Rating: 
Summary: A unique film!
Review: After seeing Gosford Park in a theater, I commented that I looked forward to seeing it in DVD, to have subtitles, to be able to figure out everything that was going on. Well... a friend and I have now seen it a total of 4 times together, including two DVD commentaries (with subtitles...) and guess what? We *still* haven't figured out all the interwoven plots! And that's OK, as it turns out. The movie is an attempt to give you the experience of attending a shooting party at a British country house in as authentic a way as possible, which means that, yes, it's not really important to "get" everything that's going on, just as you wouldn't have understood everything if you had been there! Brilliant performances by a cast of outstanding actors. And the Ivor Novello songs are more delightful with every hearing.
Rating: 
Summary: This was a disappointment
Review: After reading the write up, I anticipated a witty film with a calculated pace. I even watched it a second time just in case I was "off" the first time and still found the movie lacking in wit. Others suggested "Remains of the Day" and I'd also offer "Mrs. Brown."
Rating: 
Summary: Upstairs, Downstairs Whodunit
Review: For those of you who were hoping for a thrilling murder mystery you picked the wrong movie. Some however continued to watch and were thrilled in a different way by what they saw.Altman's movie is a study is the British class structure, the upstairs and the downstairs, and how they interact and deal with one another. The movie is told from the point of view of a ladies maid, and the movie concerns itself with the relationships between the hierarchy of the servants, and of the socialites. Small gossip is passed from level to level,...information is gathered about family and money and smart one liners are traded back and forth. But suddenly murder strikes, the head of the house is poisoned and then stabbed, and the bumbling inspector is brought in. He is snubbed by the servants, and scorned by their masters, and the murder is left to stand, with nobody caring enough to do or say anything... What is truly great about the movie however, are the characters that it creates, and how they interact with one another. The movie is brilliantly cast, and the script is very clever. It reveals everything, not through words, but through glances, gestures, alliances, and feelings.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: I loved this film. One of my favorite of last year. I like the DVD because I can watch it with captions. You don't realize how much you miss because during the course of the film the actors talk over each other. There is foreground dialogue and background dialogue and the captioning picks up both. So you get a lot of little details that you miss if you're just watching it without the captions. Also Julian Fellow's commentary is wonderful. I loved listening to him explain the cultural details in the scenes as well as his little bon mots about where some of the ideas for dialogue came from. I highly recommend.
Rating:
Summary: Altman's Tribute to Rules of the Game
Review: The story is told in that wonderful, spreading stain style that is Altman's trademark, this time influenced by Bill Brandt's portraits of English domestics. I was moved by the juxtaposition of the not so idle workers and the not-so-idle rich.
Rating: 
Summary: Waiting for Bresson
Review: I respect Robert Altman for Short Cuts and McCabe and Mrs Miller and The Long Goodbye. Some of his other films, such as Nashville or MASH, I see as possessing some ineffable sort of integrity, while not exactly being able to muster a solid appreciation for them. The later films, like Cookie's Fortune and Gosford Park, I turn inside out, like an empty coat pocket, searching for the Altman of old, alas to find that he really isn't there, and beginning to wonder if he ever was in the first place. To a part of Altman's audience, the absence of dynamics from his work is a premium seal of his seriousness as an artist. There was always a lack of affect in Altman's films, even in his best work, a Dreyer-like, Bresson-like reticence to direct the audience's experience of the material of the story, or in other words, to give that story dramatic shape. There are no Spielbergian cues in all of Altman. He leaves it to his audience to sort through the uncollated heaps of data, and make of the time spent what they will. Flattered as I am by his trust in me as a sort of information sieve, I wish he would exert himself just a little more as a storyteller, a narrator, a dramatist. --Now more than ever. The part of the audience that is made feel brainy by the postmodern eschewing of shape are welcome to it. Gosford Park goes over the top as anti-experience. It is indeed a two and a half hour vamp, spent waiting for something that never does to materialize out of thin air. Sadly, I give this film 1 star.
Rating:
Summary: BORING, Takes too long to get to the point
Review: It's watchable, but takes too much time to get the story line going. My time is valuable. I fell asleep twice and had to go back to catch up. A rental for a slow Sunday afternoon.
