one with doubt that Sister Aloysius is right in her accusations. Of course, the other scene stealer is Viola Davis with her short but impactful appearance as the mother of the boy victim (akin to Judi Dench's 8-minute run in Shakespeare in Love).
Doubt is unquestionably one of the best films of 2008. (A)
Movie Review: A Message of Profound Importance Delivered by a Brilliant Ensemble
Summary: 5 Stars
DOUBT succeeds on every level - from the fine transference of Patrick Shanley's play to the screen (Shanley wrote the play, the screenplay, and directs) to the atmospheric cinematography excursion through the Bronx of the mid 1960s to the detailed delineation of the characters by Meryl Streep, Viola Davis, Amy Adams, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and even young Joseph Foster, to the careful editing. It would be difficult to imagine a finer cast, here cast in roles counter to their usual types, bringing such power to the poetry of Shanley's lines.
The story is well known by now (the dismissal of a progressive priest by a crotchety old Catholic school principal over a false rumor and all the 'doubt ' that brings into play in every character), but multiple viewings of this film intensify the humanity of each of the characters and demonstrate just how fine a writer Shanley is. The subject matter is difficult at first but the manner in which each of these superb actors (under the guidance of Shanley's direction) explore the effects of spite and loathing and forgiveness shares some of the finest ensemble acting in years. Recommended. Grady Harp, April 09