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Truly, Madly, Deeply

Truly, Madly, Deeply

List Price: $14.95
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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not my thing, but if you like NPR, rent it.
Review: I didn't like it. I gave it the stars because it wasn't a bad film, it's just not my thing. This review is to warn the people like me who would need SSRI meds to watch stuff like this without getting depressed.

It reminds me of when I first went to university in a small town full of extremely quirky "real people" living rather bizarre, solitary lives in rundown homes with hardwood floors, their shelves lined with books and their taste in music running toward string quartets. They read and talked endlessly about life in intellectual, but baleful tones as they tried to make human contact half crippled by their sensitivity. Many found this refreshing. I, however, bounded back to superficial and sunny Los Angeles as soon as possible because I saw no reason why I should be doomed to a gloomy existence merely on the basis of academic skills alone. :)

HOWEVER, if you ARE that type (and I love you guys) and you HATE hollywood movies with pretty people mouthing slick lines and special effects and phat beats..by all means RENT THIS FILM. You'll like it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Highly Recommend
Review: This is one movie I have watched many times, and still never tire of. I love the music, and I still marvel at Juliet Stevenson's crying scene - it is truly believable.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Love is a decision, not a feeling
Review: Why do people like the movie "Ghost?" Because it suggests that love can last forever, and people like that romantic notion enough to pretend the movie is good in spite of its insipid story and dreadful acting.
"Truly, Madly, Deeply" gets it exactly right, not just a great story and wonderful acting and some surprisingly funny bits. It also correctly makes it clear that loving someone isn't about what makes US feel good, but doing what's best for the object of our love regardless of how it makes us feel.
Juliet Stevenson is wonderful as the young woman devastated by the loss of her "perfect" boyfriend, and Alan Rickman is very good as that boyfriend.
Easily one of the three or four most romantic movies I've ever seen. It reminds us that love isn't a feeling, because feelings can change. It's a decision, an action, something we do. It's also about getting on with our lives, a reminder that life is for the living.
"Truly, Madly, Deeply" is almost a point-for-point response to everything that was wrong about the treacly "Ghost."
"T,M,D" is a great, great movie.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Seeing Warts and All
Review: Truly, Madly, Deeply examines the stages of loss from the tragic "I can't live without him!" to the annoyed "It's only dust!" (in response to his sneezing.) Janet Stevenson and Alan Rickman are terrific in their roles as former lovers (he's dead now). If you've ever lost someone you loved very much, you'll feel right at home with this film and doubtless shed a few tears at the touching ending. The storyline with the dead buddies is very clever. This is "Ghost" without the sappy sentimentality.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Truly, Madly, Deeply moving film!
Review: I found this movie on cable a few years ago and have loved it ever since. It is one of those simple, pure films that reflect humanity so well. Bravo!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I love this film truly, madly..well, you know
Review: Nina can't move ahead with her life after the loss of her lover, Jamie, so Jamie returns to her. And for a while she's overjoyed. But then she starts to remember why Jamie often made her crazy, remembers that he wasn't a saint or an angel, but a man. And losing him was a tragedy, but not one she can't ever recover from. She's alive and she wants a life. She can't have that with Jamie, and finally she gets the closure she needs to say good-bye to him, and move on.

So many comparisons were made between TMD and Ghost, but comparisons do justice to neither film. Taken on its own merits, I'd have to say that TMD is one of the sweetest love stories I've ever seen because it's one of the most real. Nina is a real woman who gets blotchy when she cries, has second thoughts, says and does foolish things and loves deeply. She has needs and desires which she puts on hold out of grief, but when she gets a good, solid nudge from the ghost of her lover, she recognizes how much of life is ahead of her and she accepts, finally, that loss is a part of that life.

I'm not sure why this film means so much to me. At a guess I'd say that it transcends my love for Alan Rickman by miles. Possibly it's because I first saw it after losing someone I loved, or maybe I was just ready for the gentle humor and lessons about life, love and loss that the film offers. I highly recommend this film.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A HAUNTING AND DEEPLY MOVING FILM....
Review: Anthony Minghella, in his directorial debut, has produced a superlative film about life, love, death, and grief. It is a genre bending film that is a romantic fantasy with both comedic and dramatic layers. Original and unusual, it is at times drolly funny. At other times, it is profoundly sad and poignant.

