Rating: 
Summary: Nothing Golden here.
Review: I kept waiting for a twist in this movie that never came. Maybe I just didn't get it. This is my second Henry James novel to movie that I have watched and not enjoyed. The other movie, Turn of the Screw, has a rather disturbing ending. Golden Bowl just ended. I found Nick Nolte's line delivery to be more like he was reading from cue cards. Northam and Beckinsale are the only redeemeding factors in this film.
Rating: 
Summary: Jeremy Northam as Amerigo, in The Golden Bowl
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this film because I am a HUGE Jeremy Northam fan, and although I did find his Italian accent in the movie a little disconcerting (his excellent English is what makes him a fine actor) I still managed to view the film with satisfactory results. Since many reviews given here have offered a glimpse into what the movie entails, let's just say, overall I loved every minute of it and I recommend it to anyone who loves period films...Thanks Jeremy for making my heart palpitate!!
Rating:
Summary: A Lovely Bowl
Review: I was taken with this Merchant Ivory production of Bowl, undeniably opulent and likely the best-looking of all the Merchant Ivory productions. It is near-perfect visually. Most important, I feel Thurman has given a valid interpretation of Charlotte - an opinion not widely shared. It would have been easy to play the role as a cool, reserved fashion plate; Thurman instead chose to play the character as a still maturing, somewhat insecure girl. It is a vastly more honest and truthful depiction - and certainly much more difficult as an acting choice. A passive portrayal of victorian feminine mystique would hardly be news nor much of a challenge for an actress like Thurman. I've never liked her more than in this role.
Rating: 
Summary: Terrific Film, Terrific Adaptation
Review: I'm a bit puzzled by all the hostile comments on this movie.
I've read The Golden Bowl five times, at least. I have also seen most film and TV adaptations of James novels and novellas done since the 1970s and this one stands up very well under the double test: is it faithful to the book's spirit, is it a good film?
I loved this movie, have seen it twice and given it as a gift. I found it perfectly cast, filmed, and paced. TGB is a long dense intensely internal book but it has been faithfully rendered by a screenwriter who boldly brought the violence and threat at the core of the book forward in a fascinating sort of prologue, and made one of the book's most famous images, the Pagoda, part of a nightmare. Each time I see these sections I admire her ingenuity.
Uma Thurman broke my heart as the passionate, lonely, sensual Europeanized American who cannot have what she wants when she wants it. Yes, the part was played differently by Gayle Hunnicutt in the estimable British TV version, but so what? Thurman works because she makes it so clear how much more she wants Amerigo than the opposite and her verbal rebellion at one point is explosive (in a Jamesian way, of course).
Jeremy Northam is suitably lordly and devilishly handsome. His accent sounds just right to me, having been around Europeans who learned English from English speakers: the mix is sometimes inconsistent though charming.
Kate Beckinsale is just right as the limited innocent whose innocence is a kind of cruelty and watching her grow up, make the sacrifices she needs to while fighting through the pain of terrible awareness was haunting. Nick Nolte was sublime as the phlegmatic wealthy collector. You feel the roughness behind his suavity and the world-weariness. He's got all these amazing obejcts but what does he really have? His devotion to his daughter is pitched just right.
I loved how the film often cast him and Kate as isolated amid their stupefyinbgly beautiful collections. I loved how there are scenes opening the movie that take us back to the Prince's Renaissance forebears and that create dramatic irony when she re-enters the orbit of Maggie and Adam.
I was captivated by this movie even more the second viewing than the first, and even though the book is so familiar to me that I quote from it now and then. I own the Gayle Hunnicutt version and am glad there are too such stylish, intelligent, and very different takes on one of our greatest novels in English.
Rating:
Summary: would have gotten one star....
Review: if it weren't for Jeremy Northam's performance. This movie dragged on and on and on and on... I only finished it because I felt compelled to do so. The characters seemed unreal and the story did not translate well to the screen.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: In general I enjoy Merchant Ivory productions, but this one is below par. Visually stunning, wonderful costumes, but lacking in depth and human drama. I actually turned it off after the first 20 minutes because it so seriously lacked dramatic tension (this was during Nick Nolte's proposal to Uma Thurman. I was bored.). I ended up watching the rest because, after all, I paid for it, and it did improve, but not significantly. Interestingly, I ended up feeling the most sympathy for the lovers, the least for the wrong wife and husband/ father. There wasn't enough there to make me care deeply about any of them, however.
