Rating: 
Summary: The most Romantic Love Story I've ever seen!!!
Review: This is one of the best, heartwarming, tearjerking movies I've seen in a long time. Ann Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins are fantastic!!! This is a must see for all hopeful romantics!
Rating:
Summary: A thoroughly charming and enjoyable film
Review: This is one of the few movies made in the last 20 years or so that really is thoroughly charming and intelligent that you can't help but see it many, many times. Sir Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft are such great characters in this movie that you can actually feel yourself in the company of them and totally forget you are watching a movie. It is a movie that spans over 20 years and still the relationship that these two enjoy is just as exciting and fresh as when they first were "introduced" to each other. A fantastic friendship by mail develops and a deep friendship that few in today's world enjoy. Their love of books is quite believeable in this movie, because I too have a passion for great literature. This is a movie that makes me appreciate the books that I enjoy reading, whether they are old or new, tattered or in impeccable shape. Both Hopkins and Bancroft give stellar performances and the supporting cast is outstanding as well. I highly recommend this for those who love to sit and become involved in a movie that has charm, wit, and a captivating plot.
Rating:
Summary: A TRUE LOVE STORY
Review: This will always be one of my favorites! I have never said "raspberry" without "drawing" it out as the English do since I saw this movie. You can't review this movie . . .you simply must "live it" as you watch it. Anne Bancroft's best and Anthony Hopkins close second to Shadowlands. An incredible book lover story! When you hold a first edition hereafter, you will treasure it as Anne Bancroft did. You will raise it to your lips and kiss it. You will smell and caress the leather . . .and when you go to England you will look for the store. This will be a favorite for your lifetime.
Rating:
Summary: Touchlingly sweet almost love story!
Review: Truly one of the better movies I've seen. Anthony Hopkins shines as the studious and serious bookseller. Anne Bancroft is her wonderful loveable self as the not-quite-rich-enough to love old books script writer. This movie is a must see.
Rating:
Summary: Literate, hilarious, melancholy & wonderful
Review: Well, where do we start? Anyone who reads English and American literature, preferably those who read gluttonously among the classics, will enjoy this film. The exchange between smart, impatient, tart-tongued TV scriptwriter Helene Hanff and the genteel, reticent, conservative bookshop manager Frank Doel is made into a splendid bit of cinema that is, if we may say so, somewhat countercultural.If you're looking for sex, violence, four-letter words, or exploding skyscrapers; if you're looking for insufferably tendentious films about oppression & tyranny, then don't see this movie. If you're looking for a charming fencing-match and an affectionate epistolary relationship between two minds that are minds, if you're looking for humor and wit and sadness, and if you're looking for "haricots verts" that are choicest and choice, then do see this movie. It's perhaps really a four- or 4.5-star film, but our joy at the elegance of the screenplay, and its refreshing absence of sordor, is limitless; and makes us inclined to a generosity with the rating. (The decade of the 1960s seems to happen too fast in this film!) We haven't seen it in a while but we remember many scenes fondly: Helene pounding the keyboard of her manual typewriter in an all-caps fit of rage at an unsatisfactory edition of the New Testament; Helene babysitting for a friend and reading selections from Cardinal Newman's "Idea of a University" as a lullaby (he has that effect on some adults, too); Frank Doel saying the words "Virginibus Puerisque"; and many others, but we don't want to tell you the whole movie. See it. Oh, one more thing! In the original exchange of letters (see Hanff's book), Helene asks Frank if his surname is Welsh. In the actual letter, FD denies this with some vehemence. So we're especially glad that the part of Frank Doel is being played by one of the 20th century's three most famous Welshmen!
Rating:
Summary: Witty, touching and wonderful!
Review: Well...this is by far one of my favorite all time movies! If you loved Crossing Delancey w/ Amy Irving & Peter Riegert, you'll love this movie (and vice versa). Also, books by Rosamunde Pilcher. All of these share a common bond, rich character development. You feel as though you KNOW these people, you can picture them & see them clearly in your mind, and it's easy to get completely lost in the stories. You cry with them, laugh with them, and love them (or hate them!). But, love them or hate them, you would enjoy meeting them & spending time with them! Because they are INTERESTING!
Rating:
Summary: Amazingly Wonderful
Review: When I first became a fan of Hopkins, this movie was the farthest thing from my mind. It did not look like something that would interest me. But I was very wrong. The movie gets off to a slow start, but once the letters between Hopkins and Bancroft become more frequent, it is very difficult not to be drawn into the lives of the characters. This is a terrific movie and it is highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Four more stars when you give us the whole picture!
Review: Would you take seriously a bookshop with one bookcase in the middle of the room, but none on the side walls? What is wrong with Columbia, hacking off the side bookshelves by turning this gentle, Cinemascope masterpiece into a narrowscreen format? Get it right, people, and I'll buy it! STOP PRESS!!! The Australian (Region 4) version appeared in November 2003 and - guess what - it's widescreen! Wonderful movie, great transfer, no blinkers required!
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