Rating: 
Summary: Be warned . . .
Review: As a latecomer to Atom Egoyan's oevre, I was blown away by 'Exotica' back in '94 - I was into Hal Hartley, Luis Bunuel and Peter Greenaway at the time. I tried to seek out his other stuff while globe-trotting, with little success. I found 'The Sweet Hereafter' powerful, but much more straightforward, than 'Exotica', and thus somehow less satisfying.
'Felicia's Journey' is arguably a step in the wrong direction - less obtuse than his previous works, it lacks menace, substance, passion. I am not a big fan of Bob Hoskins in the first place, and I did not find his performance convincing here.
If you want to watch something creepy but intelligent, I recommmend Todd Solonz' 'Happiness', 'Pi', or Egoyan's truly mind-blowing 'Exotica'. I would give this a wide berth, unless you are a huge Bob Hoskins fan, and/or of an extremely undiscriminating disposition.
Rating: 
Summary: Intriguing thriller is lesser Egoyan
Review: "Felicia's Journey" is an intriguing psychological thriller about a pregnant young Irish girl who goes to England looking for the father of her baby and finds instead a psychotic, middle-aged man disguised as savior. The brilliant Canadian director, Atom Egoyan, literally isn't quite at home with the material or the location [it was shot in Great Britain]. Consequently, the movie is not quite as good as my two favorites of his, "The Sweet Hereafter" and "Exotica", though it shares that same fascinating, hypnotic quality I so much admire. As Joe, a man whose facade conceals some dreadful secrets, Bob Hoskins is awesome. He seems so innocent and well-meaning until you notice how quickly the look in his eyes can go from benign to malignant. Elaine Cassidy is just about perfect as Felicia, the young girl. She gives her dignity and purpose, portraying her as a good girl who doesn't have a clue as to how to deal with her problems. She lets Joe lure her in, not because she is stupid, but because she is innocent and unworldly. This is not a commercial movie. One of the main reasons is that Joe is not an over-the-top villain. He is all too similar to lots of people we see every day. He does appear to be a bit furtive and secretive at times, but not so much so that anyone would suspect his dreadful other side. He is not over there in some special place we pretend madmen live in. He's just the nice man who lives next door. We can't distance ourselves from him easily, and that's an uncomfortable feeling. We are much more at home with the likes of Hannibal Lecter, who safely exists only in a book or a movie. Despite its faults, "Felicia's Journey is much better than the average thriller, in particular because its images stick with you long after you've seen it. Since I have not read the novel the movie is based on, I can't comment on how the two compare.
Rating:
Summary: Atom Egoyan's Psycho
Review: a-movie-to-see.com recommendation Brazil wasn't the first Bob Hoskins film I saw, but the third. It was the first film where I could understand a word he was saying. I simply couldn't penetrate his cockney in The Long Good Friday or Mona Lisa. That doesn't mean I couldn't understand his characters. Hoskins is a forthright screen actor. He can inhabit his compact frame with a ferocious mob boss, a compassionate chauffer, a duct repairman or a foil for Roger Rabbit with imperceptible effort. Felicia's Journey played the Cannes film festival, there was a buzz about his performance. I liked the idea of him teaming with Atom Egoyan whose tragic The Sweet Hereafter drew a heartwrenching performance from Ian Holm. Listening to William Trevor's book on tape, I could tell the role of factory caterer/serial killer Joseph Ambrose Hilditch was made for Hoskins. Mr Hilditch's hands are small, seeming not to belong to the rest of him; deft, delicate fingers that can insert a battery into a watch or tidily truss a chicken, this latter a useful accomplishment, for of all things in the world Mr Hilditch enjoys eating. Like his predecessors Anthony Perkins (Psycho) and Barry Foster (Frenzy) he seems outwardly affable enough when he's with his coworkers or offering avuncular advice to wayward girls like Felicia (Elaine Cassidy). Atom Egoyan dispenses with the sensationalism of Hitchcock's shower scene and staircase sequences. He credits us with the wherewithal to conjure our own violent images to accompany Hilditch's collection of videotaped victims. On the other hand, he doesn't rely on a convoluted psychiatrist's explanation to explain to us where Hilditch went wrong. We simply watch him go wrong this time.
Rating: 
Summary: Very good story
Review: As a real Egoyan fan it was hard to wait for his next one: and there it was, Felicia's Journey, a truly good story located in a grey and dusky ambience! Bob Hoskin as kinky Hilditch really shows his talent as an old saviour of fallen angels as he offers help to poor stranded Felicia, cheated by her boyfriend who left her with nothing more than the unborn child. Just watching Hoskin in his old car (the film is residing in the 60ies) will send you chills down your spine because you are expecting something great to happen. And be sure, it will happen in the end. Believe me this film won't disappoint you - it will show you all facets of subtle psychological varieties and in the end you will be glad that it was only a movie or a DVD tape, because Felicia's journey is a hard one.
Rating: 
Summary: A not so sweet hereafter
Review: Atom Egoyan followed up his masterpiece film "The Sweet Hereafter," with this strange movie about an unusual serial killer. Bob Hoskins gives a great performance as the man whose hobbies are gormet cooking and killing young girls. But he doesn't murder them outright, as young Felica discovers. She's come to his town seeking out the boyfriend who left her. With nowehere to go, she seemingly lucks out when Hoskins offers to allow her to stay at his large house. All of this sounds more intriguing than it ends up being on the screen. Though well acted, the movie moves slowly and ultimately just doesn't amount to all that much. Egoyan's movies are always literate, but this one is so to the point that you start to lose interest. There are no great moving moments like in "The Sweet Hereafter."
