Rating: 
Summary: Does the word "Yuk" convey my feelings?
Review: Pu---leeeze! Another movie about dysfunctional family members...who cares?!
Rating: 
Summary: As Hellish as the lives it depicts.
Review: The experience of watching 'Lovely and Amazing' is akin to spending an hour and a half with selfish, annoying, miserable relatives at a family reunion. It's too bad considering the grade-A talent involved. Offbeat, interesting actors like Catherine Keener, Clark Gregg, Jake Gyllenhaal, Brenda Blethlyn, Emily Mortimer, and James LeGros are forced, against their nature by writer/director Nicole Holofcener to be as unpleasant, unsympathetic, and in some cases, downright despicable as possible. It's more than that the characters are "flawed"; from the beginning, we don't have anyone to root for, an ineluctable problem for any story. Of all faults to have, its unlikability is the one I'd least expect from Holofcener considering her incredibly charming and wry debut "Walking and Talking." Catherine Keener plays Michelle, our centerpiece character. She is mean to her sensible husband played by Clark Gregg. We're supposed to feel okay about her shrewishness because he's having an affair with her friend. But actually, the converse is true. His infidelity is understandable given HER erratic behavior. ... Everyone in this movie has done better work. Movies like Donnie Darko and October Sky show Jake Gyllenhaal's (as a young suitor to Keener) deep range and aversion to steretypical characters. Being John Malchovich, if not showing her likability, showcased Keener's seductive grin and acting skill. Clark Gregg was excellent in "Adventures of Sebastian Cole." And the great Blethlyn as Keener's equally dysfunctional mom can even give a nasty character such as hers in "Secrets and Lies" a highly watchable punch. However, the biggest letdown is Holofcener herself. "Walking and Talking" truly is an excellent movie, a poignant sympathetic, funny look at real people, and showed incredible promise for Nicole Holofcener's career. Let's hope she can bounce back from this mean, unpleasant movie and make the brilliant dramedy she is capable of.
Rating: 
Summary: the title describes the film!!!
Review: The four females in "Lovely & Amazing" look at themselves through a self-cracked mirror. Jane (Brenda Blethyn) is a well-off woman in her 50s who cares enough about others to adopt Annie (Raven Goodwin), an 8-year-old African-American girl whose birth mother is a crack addict. Jane also cares enough about herself to sign up for cosmetic surgery ($10,000 a pop and no insurance) to remove 10 pounds from her midriff. Along with Annie, Jane has two adult daughters. The older one, Michelle (Catherine Keener), is a former homecoming queen who has turned into a childish, self-centered neurotic. Though Michelle's husband constantly prods her to get a job, she fancies herself an artist. She makes miniature chairs to sell to knickknack shops, but no one's buying. Michelle's younger sister, Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer), is a beautiful aspiring actress who's already landing some small movie roles. But she has such a distorted self-image that she thinks of herself as unattractive -- even as she's posing for a photo spread in Vogue. Asked to do a "chemistry" audition with a big star named Kevin McCabe (Dermot Mulroney), she's forced to listen while casting agents casually appraise her sexuality -- or lack thereof. Both sisters are stuck in unfulfilling relationships. Elizabeth's overcritical live-in boyfriend is tired of hearing her obsess about her auditions, her resume photos, her agent, etc. Meanwhile, Michelle's sullen self-absorption and testy attitude have worn down her husband to the point that he's not especially interested in sleeping with her. To spite him, she takes a menial job at a one-hour photo shop, where her teenage boss (Jake Gyllenhaal) takes a Mrs. Robinson-like interest in her. As she proved in her fine 1996 film, "Walking and Talking," director Holofcener has an uncanny understanding of people as well as a gift for sharp, funny dialogue. Yes, "Lovely & Amazing" will probably spawn noxiously shallow lifestyle pieces on why women have poor self-esteem. But the film is much subtler and more complex than that. The entire cast is terrific, from Goodwin to Mulroney. But you have to focus on Keener, perhaps best known for her role as the merciless co-worker of John Cusack in "Being John Malkovich," who's become the Queen of Late Summer. She's creating her own type -- the acerbic smarts and ironic world-view of wisecracking dames like Rosalind Russell or "Frasier's" Peri Gilpin, with a twist of simmering anger and a drop of self-loathing. As vulnerable as she is venomous, she doesn't want to be the way she is, but she can't quite give it up, either. Deftly directed, winningly acted and shrewdly written, "Lovely & Amazing" is as softhearted as it is ruthless, as amusing as it is poignant, but it does have its faults. Mostly, it doesn't offer a lovely and amazing final resolution, one reason why I wish it went on longer. It's an engrossing and emotional film that every woman (and gay man) should see.
Rating: 
Summary: POIGNANT & WELL MADE, BUT ULTIMATELY DEPRESSING..
