Rating: 
Summary: difficult
Review: I sat through this movie while it was in the theater very frustrated at the amount of dialogue and walked away thinking it was the worst movie I had ever seen. And yet, and yet: it is a remarkable accomplishment if only for the complexity of its dialogue and the abundance of its major characters. Never before have I seen a movie that is so able to carry multiple story lines as deftly as Gosford Park. Gosford Park is not a movie that one can sit through once and 'get'. But those who put in the time to view it multiple times will be rewarded.
Rating:
Summary: Not Really a Mystery, but Great Just the Same
Review: Not truly a murder mystery, but a terrific social commentary on English life in the early 1930s. Yes, as an earlier reviewer noted, the accents can be difficult for Americans to follow all the time (but after all, the characters are ENGLISH). Don't let that put you off - it's superbly acted and never less than fascinating. I usually only make it through a few minutes of most director/producer/writer commentary tracks, but don't miss the one on this disk by the writer, Julian Fellowes. It was unusually informative and the man really knows how to tell a story.
Rating:
Summary: A great traditional whodunnit, and more
Review: Gosford Park is surely one of the best films of 2002, and it is solid proof that really large casts are great fun. It is a complex story which is great as a murder mystery but also fascinating as an examination of class. I saw it a while ago but never got the chance to review it - yet it still sticks in my mind as not only an excellent film with a great script, and good acting, directing, and a fantastic plot, but as also a highly moving work. Film like it ought to be. 5 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Dry yet Wry.
Review: I actually managed not to hear about this movie at all before I saw it. The title sounded dimly familiar. I know it won awards, but so do most movies starring Tom Hanks, and I'm sorry, but if that's the official arbiter of excellence, I'll just stay home. Anyway, I read the back of the DVD and figured it would be one of those films that I'd find boring on first viewing, yet gradually begin to appreciate if I bothered with it any further. Well, it IS rather "dry." I found it odd that Altman claims that the "F-word" was deliberately insinuated into the script a sufficient number of times to secure an R rating - supposedly to keep teenage boys with too much testosterone from seeing "Gosford Park." I should think the testosterone itself would do the job. Nothing explodes in this film, there's nary a lick of that crazy rock music the kids like, nobody gets killed...oh wait, somebody does get killed, but even the murder scene is impossibly dull and boring. Bloodless, antiseptic, British. This is an "adult" film in the true sense. This is a film about adult social politics and intrigue and gossip, about the strange edgy relationship between these indefatiguably haughty upper-crust aristocrats and the ever-complacent servants they depend upon for every least personal function, yet whom they openly revile as congenitally inferior. It would be rash to presume that the plush and pampered "Upstairs" life is really any easier psychologically than the cramped and calloused "Downstairs" life, however. "Gosford Park" is an interesting investigation of what happens when the constraints and tabus of this sort of caste system render the lives of everyone involved practically intolerable. The servants have been just as thoroughly conditioned to automatic submission as outright slaves. Their entire existence is drudgery; their only dignity is vicarious; they acquire the pretensions and snobberies of their masters and often turn viciously and hypocritically on one another. Yet the aristocrats themselves, who never have to flex a muscle for the most trifling amenity, have been driven by inevitable boredom and inertia to likewise ruthlessly intrigue against each other purely to while away the time and maintain the status-quo. Their insanely regulated and mannered lifestyle is as nigh impossible for them to embody as it is for their servants to set up. As such, everybody all-around is miserable, conspiratory, two-faced, paranoid, vindictive, jealous, insecure, chasing after an ideal which can never be realized. This social climate is the perfect breeding ground for every sort of moral dis-ease. Nice craft on everybody's part really nails this home. Each actor - from Maggie Smith as an excruciatingly pompous, impudent, willfully-helpless old mummy of a Lady, to Sir William McCordle as a fat, nasty, overbearing slob, to Kristen Scott Thomas as a harsh, withering, jaded, manipulative Marlene Dietrich doppelganger - was fitted with an individual mic so that multiple simultaneous conversations in a scene could be recorded and then mixed to allow salient bits to come through in the final cut. This invests "Gosford Park" with a certain realism and allows the viewer to feel like an invisible voyeur wandering amongst these complicated proceedings and catching both relevant and irrelevant snippets. Am I recommending it? I suppose I am. I did enjoy this film precisely because I'm the type that tends to get caught up in the minutiae of period customs and conventions, which are evidently rendered with exacting accuracy in "Gosford." The documentaries accompanying the DVD are very interesting and informative in this vein.
Rating: 
Summary: Lacks focus
Review: This movie is counfounding and frustrating to watch. There are so many characters that it should have provided viewers with a complementary roster. Also, the British accents get in the way of American comprehension. The movie lacks a concentration on any of the characters and when the end comes, viewers will be asking "so what" and "what's the point?" A murder mystery made boring.
Rating: 
Summary: Drags on and on and on...
Review: This horridly boring film from Robert Altman doesn't generate enough suspense to be interesting nor humor to be funny. It wades in a cesspool of dullness, never giving us interesting characters or even comelling situations. As if the murder mystery wasn't used enough, this movie doesn't even try to give us fascinating dialogue or characters worth mentioning. The cast is divided into two parts: the rich and the servents. The rich sit around acting pompous and speaking with British accents. Their servents have no particularly unique qualities. Now here's the odd part: the film was up for the best picture award at the Oscars. What for? A weak delivery? Bland characters? This film fails on all counts in turning in something worth watching. It's long-winded and never really gets off the ground.