Rating:
Summary: A not so sweet hereafter
Review: Atom Egoyan followed up his masterpiece film "The Sweet Hereafter," with this strange movie about an unusual serial killer. Bob Hoskins gives a great performance as the man whose hobbies are gormet cooking and killing young girls. But he doesn't murder them outright, as young Felica discovers. She's come to his town seeking out the boyfriend who left her. With nowehere to go, she seemingly lucks out when Hoskins offers to allow her to stay at his large house. All of this sounds more intriguing than it ends up being on the screen. Though well acted, the movie moves slowly and ultimately just doesn't amount to all that much. Egoyan's movies are always literate, but this one is so to the point that you start to lose interest. There are no great moving moments like in "The Sweet Hereafter."
Rating:
Summary: A chilling movie....
Review: Atom Egoyan's Felicia's Journey is the kind of movie that will make you sit and think about the characters. In the surface and in the promotions, this is a serial killer movie. In reality, it is much more than this. Not only does the movie deal with the plottings of a madman played by Bob Hoskins, but it gives us a window into his past which tries to help us understand what went wrong with this man. Yet we could never completely understand a man like this. Opposite Hoskins is a very innocent performance by Elaine Cassidy. She plays a naive young lady, looking for her boyfriend. Here, too, we see the pain in her life. Both Hoskins and Cassidy have a horrible mother and father, respectively. The shame in which they grow up in is very important here. I was less interested in what was going to happen and what did happen than I was in letting Egoyan work his gift as a director. He manages to take this story into disturbing imagery not because of gore or physicality, but for meeting such scarred people, and (in Hoskin's case) their victims in such a visually provacative way.
Rating:
Summary: Gourmet Madness
Review: Bob Hoskins splendidly plays a serial killer who is also a gourmet chef and manager of a catering service at a large factory. A respected and outwardly very respectable man whose mother was a TV personality chef whose influence has dominated him from childhood. Into his clutches falls a girl from Ireland pursuing the man who impregnated her and who she thinks is as much in love with her as she with him. The fun of the movie is in watching Hoskins develop her trust to the point where she stays with him in his home. The story is extremely well developed, a tight, concise study that is gripping from start to finish as we wrestle with the killer's intentions while fearing for his beautiful victim, played by Eileen Cassidy. The only off-note in this fine art house film is the final resolution where the plausability of the killer's dialogue and actions takes a turn completely inconsistent with the heretofore unerring observation of real human behavior and interaction. Suddenly, what comes out of Hoskin's mouth is anything that serves the writer/director's (Atom Egoyan) misdirection of what was needed for the denouement and finale. He should have given it more thought. The film, however, is worth seeing for all its other virtues and is highly recommended. ~~ The Filmiliar Cineaste http://variagate.com/movrevue.htm
Rating: 
Summary: Conman at Cannnes
Review: Can you believe that this "film" cost 10 million dollars to make.My bet is that Nucleus spent maximum 1 million on Production,4 million in to his pocket and the rest was spent on bribing the judges.I mean do you not smell a rat when the video is selling for 111 dollars and Atoms talk of casting an unknown young Irish actress for freshness-come on face it it was because you'd get her for cheap.(no offense to her she did well).I think its time Egoyan went to Film school,I have'nt seen any of his other films but I feel very strongly that this is probably one of the worst films I have seen.The plot made no sense,so many unfinished details,full of cliches about rural Ireland.It was like a farce that was'nt funny.A complete waste of time that leaves a I bad taste in your mouth.Who were the Bible bashers supposed to be at the end?If they were supposed to be Jehovahs Witnesses at least try to get it right.In conclusion this movie is a disgrace.I was'nt so disgusted until I read that this film made it to Cannes as I had assumed it was a directors first film (and last)made on a low budget.Pathetic!!!!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Underappreciated
Review: Despite the mixed to negative reviews this film received, I quite liked it. It wasn't dramatic, considering the subject matter: an isolated middle-aged man who befriends then kills young girls in trouble. Yet I somehow liked that, along with its pace, slow or not; the location shooting and the acting. The book, I think, was set in the mid-70s, and the film doesn't specify an era, so it is realistic in its portrayal of an impregnated Irish girl arriving in England seeking the boyfriend who has helped her get into this condition without leaving her an actual address. Befriended by Bob Hoskins, a caterer suffering from a childhood traumatized by a bullying mother, she finds herself drugged then trapped in his house, which she escapes by chance. That the viewer is clued into what Hoskins does with the girls he befriends via videotapes he has made of them in his car is subtle and effective. Hoskin's character has spent his whole life in the largish house in which he spent his miserable childhood. This, if anything, is the reason why he kills: a solitude relievable only by befriending then trapping people in his car or, like Felicia, his house, disposing of them as they realize the warped mind this man actually possesses.This isn't Egoyan's best film ("The Sweet Hereafter" might be)but it shows that the filmaker's subject matter is diverse and his direction skilled.
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