Rating: 
Summary: Gosford Park
Review: Brilliant in every way possible.OUSTANDING.Dame Maggie Smith is
the best actress in the whole world and so is Helen Mirren.
One of the best movies ever , right behind Harry Potter and the
Philosophers Stone .But i'm sure some people will agree with
me in saying that the second movie will be better.The fourth book
is the best.Dame Maggie Smith SHOULD have won the stupid Oscar,
because she is such the best actress and not stupid Jennifer
Connely!
Rating:
Summary: Great!!!!
Review: This is the Best movie of all time!!! You have got to see it.
It`s a clever mistery movie! It`s funny, romantic, misterious, and clever. For the cute boy lovers you have Ryan Phillippe. For the Mystrey lovers, you have the movie. For the Humor you have all of the peronalitys clashing. It`s Fabouluse!!! You can`t miss it. It`s bassed after the 1920`s. With maids and servants clashing ith the couples, actors, and job seekers. When people come to gether for a shooting weekend. When someone is killed, twice. You have to see it or even buy it!!!!!!!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: A Superb Culmination of the Altman Aesthetic
Review: Altman, now in his seventies, is in the twilight of his career, and Gosford Park is the beautiful culmination of this master filmmaker's effort; that says a great deal considering a body of work spanning three decades full of experimentation, risk, and breathtaking results. Gosford is easily one of his finest achievements. Altman's love of filmmaking and, in particular, actors, is on rich display here; Gosford Park is an enchanting, gorgeous gift from the Movie Gods and a true swan song... a man who has given back so much to American film making over the past decades. It makes one wonder what these awards stand for. Altman is one of Hollywood's most talented artists - ..., it would start polishing his lifetime achievement award for next year.
Rating: 
Summary: There's No Place Like Home
Review: Ordinarily, I don't like who done its, but I really liked Gosford Park. Like most in the audience, I found the tale very clever and amusing. A few of the customers were rolling in the aisles, convulsed with laughter. As an examination of the class warfare of the early 1930s, it was far more profound than you might expect from such a light piece. The decadance of the upper class and the anger and cynicism of the servants were palpable and that set up all of the suspects that a murder mystery might ever need. The sociological theme was worth the price of admission by itself. The scenery, cinematography, and settings were superb reminders of a period rarely examined. The acting by the entire company was superb. Helem Mirren is an extraordianry talent, and she brought her character to life, as she always does. Were this not a less than serious film, Maggie Smith should not have been cast. Her ability to tower above all other players and steal every scene she is in constantly amazes me. The reason I gave the film four instead of five stars was the difficulty created by the use of so many working class dialects by the servants. While it gave an authentisity to the story, it made it difficult for me to get into the tale and to suspend disbelief as quickly as I might have. All in all, it is a fine movie, and it is well worth the praise that it has been getting.
Rating:
Summary: A Perfect Movie
Review: In Gosford Park Robert Altman sets himself an almost impossible task, and pulls off what might be The Perfect Movie. This one has it all: drama (both high and low) and comedy, sex and violence, incredible beauty and vile human ugliness. It has a script that one would think some mid-level executive in Hollywood would have squashed as being more story than could be told in two-plus hours, and it probably needed a Robert Altman both to get the green light for the project in the first place and then to actually pull it off. The setting is a large British country house in the '30s, and the plot centers around the house residents and several wealthy guests and all their servants at the house for a weekend of hunting. Immediately the house is divided between the nobles and the servants, and much of the next two hours' interplay involves this distinct class difference. The guests interact with the house residents and the other guests, while the visiting servants are accommodated by the butler and head housekeeper and head chef of the house. The nobles come downstairs occasionally to give instructions, and the servants are quitely everywhere as the nobles discuss all their dirty little secrets (and make some new ones). All the doings upstairs are duly scrutinized and analyzed by the servant corps, and alliances are formed and fall as events unfold. This all requires a very large cast (and he could not possibly have cast better--there are too many standouts to mention) but Altman begins with Maggie Smith and her maid and driver, to set the tone and to introduce a pivotal character, and also to ease us into what will shortly be a very hectic scene. We meet a few others as she makes her journey, and she arrives at the house to join the fray. Each character plays a vital part in what begins as a huge and confusing puzzle, and each little story and subplot is essential to the fabulous, three-dimensional whole that is, almost miraculously, birthed at the end. But that intricacy places some demands on the viewer; indeed, the most common criticism I've seen is from viewers who wander innocently into the fray and never find their way back out. It's a movie that requires rapt attention at all times, but it rewards us by leaving us stunned and breathless not for the body count or special effects but simply for the sheer virtuosity of the story-telling. That he actually pulls it all together in the end is a bit like watching a vaudeville juggler who keeps 18 plates spinning while singing an opera aria and balancing on a beach ball with one foot: you're convinced A) that it can't be done, and B) that even if it CAN be done it won't be accomplished this time! The first time I saw it I was wowed but left the theater still wondering about a couple of the characters. The second time it made much more sense, but I think there are discoveries aplenty to be made by further viewings (which will have to wait for the DVD)! Movies are about story-telling, and about the human beings in those stories. No special effects budget can take the place of great writing, or of a substantial idea well-executed. But maybe if movies like this are becoming rarer (though it's been a good year for movies) it makes one like Gosford Park stand out from the hail of bullets and reminds us what great story-telling really is.
