Rating: 
Summary: Surprisingly Apalling...
Review: P>In this film however, it completely fell apart. There was no storyline and nothing to keep my attention. It seemed that all it was was Altman playing around and having fun with his characters in a scenario, like a child playing with a doll's house. He has received acclaim for this approach, but in GP this technique comes accross as pure laziness with no respect for the time the audience is giving up to watch it.True there were funny moments in a typical - but less successful - MASH fashion where amusing events, comments and body language came at quite a witty pace. Maggie Smith did a good job at portraying her snobbish character and I could see how Stephen Fry was trying hard to push the film to a more entertaining height whenever he could. But that was still not enough to make this into a good movie. All that happens is a bunch of people come together in this big house, they are characterised for over an hour and then one of then is murdered. The rest of the movie is just people wandering about with their own little dis-jointed cameos. The only way the murder is "solved" is that the same particular maid overhears a bit of information during the course of a gossip and then goes and talks to the murderers in a typical pathetic "why did you do it?" fashion. Nothing happens in this movie that you can't get by watching a poor episode of Inspector Morse. Watching it, I also felt insulted. A movie all about British folks having a jolly good shoot in the country would never have become this big without the missing link: an american in the cast. Sure enough, there he was. Amoung all the British cast, there had to be at least one american to make it sell(in fact there were two). There was no logic to their appearing in the film. I could see right past the whole scheme and it made the movie all the more stupid. ...and this has been nominated for Oscars???? What is wrong with this planet today? Why the heck has this film become so successful? Is it the cast? The famous director? Bribes? Or is it that the flimbsy nature of this movie is enough to appeal to the lowest common denominator amoung mainstream audiences? There is this assumption among people today that if they don't understand something then it has to be extremely intellectual. Sometimes that is true, but not in this case. I know that there have been many terrible movies that have been made into big successes because of being popular amoung a simple audience, but even this movie fails to deliver ANYTHING to appeal on ANY level of interest. Pointless, Stereotyped - and above all - BORING. That's my summary of this movie. I'm not an action movie junkie who finds quality, subtle movies boring and then writes reviews like this to slag them off. I actually look critically for good movies with some enriching insight. This movie simply has no content. That is undeniably the case and I expect lots of people to click the "no" on the helpfulness counter above the review so to try and punnish me. Please resist all the unexplainable hype. Don't watch this movie and certainly DON'T BUY IT - money is far more valuable.
I am very disappointed. It was a waste.
Rating: 
Summary: Vanity Fair
Review: Altman likes superficial people, or he likes to make movies about them. Its too bad that he never takes on heavier material but then it makes sense that he picks the material he does when you consider that he doesn't like heavy themes or people because they interfere with his light touch and signature style which is laid back Californian. Altman likes actors because they are superficial creatures, his actors seem to accept his flattery("improvise, improvise") as sincere which makes it all the funnier.
The best two characters ever to appear in an Altman film were McCabe and Mrs. Miller(Beatty and Christie are neither of them superficial, but he never cast either of them again). The best actors in Gosford Park play stage roles that vain actors love, they are less characters than oft encountered archetypes. Over character studies Altman has chosen theatre which is less about individuals than about social types and groups and dynamics and he has filmed a number of plays. Gosford Park is good theatre. It is social comedy and part of its entertainment value is that you expect Altman to subvert this worn and frayed and familiar genre in some surprising way but he doesn't, not quite in the way you would expect anyway. It is very good as social comedies go but social comedy has a rather limited reach and is not judged effective by depth of vision but on how witty or clever its dialogue is and how seamless the overall portrait. There is a dark side to this comedy but the darkness has no menace and is of no real consequence, a corpse is no great inconvenience to anyone in Gosford Park. That is the one subversion Altman allows. The Long Goodbye and The Player also made this point. And to his credit Altman does not moralise. It is not Altmans style to do more than show it.
Any director who satirizes the corrupt rich and idealizes the naive servant is either soft in the head or is making fun of such passe distinctions and how tired and yet accepted the narrative norms have become. I always feel something is missing when I see an Altman film and I think what that is is strong characters. You get irony instead. And ambiguity.
Altman is a director who on occasion is considered among the greats so I always assume he is making a point of being insubstantial and mocking any attempt at meaning as he so often seems to do. I like Altmans just slightly unconventional use of conventions. As if the ultimate subversion were not to subvert too very much at all.
Rating:
Summary: A silly film
Review: What could these first-rate British actors have been thinking of when they agreed to play meager parts in this second-rate Altman film! ... And American audiences and movie critics who fell all over themselves to extol this film! PLEASE! What was it, the accents?...Maggie Smith's character was bitchy and mean-spirited - a part she can play in her sleep. And to what purpose - to make fun of Ivor Novello (wonderfully played by Jeremy Northam), one of the few interesting characters in the film. Her part made no sense at all. When this film is reviewed again - say ten years from now - it will be seen as a shabby, hackneyed film.