Rating:
Summary: **** UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS ****
Review: Gosford Park is a highly entertaining British upstairs/downstairs whodunnit set in a 1930's stately home, which examines the social relationships and etiquette of the era and is filled with excellent one-liners and an excellent cast. Opening with a cross-section of British high society arriving at a stately mansion for a weekend shooting party along with their servants at Gosford Park, it is not long before the upstairs downstairs politics of master and servant (illicit sexual trysts, dodgy business deals and unspoken heirarchy's are revealed). Eventually of course the bitter politics and sordid double-dealings lead to the murder of the lord of the manor, Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon) and so the movie transforms from social commentary (with black comedy) to a whodunnit murder mystery. Although, as is eventually revealed, its less of a whodunnit and more of a who cares because it transpires that Sir William was such a loathsome and morally reprehensible character that his loss is mourned by (next to) nobody. And so with a houseful of suspects, both upstairs and downstairs, the task of solving Sir William's murder is assigned to the hapless Inspector Thompson (Stephen Fry), a dithering idiot who contaminates the crime scene and is bullied by the aristocrats. He ignores all the obvious clues much to the frustration of his uniformed working class assistant, whilst the guests try to conceal their deepest darkest secrets. For Gosford Park, a kind of cross between Remains of The Day and an Agatha Christie novel, Director Robert Altman has assembled the cream of British acting talent and provided them with a sparkling script by screenwriter Julian Fellowes. Full of wit and insight, the script provides wonderful material for all its excellent ensemble cast which includes, above stairs; Michael Gambon is the grumpy lord of the manor and Kristin Scott Thomas (The English Patient) his very elegant but dissafected wife. Charles Dance (White Mischief) plays 'war hero' Lord Stockdale, and Geraldine Somerville (Arthur/Harry Potter) his wife. The excellent Jeremy Northam (The Net/Enigma/Emma) is acclaimed songwriter Ivor Novello, and James Wilby (Howard's End) plays the Honorable Freddie Nesbitt, to name but a few. Downstairs the servants include; Ryan Phillipe (Cruel Intentions/Antitrust), Helen Mirren (2010/The Mosquito Coast), Richard E. Grant (Withnail and I/Bram Stoker's Dracula), Alan Bates (The Sum of All Fears, Women In Love), Derek Jacobi (Gladiator/Dead Again), Emily Watson (Angela's Ashes/Breaking The Waves/Red Dragon), Clive Owen and Kelly MacDonald. Particularly good amongst this cast are (perhaps surprisingly) Clive Owen (Croupier/The Bourne Identity), who is a good bet to be the next 007, and Kelly MacDonald (Trainspotting) as Mary, Lady Trentham's Lady's Maid. However it is Dame Maggie Smith (Harry Potter/The prime of Miss Jean Brodie) that steals the show as the acid tongued Lady Trentham. This is undoubtedly Robert Altman's best movie for some time perhaps since The Player and definitely since Short Cuts. Infinitely superior to Altman's last outing, the ill-judged Dr T and the Women, Gosford Park is a very elegant movie performed by a faultless cast and even if the ending is a little flat and unsatisfactory, Gosford Park is never less than entertaining. Four stars ****
Rating:
Summary: Outrage!
Review: ...If you are looking for an in-your-face action-packed thriller/murder mystery of the type in which Bruce Willis would likely star, this is NOT it. This is a British murder mystery in the style of Agatha Christie. It is calm and subtle. It requires a modicum of an attention span to watch... What reviewers fail to realize is that they didn't understand the plot precisely because it is not flashed in their faces in neon letters. The murderer is revealed at the very end through rather unique means and I bet you never would have guessed who done it! The interesting part for me is the fact that life goes on for most of the characters as if nothing happened. But that is the message of Gosford Park, I think: life in inter-war England was like that. Servants behaved as they should, masters as they should, everyone had his place, the King was in his castle, God was in his heaven, and the sun never set on the British Empire. It was the end of those times. I love how this movie portrays the abject boredom of "what is done". Excellent story. The only drawback is the sound-quality -- it's as if the microphones aren't in the right place sometimes.
Rating:
Summary: Some movies return what you put into them.
Review: Puzzled by the dead-split comments on this film? Don't be: it's a *subtle* movie, and Hollywood has just not geared modern audiences for subtlety. No car chases, automatic weapons, or technicolor explosions here.
Yes, it's true that the heavy English accents can be daunting. But attention and thought are rewarded by a rich, coherent story of the sort most moviemakers don't bother with any more. And if you are willing to actually THINK a bit about this movie, there are ongoing worlds of comment on class, wealth, human character, etc. Repeated viewing actually yields more subtleties. The DVD transfers the very good sound and camera work of the film to the small screen about as well as possible.
Gosford Park is a worthwhile addition to the astonishing body of Altman's life's work, and highly recommended to anyone starved of content by the flood of Corporate Mega Blockbusters.
For everybody else, hey, there's always a new Vin Diesel flick coming out...
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