Rating: 
Summary: Zzzzzzzzz
Review: The night before I saw "Gosford Park" I saw the wonderful French film, "Amelie". Since most American audiences don't speak French, the film was appropriately subtitled in English. "Gosford Park" should have been similarly subtitled, because it is nearly impossible to understand the many half-mumbled and otherwise inaudible snippets of dialog that let you in on what the heck this movie is supposed to be about! After the first thirty minutes I was sorely tempted to leave, but since I'd paid my 9 bucks I thought I'd stay and see if I could piece together anything from what WAS intelligible from the mouths of the horribly boring cast of characters. According to Altman, he didn't want to "serve" anything to the audience; rather, it is up to the audience to work for it - i.e., zero in on a given character in a scene and thereby (according to Altman) "get into" the picture. Might be a novel idea, if there was ANYONE in this film who had ANYTHING attention-grabbing to say! The problem is, upstairs or downstairs, there's not an interesting one in the bunch. If tedium is your cup of tea, then I suppose you might find some redeeming value in this bland ensemble concoction. Apparently one is supposed to infer that there is something of interest in the film because of the particular historical/social setting or the indisputably able cast, rather than there actually being something of interest happening on the screen. What a pretentious load of baloney! I saw this film only because of the high praise from the critics. Last time I let those bozos make a difference in my choice of films. I read Roger Ebert's four-star review only after I saw the movie. Here's his idea of "scene-stealing" repartee: When Hollywood star Ivor Novello (Jeremy Northam) entertains after dinner with one song, and then another, and then another, and shows no sign of stopping, [Maggie] Smith crisply asks, "Do you think he'll be as long as he usually is?" and then stage-whispers, "Don't encourage him." A veritable knee-slapper, eh what?! HA HA HA! Of Altman, he writes: "As a director he has never been willing to settle for plot; he is much more interested in character and situation..." Read: If you're looking for something as trivial as a plot in this turkey, you'll just have to come up with one on your own. The director was simply too busy with more important things - like, letting the actors do as they wanted and declaring that whatever the result, it would be just fine. It is reminiscent of the approach Albert Brooks took in his hilarious "mockumentary" film, "Real Life". It didn't work there, either - but that was the joke! Of the screenplay, Ebert writes: "Like guests at a big party, we are confused when we first arrive: Who are all these people? By the end, we know." The problem is, by the time we do know, WE DON'T CARE! Who gives a rats a$$ about a bunch of snooty and petty British aristocrats and their sniveling and petty servants? Any attempt to try to "explain" the supposed "depth" of this cinematic sleeping pill to the rest of us poor dumb slobs by high-minded critics and Altman apologists is both condescending and pathetic. They remind me of the art teacher in "Ghost World", who imbues worthless tripe masquerading as art with lofty qualities it does not actually possess. This film might best be summarized by the immortal words of Pee Wee Herman: "It's like you're unraveling a big cable-knit sweater that someone keeps knitting and knitting and knitting and knitting and knitting and knitting..."
Rating:
Summary: Masterpiece Theater on steroids
Review: This movie is sort of like Masterpiece Theater with Alistair Cook on steroids, and I enjoyed it even though it's not really my "cup of tea." (Sorry about that). But if you like Anthony Trollope novels or liked Masterpiece Theater, you'll probably like this movie. A friend of mine recently had two friends visiting from England. They saw the movie and raved about it, but again, it probably helps to be into this sort of high-society period piece. But I will say that as a period piece it's pretty striking--I felt sorry for the prop guy because of all the old 1930's paraphernalia somebody had to scrounge up. Because of that, it did seem very realistic and faithful to the historical details. If you like old cars, you'll enjoy the mint-condition old Rolls Royces that come and go. I'll bet those are worth some serious money. The look behind the scenes of a British upper-crust family and their friends and visitors is sort of interesting, because the movie gives equal weight to both the servant staff and the more noble-born characters. The characters of all the servants--the butlers, valets, housekeeping staff, and so on--are developed in just as much depth and detail as the aristocratic family members themselves. So at least in one important respect this movie is different from your usual British high society novel or story, and actually most of the servants turn out to be more interesting as characters than the high-society types. To sum up, despite my predilection for faster-pasted and somewhat different movies, I still thought this was an excellent film and worth seeing if like this sort of story.
Rating: 
Summary: House full of virtually indistinguishable generic buffoons
Review: Seems that every year about one token dud gets a Best Picture nomination for whatever reason. And this year's entry of that sort is Gosford Park. One might be encouraged in the first 15 minutes or so, first because one thinks surely a Best Picture nominee has something substantial to offer, and second because the setup can at first look promising. It's a comedy of British manners, set in the 1930s. It can seem at first to be sort of a twentieth century Jane Austen. But it quickly becomes clear that any 30 minutes of this is a pale imitation of Jane Austen at best. She knew how to inject genuine heroes and heroines and interesting antagonists into an otherwise farce-prone setting; the creators of this did not. Gosford Park has been said to be about class distinctions, but actually practically every character in it, regardless of class, seems to be virtually the same half-baked buffoon on steroids. Then, about midway through, this only sporadically funny satire suddenly turns into a murder mystery. But by then the characters are running together to an extent that makes it hard to care who killed whom among them. And finally, by the ending, with a confusing at best resolution of the mystery, it's almost impossible to care. It's one of those endings whose best attribute is that it IS an ending. One can finally give a sigh of relief that it's over.
Rating:
Summary: Yawn!
Review: Why did this movie get Oscar nominations? Two and a half hours of this were more than I could take. It was a bunch of blabbermouths doing mostly the same over and over again. There were no characters I could relate to! The acting nominations make a bit more sense than best picture (at least the cast seemed to be trying), but geez! Big waste of talent! If it were TV it would be a boring sitcom after less than half an hour!
Rating: 
Summary: Great Acting, Great Script
Review: The Actors in this film are at their best, with outstanding performances by everyone. The script and the storyline are very entertaining and hold your attention. I just found that the sound was off, and it was hard to understand some of the dialogue. Also, many of the relationships are not very clear and you have to figure them out by reading between the lines. But the thing that makes this movie what it is, are the great acting performances.
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