Rating:
Summary: Incomparable Altman
Review: Altman followers will have no trouble seeing in "Gosford Park" the auteur's favorite themes and devices--a preoccupation with time and place over "story," an intersecting repertory of actors whose various characters are subtly and gradually disclosed through their interaction, protracted shots with significant visual information planted in all corners of the screen, an audio track characterized by overlapping dialogue and multiple conversations. Add to all this Altman's respect for actors who contribute their own ideas to the script and his ability to seize and incorporate the serendipitous, and the results can be purely exhilarating cinema. At its best ("Nashville"), Altman's approach produces films that imitate and criticize life like few others, evoking spinetingling epiphanies during the film experience and indelible memories afterwards. At its worst ("Ready to Wear," "Kansas City") the results are little more than tedious, meaningless exercises in cinematic self-indulgence. What distinguishes "Gosford Park" from much of Altman's previous work is the director's exercising of a much firmer hand over the proceedings. Altman usually eschews film scores, preferring to go with source music ("Nashville") or no music at all. "Gosford Park," on the other hand, is a heavily scored movie, a device that insures narrative form and plot continuity not to mention a "melodramatic" heightening of emotion felt by both characters and spectator. To describe the film as a satire on the crumbling of residual, anachronistic aristocratic values and class distinctions in the 20th century is to do it injustice. True, Altman uses social distinctions, new vs. old money, master vs. servant class, Hollywood actors who play roles for a living vs. the served and servants who live because of their roles. And he throws in stereotypes of plot and character that somehow work--enlivening the proceedings while drawing both the satire and more subtle characterizations into sharper focus. But Altman's satire on class, British culture, and literary and film genres themselves are all merely vehicles for his exploration of characters, of their dreams and desires, and above all the consequences of repressed and thwarted desire. If there's a flaw in the film, it's Altman's failure to bring out the degree to which even the most "liberated" of characters fall prey to their freedom. "Gosford Park" leaves us with the picture of a servant class making touch with its own feelings, daring to imagine a life of expressed desires and personal happiness as a consequence. Only the stinging depiction and indictment of the ruling class carry any hint that personal freedom has its own liabilities. "Gosford Park" is not the epiphany that "Nashville" is, but it's a brilliant cinematic house of mirrors, casting reflections and meanings that can only multiply upon repeated viewings.
Rating: 
Summary: UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS, AND ROOM TO ROOM A GREAT MOVIE!!
Review: Gosford Park is one of those great British films that take you into the lives of the "Upstairs, Downstairs" servants and their respective employers. I found this movie very funny and engaging, with enough movement and plot diversity to keep me involved. If only they didn't talk so fast. I know I lost a lot of dialog. And will have to see it again and again to ever catch that English-clip to their speech. Its impossible to run down the list of characters one by one as they all did a tremendous job. Maggie Smith "there's nothing worse than breaking in a new maid", is the tongue in cheek -catty- no- bars- held -antagonist of the American delegation at the gathering, and she was in her element. Altman, Cookies Fortune, Gingerbread Man, Mash, and Vincent and Theo. Played his character to the hilt and wove the mystery from room to room and up and down the stairs. As co-producer Bob Balaban, has the distinguished pleasure of being one of the first actors to play a homosexual scene. It was " Midnight Cowboy" and there was a sexual scene in the theater. Gosford park is a very enjoyable movie and I suggest you pay close attention to center right and left as you can miss some important things going on. ciao yaaah69
Rating:
Summary: Agatha Christie with an Edge
Review: Terrific period setting of the British uppers enjoying or suffering a weekend at a country manor. Rapid sequences from upstairs (the uppers) and downstairs (valets, maids, and cooks) keep the action hopping. Plot and relationships a bit complicated but who cares. Great drawing room scenes of the bored and worried with Noel Coward echoes at the piano. Murder keeps the spice sizzling at the end.
Rating:
Summary: Remember to pack your critical faculties
Review: On the most superficial level Gosford Park's a beautifully realised Agatha Christie send up, complete with Upstairs, Downstairs casting and a bumbling detective/smartarse sidekick combination, who between them play an outstanding "nobody leave ze room" role. But to see it as only that, as most of its few detractors on this site seem to have, is to miss the point altogether. If you come expecting a murder mystery, you'll go home confused and disappointed. This isn't Murder on the Orient Express. The murder doesn't really matter, that much - it's just context for the shenanigans which accompany it. One or two people didn't like the "clipped British accents". Well, here's some news for you, friends: there's a planet full of folks out here who don't care much for the whiny Californian accent, but most of the time we attend the cinema, we don't get the choice. So deal with it. Gosford Park's set in the home counties, for crying out loud. But in any case such moaning is not worthy of consideration. This is the sort of film you'll want to see again as soon as you leave the theatre, just to see the things you know that you missed the first time. The narrative is so well crafted - you really do feel like you're drifting from genuine conversation to genuine conversation without the plot being thumped between your eyes - and the little subplots and subtexts shimmer and bubble around, occasionally simmering and moulding into each other as relationships between the characters are hinted at, covered and uncovered. What it tells us is that rich tend to hate each other and lead (and spice!) their lives through their servants, while the servants themselves were more bound by social convention even than their masters. Until the Americans come along, that is, and the emancipation begins! When visiting film star Ivor Novello performs the piano in the lounge, the rich folk ignore and/or are mildly irritated by his show-offery, while the servants, to a person, are captivated. Read like that, it sounds like a soap opera, and I suppose it probably is. But what a soap.
