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Sliding Doors

Sliding Doors

List Price: $14.99
Your Price: $11.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent Movie
Review: I have been wanting to see this move forever and now that I finally got to see it was great I saw it about four times over the weekend before I had to return it and each time it just got better and better. My b/f, who dislikes most of the movies I like, came in the livingroom and actually watched it with me. And the best part was that he liked it. He said it was an excellent movie and I must say I do agree.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Saw this 4 times in the theater!
Review: Excellent movie! Peter Howitt has written a interesting, romantic and inspiring story. There are over a hundred reviews that you can get the plot points from, so I will not duplicate. I'd recommend this to anyone who likes Gwyneth Paltrow because she absolutely *shines* in this film. The DVD is nice, despite not having a ton of features. Then again, most low budget films that fly under the radar wouldn't. The soundtrack is full of fantastic music, and Dido's "Thank You" is in the ending credits before she became popular. (This was back in 1998) This is not just a movie for women, even my husband found it quite funny! RUN do not walk to buy or rent this fabulous film!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Well...
Review: I'm a guy who's very difficult to relax. I've just found a review here really helping me to relax. Thank you very much! Besides, there's a lot of reviews here. This is interesting.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: This is a Gwyneth personal show
Review: I'm lazy to read other reviews here but I guess my view is just common because the fact is obvious. This movie is soft and flat so it is very easy to digest. I don't suggest any male animals to rent this movie except: 1. You admire Gwyneth. 2. You strongly want to get a girlfriend so for your study you need to peep at their daydreams. 3. You want to change your sex, i.e., cut something and become female animals. 4. You need one more reason to kill yourself, and a boring movie can prove the world is boring too. I like this movie because I love to watch Gwyneth and she's especially pretty, lovely and charming in this movie. And because I like to dream I'm a good-looking working girl(working in an office not a factory) living in a big, interesting city like London, blablabla...and will meet my prince sooner or later and develop our romance, maybe just beginning in the elevator of the buliding I'm working at or in my journey to go to work!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Simple Slide of Fate
Review: This offbeat gem of a movie will surprise even those of us who thought Gwyneth Paltrow is all legs and hair and precious little talent. I know it did me. I won't rehash the plot again, except to say that the "What if I had ONLY caught that train?" scenario is something we've all experienced and wondered about at one point or another. London career gal Helen gets to experience both possibilities, with hilarious and touching results. Ms. Paltrow turns in a winning, subtly nuanced performance in her dual role as Helen-Who-Makes-the-Train, and Helen-Who-Doesn't, making herself likeable enough in both scenarios that we root for her in both 'lives'. Despite some lapses into superficiality, the script keeps us guessing how things will turn out for Helen--in fact, what appears to be the 'ideal' scenario at first is shown to be not so ideal at all.

Two things make this movie worth viewing a second time--the glimpse it provides into the lives of contemporary London 'singletons', which is always intriging to this Anglophile, and John Hannah in the role of James, Helen's love interest in her 'alternative' universe. First encountered by Helen, and the audience as a persistently chatty fellow passenger on the Tube, he quickly wins Helen's heart, and the audience's with his warm and endearing teddy-bearish decency, his quirky and appealing looks, and The Accent, a Scottish brogue so thick as to be nearly impenetrable at first to Yank ears, but which soon becomes addictive. 'Sliding Doors' is just that much better when Hannah is on-screen, and he and Paltrow make an appealing, if unlikely couple--the Golden Hollywood It-Girl paired with a clownishly attractive regular Joe. The same formula was used in 'Notting Hill', but unlike the sterile screen pairing of Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant in that film, Paltrow and Hannah do achieve a real, quirky chemistry together that makes the romance believable.

Fans of "Four Weddings and a Funeral" will recognize Hannah--he gives a charmingly different performance here as a romantic leading man. Here's hoping he can follow in the footsteps of his countryman Sean Connery and snag some more juicy leading parts in America that will display The Accent to full advantage!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Gwyneth fans will fawn over "Sliding Doors"
Review: "Sliding Doors" is a good example of a nice, enjoyable movie. Gwyneth Paltrow plays a young English woman named Helen, who, if only she had made her train, would have lived a very different life. We see both lives and how life unfolds not by choices made but by chances lost. Helen's boyfriend is a two-timing cad-- and the real question is: at what point in each life will she find out? And how will Helen handle it? The results are tender, amusing, and interesting.

Well acted (Paltrow has a pretty good handle on a British accent and is just plain sweet) and even the over-the-top actors aren't too much to stomach. I really enjoyed this little movie, especially since I didn't expect much from it. A good fourth-date movie.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Faux Brit. So what! This one is a keeper
Review: Gwyneth is one of the few American celebrities who can play a credible brit. Her dual role as the parallel- universed Helen is brilliant. It plays around with destiny and the age-old idea that threads of time converge when destiny takes charge. In this case, it is all for love. She catches the Underground train AND she doesn't catch it. Here is where is gets interesting. One Helen gets empowered with the breakup of her long time boyfriend Jerry. All the while, the non-train-catching Helen is more submissive, doubting Jerry's whereabouts and barely hacking it with dead-end jobs.