Jeremy Northam is usually worth watching (I wish Colin Firth weren't such a darling of Hollywood. I'd have loved to see Northam in Girl with a Pearl Earring, for example.) Here he is hidden behind a beard and an Italian accent. Kate Beckinsale is another reason I was interested, but I just wasn't compelled by her ingenue character.
Rating:
Summary: Like The Bowl of Title, The Film Is Beautiful, But Flawed
Review: Long after he made film versions of Henry James with "The Europeans" and "The Bostonians," James Ivory, acclaimed director, came back to this author with another film adaptation of "The Golden Bowl." Actually, Ivory had been thinking about the possibility of making films of "The Portrait of a Lady" or "The Wings of a Dove," but they were taken up as text by Jane Campion and Iain Softley respectively, so he turned to this book, the last one of James. The result is, I think, rather closer to the former rather than to the latter; like Nicole Kidman as Isabel, the film expresses with gorgeous costumes and props, but lefts its heart somewhere behind.The story, very faithful to the original book, is comparatively simple. "Prince" Amerigo (Jeremy Northam playing, unaccountably, an Italian) belongs to a once prosperous and prestigious Italian family, which, however, is now finacially reduced. He meets and keeps a romantic attachment with a beautiful woman Charlotte Stant (Uma Thurman, gorgeous as ever), but without enough money he decides to marry Maggie Verver (Kate Beckinsale), daughter of rich American tycoon and collector of fine art Adam Verver (Nick Nolte), but still keeps on his clandestine meeting with Charlotte (who happens to be Maggie's best friend), who in turn married Adam. This delicate equiliburium of secret love lasts only for a short time until an incident happens, when Maggie comes to realize that her husband is having an affair with her friend: until the titular golden bowl, apparently perfect, but deep inside flawed and cracked like the relations of the chracters here, shatters into pieces. The melodramatic (and some say banal) story of the book is preserved for most part, by the pen of Ruth Prawer Jhabvola, and probably no complaint would be heard from the fans of the original Henry James book. However, as is the case with "The Portrait of a Lady," it is also unlikely to convert film viewers to James fans, because the values described here is irrevocably dated. No one, at least in the most part of Western culture today, would not look at the theme of adultery as the people in the film do. You would think, looking at the tormented heroine such as Isabell Archer or Charotte Stant: If you don't like him, why don't you leave him? In fact, this is the point of the book, which deals with the unique situations of the people trapped in the mores of the high sphere of society, tracing how a certain set of people would act in a given time and place, according to the social and phychological codes ruling over them. And now the film has a big trouble; in short, how can the movie interpret the subtle relations of the book (which, incidentally, is a very difficult to read, as every reader would find)?; how should the film present, before the more liberal modern audience, the believable characters that they can relate to, or at least, understand? The film, trying to overcome this problem, succeeds but not perfectly. After Maggie realizes the truth about realtions between her husband and Charlotte, things start to change. The people who know the truth -- Amerigo and Charlotte -- are now left in the dark while the people who didn't -- Maggie and Adam Verver -- start to gain power over the former pair. The table has been turned, with the broken cup of gold, which is flawed.... ... and flawed as the film itself. Charlotte and her husband go to American City, leaving behind Maggie and Amerigo, and thus Charlotte is virtually "packed" and "sent" to America where she will be buried alive for the rest of her life. On the other hand, Amerigo goes back to her wife Maggie, with a "Prince"-like attitude, saying that he loves his wife, as if nothing had happened. But he is also imprisoned in a family life he never cares. This crucial part of the book is displayed so weakly that some may be left confused watching the ending of the film. This happens, I think, because of the film's cast: though Thurman and Northamm are good choice for the roles and fit in them pretty successfully, Nick Nolte and Kate Beckinsale are both greatly miscast: they just do not look like father and daughter who aodre each other. And more to the point, both characters of father and daughter should be given, my impression after reading the book tells me, more ruthlessness, or even menace, in separating the lovers of Charlotte and Amerigo. The fact is, they, father and daughter, conspire without saying that they need to conspire. The tycoon father literally collects Charlotte, and that cruelty is in the book with a striking lasso image, which hangs around Charlotte's neck, and of which end Adam holds firmly. Nolte briefly shows this side of the character when he silently and grimly supervises his wife's lecture about his pictures before the guests. But it is not enough at all, and about Kate Beckinsale, her acting is, sorry fans, but far from satisfactory, to convince us the authenticity of the last confrontation scene between Maggie and Charlotte, which is not so much suggestive of her inner feeling, as simply confusing. All in all, the film is good; as you expect from Ivory's films, you see costumes and props that are delight to your eyes. Still, the film shows unwittingly that some books cannot be made into film. Probably, the most successful film adaptaion of the books of Henry James is Wyler's "Heirness," which is based on "Washington Square." This gives, however, least of James's taste.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed Merchant Ivory fan