Rating:
Summary: NOT as advertised
Review: On the basis of a superb -- and totally misleading -- trailer for this film, we went to see this film expecting a 1920's or 30's British manor house murder mystery, a genre we've long enjoyed. This movie is NOT about a murder. It's about a justifiable homicide of an evil capitalist. As a matter of fact, virtually all the upper-class characters in this film are horrible people. superbly portrayed by actors who come across as card-carrying members of the Communist wing of the Labor party, trashing the aristcracy with the glee of political demonstrators throwing rocks. This meanspirited film is more about class war than anything else. The detective is a total fool who solves nothing. The victim deserved being killed. One knows almost immediately who committed the murder -- or justifiable homicide. I have no love for the British aristocracy (I believe in meritocracy), but they are not the only targets: the victim is an evil capitalist (aren't they all?). Parasitical aristocrats and capitalists are all the bad guys. This film has strongly leftwing overtones, no surprise given Altman's recent nasty comments about America and our President -- which unfortunately he made AFTER I'd paid to see this polemic. Why did Altman get a nomination for directing? He's said that he hired the best actors, which he did, and let them go. He took no credit for their fine work and probably deserves none. Actors love Altman because he lets them do what they want and makes the process of making his films so much fun. The final product is too often a jumble of styles and his audiences have a lot less fun trying to figure out what's going on. The acting in this film is superb, but I felt I got conned into paying to see a radical left-wing diatribe passing for something else. At least The Crade Will Rock was honest about what it was.
Rating:
Summary: Complex, Witty, and Extremely Entertaining
Review: Murder mysteries are a very rigid genre, for they carry very strong audience expectations: it will include at least one murder, there will be clues indicating the identity of the killer if one is sharp enough to see them, and the story will conclude with the revelation of the killer. Given its strictness, it is not a genre that one would normally associate with director Robert Altman, who has built a career on a style that gives equal weight to myriads of detail both important and inconsequential and then draws all into a multi-layered thematic whole. And yet in GOSFORD PARK Altman's peculiar style serves not only his broader intent, it serves the genre as well--and it does so to great effect. Like most Altman films, GOSFORD PARK presents us with a wide array of personalities, in this case shown against the backdrop of a 1930s English countryside shooting party where a number of unsavory story lines unfold before us in the form of remarks overheard in passing and details caught out of the corner of the eye. And in this respect, Altman becomes almost as Agatha Christie as Christie herself, distracting us with certain relationships and events even while he clearly specifies the drift toward murder--and the motive behind it--in clear view at one side. But like most Altman films, GOSFORD PARK is about a great deal more than any simple plot summary can indicate. Even while presenting us with a classic murder mystery it is as much about the cruelty of a rigid class system and the manner in which it destorts the personalities of both master and servant, even at a point in time when the control of the ruling class has begun to slip. Surprisingly, however, even these themes play into both the crime and its solution, and the result is a much neater package than generally found in an Altman film. Altman, who works in a mosaic-like style, is an extremely problematic director in the sense that you either like his work a great deal or you dislike it with considerable intensity. GOSFORD PARK, which features a particularly fine ensemble cast even for an Altman film, will not change the opinion of either group, and for all its success the film does not attain the same shocking sharpness and breadth of his penultimate statement, NASHVILLE. But even so, it is Altman at his best and in an somewhat more accessible form than usual, and I recommend it very strongly.
Rating:
Summary: oh my god.....this was bad...
Review: I am at a loss for words with this film...
It was so dull.... Oh my god. Well, filmed, and well acted, but the story is so dragging.... Oh it was painful... PAINFUL...
This movie has a lot of hype behind it but hwhen i saw it it was just a long boring movie an the plot was hardly there... I almost walked out. I haven't walked out on a movie in my entire life. (I have seen a lot of movies for the record...) Bt do not even waste your time. If you want to be dumber.. Then it is ok to watch this movie... But if you expect any good from it, don't waste your time. See something like "Life as a House", "Amelie", "requiem for a Dream", "Monsters' Ball" but this, just go rent clue...
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