Helen's male counterparts - one idiotic and emotionally inept, the other adorably funny and sensitive - bring out the different sides of each "possible" Helen. In the end though, regardless of the darn train schedule, love ties up the tracks and one message remains: Love conquers all and just finds a way to happen.

The soundtrack rocks! It was where I first heard Dido.

Try 'The Secret Garden' and see Jerry, or John Lynch, in a more sympathetic and haunting role. John Hannah plays the quirky Jonathon in 'The Mummy'.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A clever & charming movie!
Review: What if you were given a chance to lead a double life ? That's what happends to Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow) when her life takes two different directions at once, leading you in an exciting and thought-provoking contemporary adventure. Gwyneth Paltrow and John Hannah are just right for the parts, and the conclusion of the picture leave you with a satisfied feeling and an inevitable "what if" feeling that will stay with you for days. Overall, this rollercoaster ride of a movie won't disappoint!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Fate- like never seen before.
Review: Have you ever had one of those days when you find yourself thinking "if only I caught that bloody train, none of this would have happened"? Well in this beautiful romantic comedy starring Gwenyth Paltrow and John Hanna, that simple question is the primary focus of the story. When Helen, played by Gwenyth Paltrow, misses the train going home her life takes an amazing change in course by showing her life as it would have happened if she caught the train. Athough it sounds confusing in text, the movie clearly presents Helen's destiny one two seperate diverged roads. The symbolism of Helen's two new characters signify how singular events can permanently alter your life forever. John Hanna plays James, the nicer of Helen's boyfriends. Although he is the typical flat male charachter in romantic movies, the viewer never seems to tire of his "cheesiness." He cheers Helen up by quoting Monty Python, "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquistion." This also is significant towards the movie's story since it focuses on how nobody can truly expect how their life can change in a split second. Since I don't want to give away the ending I can only tell you that it, in my opinion it symbolizes fate better than I have ever seen before. This movie brilliantly shows us the meaning of life, fate, destiny, and love. I would reccomend it especially for those who seem to feel like life is not going their way or if only things went a little differently everything would be different. I would especially recommend it for anyone who appreciates British humor.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Gwyneth Paltrow's finest hour
Review: Gwyneth Paltrow has long been one of the few American actresses who can perfectly mimic the British accent. We saw this in 'Emma', and we now witness her excelling at this particular talent in 'Sliding Doors', one of the most thoughtful English films to come out in the last decade. I first saw this film a few years ago upon initial release, and was both impressed and intrigued by the director's style of film-making. Rarely have there been good films that weave alternating storylines convincingly, and to do it when the characters in both storylines are the same person must have been a task indeed. But on every imaginable level, 'Sliding Doors' is a respectable success, moderately successful in some areas and hugely in others.

Much of this is due to the presence of Gwyneth Paltrow and John Hannah. I have never really liked Gwyneth in her screen performances (I thought her Oscar should have actually gone to Cate Blanchett), but she managed to endear herself to me in this movie. This is due to the intelligent script and the quaint London setting, I suppose, but is also owed to Gwyneth's smouldering chemistry with the lead actor (little known John Hannah, who was also the gay lover in 'Four Weddings and a Funeral'). He has always been a rather reclusive actor and this film remains his only real foray into mainstream cinema as a leading man (he did play Rachel Weisz's brother in 'The Mummy' but no one remembered his role there).

The story is simple enough. Gwyneth lives with her aspiring writer boyfriend in a downtown apartment. Unbeknowest to her, he is having an affair with an American executive who works in England (played by Jeanne Tripplehorn, who gets all the bitchy lines). One day, after being fired from her job, Gwyn returns home through the metro rail network. The story splits in two here. On one hand we learn of Gwyn's life if she catches the train on time and therefore reaches home in time to find her cheating man in bed with someone else. And on the other, the story deals with what happens if she didn't catch the train and thus reached home late, completely ignorant that her boyfriend's lover has managed to leave before her arrival. This is all brilliant fun, but also soaked in spiritual tones that never get too preachy or boring. A film like this can only work if the leads are convinced of the storyline and the characters they are playing. On those counts, 'Sliding Doors' is a resounding success.

I particularly liked the way everything came together in the end. Perhaps the message was that you can't cheat destiny or escape from what will eventually happen to you. Luckily for us, the film also suggests that everything that happens to you is good and should be welcomed. I thought this was masterfully brought across. On VHS, this film looks dull as the colors sometimes blend into one another and the sound isn't exactly praiseworthy. Still, it's a worthy buy, as this is the best of British cinema, and is one of those rare gems that don't come by that often. Highly recommended.


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