The plot revolves around Nina (Juliet Stevenson), a thirty something English woman who has lost Jamie (Alan Rickman), the love of her life, to a totally unexpected death. She is profoundly in despair and her grief is bottomless, piercing, palpable, and all encompassing. Living in a rat infested flat, Nina seems unable to cope with life without her Jamie, for whom she incessantly longs. When it seems that she can no longer bear the pain of his loss, he suddenly comes back from the dead, no figment of her imagination.

Initially overjoyed, transformed by her sheer happiness at having Jamie back, she becomes her old self. Of course, it is too good to be true. He starts having all his dead friends crash at the flat with him, invading her space and privacy, redoing her flat, and complaining. Those little annoying things about Jamie that she had forgotten come bubbling to the surface. Having romanticized their relationship in her overwhelming sense of loss, this reminder of how he really was helps to ground her grief.

When she meets a sensitive and attractive man, Mark (Michael Maloney), who is attracted to her, she finds herself torn between the memories of her love for her dead Jamie and the possiblity of love with the very much alive Mark. Nina has a decision to make that will determine her future. Moreover, the viewer has to wonder whether Jamie's return and subsequent behavior was part of a concerted effort prompted by his love for Nina and his own profound sadness at seeing her unable to go on with a life without him. They surely loved each other truly, madly, deeply.

Juliet Stevenson gives a bravura performance as the haunted Nina. The scene in which she unburdens her grief to her therapist is heartbreaking in scope and will render the viewer to a sobbing, gibbering jelly. Alan Rickman's performance as the beloved Jamie is both romantic and droll. The viewer can understand how it was that Nina and Jamie loved each other so much. Michael Maloney is likewise engaging as the sensitive and whimsical Mark. The viewer knows the instant Mark appears on screen that, if any man can woo Nina away from her memories and spectral lover, it is he.

All in all, this has got to be one of the most definitive films on love, overwhelming grief, and closure. Bravo!

The DVD provides a crystal clear picture as well an excellent audio. While it has some bonus features, it is limited to an audio commentary with the director, as well as a brief interview with him. Originally filmed on a shoestring budget for BBC TV, it is shown full screen only.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of the best romantic comedies to come out of the UK
Review: I have seen this film 3 times, and it just gets better with each viewing. Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman give perfect performances in this off-beat romantic comedy that will make you laugh and cry - forget cry...sob!

The British just know how to do this genre better than anyone else (i.e. Four Weddings..., Notting Hill, Sliding Doors, etc.): They put enough meat on the bones of their romantic comedies to make you think and feel while being amused and entertained, without tipping the scales (like the French and the Germans tend to do).

A perfect, yet highly under-rated film.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: British thinking-viewer's GHOST.
Review: A marvelous film given a better treatment in DVD-land than expected. While not the extras-exploding special edition disc we've come to know and love; this dvd of TMD still delivers. The picture is the best you're going to get out of ten-year-old 16mm 1:1.33 on an ultra-low budget (i.e., compression's cranked a little high, but it's not like you notice), the sound is clear, and Minghella's seam-pointing-out commentary is insightful and fascinating, if a little dry. And while the interview segment also includes a lot of soundbytes that are repetitions of things said in the commentary, it's still better than plain vanilla nothing. Besides seeing how all the langugage-agency bits were translated on the Spanish and French soundtracks is a hoot.

My wish list would have included the 10-minute Beckett "Play," (another BBC piece directed by Minghella and staring Stevenson and Rickman and mentioned obliquely in the commentary), or the Jim Henson "Living With Dinosaurs," or just Juliet Stevenson on the commentary track with Minghella. But, can't have everything. Here's hoping someone puts STORYTELLER on dvd.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: why full screen?
Review: I've been waiting and waiting for this one to come out on DVD and it finally does and it's not widescreen? Why not? I'll stick with the VHS version until there's a more compelling DVD available.


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