Review: Merchant Ivory is known for costume drama. But this dramatization - and I use the word loosely - of James's The Golden Bowl - is all costume. As beautiful as it is to look at, you still find yourself drumming your fingers on the arm of your chair, waiting for the spectacle, please God, to end. As for the acting, yikes! Why, oh why would any director settle upon Nick Nolte for a major part? In his last several forays in front of the camera, Nolte speaks his lines - indeed, every drawn-out syllable - very, very carefully, but his mind is obviously elsewhere. I do not know what he is paying his agent, but that fee is worth every penny. Anjelica Huston, normally a good, solid actress, was all at sea, and could never quite settle upon her character's accent. Such as it was, it came and went. Uma Thurman played her character as extremely unlikable, even repellant, which cannot be what Henry James had in mind, and which makes no sense dramatically. After all, it was her character, Charlotte, who initiated all the action in the story. Whether this was Thurman's misinterpretation or the director's misguided coaching is anyone's guess. Kate Beckinsale as the wronged wife was completely and utterly dull. Only Jeremy Northam inhabited his part with any credibility. A contemporary Englishman playing an Italian prince, ca. 1903! And you know, he wasn't bad. I used to (past tense) look forward to the next new movie from Merchant Ivory. But there was always the danger that their style - of a too-reverent, nostalgic regard for the upper-class style of the Edwardian era - would grow ever more mannered, sugarcoated, and lifeless. They are reaching the point where the viewer would be well advised to watch their movies with the sound turned off.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointed Merchant Ivory fan
Review: Merchant Ivory is known for costume drama. But this dramatization - and I use the word loosely - of James's The Golden Bowl - is all costume. As beautiful as it is to look at, you still find yourself drumming your fingers on the arm of your chair, waiting for the spectacle, please God, to end. As for the acting, yikes! Why, oh why would any director settle upon Nick Nolte for a major part? In his last several forays in front of the camera, Nolte speaks his lines - indeed, every drawn-out syllable - very, very carefully, but his mind is obviously elsewhere. I do not know what he is paying his agent, but that fee is worth every penny. Anjelica Huston, normally a good, solid actress, was all at sea, and could never quite settle upon her character's accent. Such as it was, it came and went. Uma Thurman played her character as extremely unlikable, even repellant, which cannot be what Henry James had in mind, and which makes no sense dramatically. After all, it was her character, Charlotte, who initiated all the action in the story. Whether this was Thurman's misinterpretation or the director's misguided coaching is anyone's guess. Kate Beckinsale as the wronged wife was completely and utterly dull. Only Jeremy Northam inhabited his part with any credibility. A contemporary Englishman playing an Italian prince, ca. 1903! And you know, he wasn't bad. I used to (past tense) look forward to the next new movie from Merchant Ivory. But there was always the danger that their style - of a too-reverent, nostalgic regard for the upper-class style of the Edwardian era - would grow ever more mannered, sugarcoated, and lifeless. They are reaching the point where the viewer would be well advised to watch their movies with the sound turned off.
Rating:
Summary: The Golden Bowl Not Just Cracked, But Broken
Review: Novels don't always transfer to the screen with suitable pacing and power. Of all the James novels that might be adapted to a visual medium, "The Golden Bowl" seems perhaps the least attractive. The depth and force of the piece is in the genius of the various characters' internal reflections. The film gives us not these, but instead just the bare bones of the plot, which in itself is not much to chew over. Oddly enough, the film, rather than the novel, deserves H.G. Wells' criticism that James here resembles a hippopotamus trying to pick up a pea. The symbolic and the suggestive are reduced to the clumsily literal both in dialogue and directorial insight. The actors do the best they can with the dialogue they're given, but when of work of brilliant interiority is reduced to externals, it becomes unconvincingly empty when it's not laughable
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