Rating:
Summary: Might have worked if it were twice as long.
Review: Gosford Park (Robert Altman, 2001) I was truly a glutton for punishment this weekend—not only a Joel Schumacher film, but one by Robert Altman, as well. Altman has been trying for thirty-two years to make another film as good as M*A*S*H. He hasn’t succeeded yet, though Gosford Park is the closest he’s come to it. Like M*A*S*H, Altman here assembles an exceptionally high-powered cast, containing too many both rising and established stars to single anyone out, and throws them into a situation; here, a hunting party. Mismarketed as a mystery film, this is actually something of a drawing-room drama. Unfortunately, it seems Altman considered it a mystery film, as well, because the pace and character development necessary to films of the latter sort is utterly absent. The viewer is rushed through plotline after plotline, given almost nothing to go on in each episode and no time at all to get to know the characters. No one is onscreen long enough for us to develop an affinity for any of the plotlines (of which the much ballyhooed murder of the host, played by Michael Gambon [Longitude] is only one, and a minor one at that), and a few characters jump plotlines as readily as some characters jump from bed to bed. There was much to work with here, and in a movie two or three times as long, it might have all been done justice. As it is, the performances by such brilliant actors as Emily Watson, Clive Owen, and Helen Mirren do nothing but hint at what might have been found had any of them had enough screen time to really start developing. (Mirren, as always, should be singled out; what little screen time she has is riveting.) That Gosford Park was nominated for both Best Picture and Best Director in a year when such films as The Others, Donnie Darko, Monsters, Inc., Shrek, Y Tu Mama Tambien, The Man Who Wasn’t There, (oh, you get the idea) were ignored for both awards is ludicrous. **
Rating:
Summary: Upstairs, Downstairs, and In Between
Review: This film is a period masterpiece. Altman has captured aristocratic England of the 1930's perfectly. In a fashion similar to "Titanic," the creators of this film wanted to "get it right," and conducted extensive research on the etiquette of the period. Ancient butlers, maids, and footmen were enlisted to share their memories, coach the actors, and ensure that the film reflected the reality of the era. Period wallpaper was recreated. Authentic locations were employed. The special features included on the DVD are stellar; there are two separate commentaries, one by Robert Altman and one by Julian Fellows, the screenwriter- both worth listening to. The dialogue is a bit hard to catch at times. One solution: turn on the English subtitles. This can help the American ear that is not tuned to British inflection. This is a film you can watch again and again, and you will catch new subtleties each time. The ensemble cast shines. The connections between those who serve and those served are intricate on many levels (physical, sensual, spiritual...). A few stand-outs: Maggie Smith, at her Bette-Davis-acerbic finest; Jeremy Northam, who plays the fading (real) film star Ivor Novello, and does a wonderful job singing period songs; the delightful Emily Watson; Helen Mirrin, in an understated, subtle performance as the housekeeper; Alan Bates as the alcoholic butler; Clive Owen as a valet with a secret. If you get a warm spot in your heart when you think of Brideshead Revisited, Howards End, and other period pieces, this is a film for you. If you love superb acting at its finest, and the art of filmmaking, buy this DVD. You will find a superior film plus a world of bonus material. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Let's see if I can write a coherent negative review
Review: I don't know, but I want to give it a go. My main objection to the film differs from those who had trouble picking up on the conversation, who disliked its rather shopworn depiction of English class warfare, who objected to the murky sound, who were annoyed by the highly stylized ensemble playing by an admittedly brilliant cast; these were merely annoyances for me. I object to this film because I feel it has neither heart nor soul--it's all surfaces (albeit, slick ones, as one expects in an Altman film), except for a rather nasty view of the human condition that leaks out between the frames. Are people really as mean-spirited, arch, bungling, stupid, and unlikeable as this sick crew of characters? Not in my experience. Could the British class system really have been as dreadful as it appears in this film? I doubt it. We get an entirely different picture of English life in, say, Dorthoy Sayers or J. R. R. Tolkien or Evelyn Waugh--one that strikes me as a lot more true-to-life and balanced. Really, this film is very heavy handed, almost ideological, in its depiction of troubled relations between classes. Yes, Kelly MacDonald as Mary, Lady Trentham's wide-eyed-but-not-as-naive-as-she-seems Lady's Maid, brings some welcome relief to these morose goings on, but for me it is too little to rescue the on-screen shambles that played out before my befuddled eyes. Now I'll come completely clean. I haven't very much liked any of the Altman films I've seen, and generally for the same sort of reasons. For me, he sacrifices style for content, he has a warped view of humanity, he delights in confusion and misdirection, and he deconstructs without concomitant reconstruction, a formula for unsatisfactory art. He's just not my cup of tea.
Rating:
Summary: It's Better on the third or forth viewing
Review: It takes a while to figure out who everyone is and their relationships with each other, after all it is an ensemble cast of over 30, so watch it the first time through to find out "who done it". Then watch it again and again to really figure things out and to pick up on all the wonderful details that you missed the first few times. The trailer seems to lead you to believe this is a comedy, but it is a first class drama that hapens to revolve around a murder. And yes, Jeremy Northam does his own singing in this movie and displays a lovely tenor voice that was really surprising.
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