Review: The good things about the movie: it is very real, and captures the idiosynchrasies of the women remarkably well (a mother and her two daughters through a period of change.) The bad things about the movie: although the movie is well made, the narrative is more than a bit lacking dragging the pace beyond any trickle of entertainment (and I recognize this is subjective.) That it is so real is also the movie's weakness. One daughter stands naked before her new lover and begs a frank assessment, good and bad, of her body. Another takes a job at the one hour photo after failing to sell her home made wrapping paper. Mommie dear thinks maybe her liposuction doctor is flirting with her. All you are left with is the feeling of having looked through a neighbor's window. The lives of these women occupy the space between tragic and heroic, in sight of both but touching neither. Somewhat depressing to watch but if you like "reality" this is as real as it gets.
Rating:
Summary: Bad sound, stick-figure male characters
Review: The mix and remix of sound for this DVD is so bad I suggest you turn on the subtitles so you can follow the dialog more easily. Excellent male actors are given little or nothing to do. Given these faults and the lack of any real movement in the characters, there is a lot that is excellent. There is close observation of details in how we talk to each other, much of which is very funny. Catherine Keener once again shows how excellent an actor she is, inhabiting her character so completely and naturally she saves the movie. Her examples of "fake" and real smiles are terrific to watch, as is her panic being at a party where she is a nobody. In a way this movie is part insider "Hollywood " joke and part essay on female insecurities.
The director has inserted a subplot about an adopted sister that is good by itself but not really needed as part of the flow and it detracts from the overall effect.
Rent it for Keener, otherwise as an example of a project that did not quite make it.. And also as an example of how important sound is to get right.
Rating:
Summary: Why Can't These Women Catch A Break?
Review: The quintessential chick-flick, "Lovely and Amazing" is a warm and insightful film about feelings, family, and strained relationships. All the men are insensitive and unable to detect the needs of the women in their lives. All the women are tortured by insecurities about their bodies, but know themselves as creative, devoted, and nurturing. Resting heavily on character development like only a novel can, the movie lacks any real plot. Instead, the audience is treated to an ever deepening intimacy with the open sores that are the lives of three sisters and their mother. Well acted.
Rating:
Summary: Film that's full of humor, but no resolution
Review: There are good performances in this film and interesting subjects that are brought up, but there is a serious flaw here and that's the fact that it doesn't face up to the issues much and just presents them. The ultimate presentation of this is the mother who gets lyposuction, there are certain things in her life which she simply doesn't remedy and movie seems OK to let her not deal with them. In a way this is true to life, but if you wanted to broach certain subjects in film about people's crossroads in life than the film should have a definitive view on them. This film's view on the characters was that it liked them and so it was non-judgmental. It just doesn't seem to have a point for existing even though that existence is funny, sad,and presented with a very matter of fact, frankness, that is rare nowadays. One thing that wasn't dealt with that I liked was Dermot Mulroney's character in relationship to Emily Mortimer's character. He's completely using her and he's completely honest about that, but we don't know if she'll have another liason with him in the future, or not. I liked that particular open end.
Rating:
Summary: Misogynistic and boring
Review: There are no female characters in this movie that have a single good quality to them. Neurotic, insecure to the extreme, self-loathing, angry, manipulative and racist - just for starters. I don't know what all those other reviewers saw but this film was horrible!
Rating: 
Summary: Lovely and Amazing is truely Lovely and Amazing
Review: This is a movie of long dialogue scenes, don't expect action, it may seem slow for some people, but in fact it's a heart-warming drama. To understand this film, keep focusing on the dialogue, it will take you deeper inside the character, which will take you even much deeper inside the story, by that time you won't feel the minutes passing by, and you'll beg if it was much longer than that. The performance is amazing, the script is very well-written, there were no gaps, very logic, the twists and turns break the heart. Emily Mortimer plays the role of an actress with very weak self-confidence, or weak character, she excelled in this role, her face was so innocent. Catherine Keener is the eldest sister, a loser unemployed married woman, desperately tries to sell the things she makes. Things always go against her well. Brenda Blethyn is the mother who's trying to live her past despite being old. Despite being simple, this film is one of my favourites. I really recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: "The Dialogue Is Frequently Outstanding"
Review: This is a slight film though it is both entertaining and insightful. The characters are in the main familiar, postmodern self-absorbed types, all too often demonstrating to our amusement their prickly tempers under their "non-judgmental" surfaces when they're even slightly thwarted. The speed with which Catherine Keener, for instance, spits out four-letter words
at those who reject her artwork is a delight to observe.
On a deeper level, the film suggests that its characters' self-absorption is chosen, but that realized personhood rests in the decision to transcend the self and do what's needed for someone else. Happily, the scene in which Keener says the right thing to her hurting African-American stepsister is not preachy but both believable and winning. All in all, Nicole Holofcener has given us a film of contemporary life marked by verbal wit and intelligence.
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