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Summary: "Who can I tell? And not destroy in the telling?"
Review: ANGELS & INSECTS is probably one of the most fascinating movies of the 1990's. With beautiful set designs and marvelous costumes, A&I wins! Patsy Kensit, Mark Rylance, and Kristen Scott Thomas (in one of her best roles ever!) light up the screen with a dark story hidden in the walls of one aristocratic house in the early years of the 1700's. When (Rylance) weds (Kensit) he thought it was the perfect marriage. But when he learns of the damp, dark, past that still haunts the present... he learns that there was no such perfection. A shocking tale, a brilliant story, and cast and crew that never let you down. ANGELS & INSECTS, like EYES WIDE SHUT, will have you on the edge of your bed...an erotic tale, that never lets you fall.
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Summary: Angels and Insects, thought provoking and beautiful
Review: Angels and Insects is one of the most dramatic and insightful movies of our time period. The plot gives viewers insight into the world of Victorian England. The main characters Mark Rylance and Kristen Scott-Thomas, are the ones who make the film exceptional. Their unnerving attraction to one anothers beauty and intellect carry the film.Yet the film also draws light onto the idea of how distinct and pure a family should be. And throughout the entire film, the vivid colors and sounds of nature are displayed to the viewer. Angels and Insects is a movie for those who are interested in drama and mystery.
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Summary: Absolutely spectacular film!
Review: Angels and Insects is one of the most visually stunning movies I have ever seen and every bit of the immense beauty & luxury that is on the screen contributes to the sense & definition of exquisite excess that is so ingrained in the Alabasters' way of life. If one imagines what this movie would have been like as a 1940s Hollywood effort, perhaps starring Olivier & Fontaine, ala Rebecca, then one must really appreciate the subtly shaded performances. I have never seen better acting onscreen, especially in the performances of Rylance & Thomas. And all the interplay of idea & emotion, science & passion, objectivity & subjectivity, so rarely transferable from print to film are so brilliantly achieved here. Hey, even the sex scenes are among the best I've ever viewed.
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Summary: I love this movie!!!!!
Review: Average Joes, beware-this movie is not for you! It's cerebral, sensuous, gorgeously photographed and art directed, with amusing costumes and fine performances. If you like Poison and Blue Velvet, try this.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning
Review: I had never heard of this film, but I was stunned when it crossed my path. It is "in the manner of" Merchant/Ivory, but the story is both more important and vivid than most of theirs. It is a beautiful rendering of one of the abiding human paradoxes: a good man who finds that physical love and security are hollow when they keep him from his life's work. Altogether worthy of Greek Tragedy or Jane Austin. Perfectly cast, paced, written and photographed. Kensit finally shows that she has the capacity for serious work, and Haas could not be better. Entertaining, visually splendid. A minor classic! It's too bad they couldn't find a better title.
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Summary: stayed with me for days after
Review: I loved this flick. I rented it on a whim cuz i remember hearing way back when that it was pretty good, plus it had a coupla really good looking actresses in it. i wasn't prepared to be sucked in as thoroughly as I was.
The plot is very simple. others have described it well. What really hooked me about the film were 1.The photography. Almost every scene in the movie looks good enough to serve as a poster ad for the flick. 2.The set design. The sets combined with the costumes make for just gorgeous eye candy. 3. the dialogue. Very clever and often moving diologue. I especially love a scene set in a greenhouse where Adamson expresses his love for Eugenia.
The filmmakers knew what they were doing and they did it well. They took their time and made a movie that serves as a fairly moving drama (I replayed the ending so many times it's embarrassing) and a surprisingly insightful and interesting examination of the insect world.
Some have said the flick is boring, and I can see why some would feel that way, tho it absolutely was not for me. It is a slow movie, but some movies are supposed to be and i think this is one. It's a gorgeous flick. Highly recommended.
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Summary: Unsettling and seductive bee hives
Review: I strongly recommend this odd but fascinating film. The story is full of strange twists; the images are beautiful, the acting is superb, and A. S. Byatt's underlying message is disturbing.
We all know Victorian England was full of sexual repression and hidden obsessions but this film reveals just how pathological sexual secrets can become.
The story is that of a young working class entymologist whose research is supported by Sir Harald Alabaster. William Anderson, the insect specialist, discovers a beautiful moth in the Amazon and brings it back to England for Sir Harald, naming it after his beautiful eldest daughter, Eugenia. Sir Harald's wife is a rotund mountain of fat, producing children while being served hand and foot by servants, as if she were a giant termite queen. William falls for Eugenia, against all odds marries her, and then becomes part of a strange sexual pattern with his wife where he is invited into her bedroom for a night of wild sex, followed by her separation from him during her pregnancy. He is not usually invited back again except in this cycle of one-night-stand,pregnancy, new birth, and then one-night-stand. William's children and the younger children of Sir Harald have a nanny, Maddy, played superbly by Kristin Scott Thomas. Eventually William comes to understand the secret behind his wife's sexuality and through the support of Maddy, is able to divorce himself from the Alabaster household.
What is A.S. Byatt telling us? I think the film is telling us that as social creatures, we organize our work and society much like bee hives or ant mounds, full of hierarchy and division of labor and every opportunity for reflective thinking to be drowned out and for pathology to survive unchallenged.
Wierd and beautiful is hte best way to summarize this film.
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Summary: Great Movie - Horrible Disk
Review: I will let others comment on the movie, and I agree with most of the positive comments it is receiving. HOWEVER - I am a big DVD buff, and picture quality is very important to me. This is probably the single WORST transfer of a movie from film to digital media that I have EVER seen (Save RAN). The quality wavers from mediocre to downright horrible throughout the movie, and it was so distracting, I really could not get into the film. C'mon MGM, couldn't you have spent a LITTLE more time and attention to get this right??? It is such a visually stunning movie, and to see it this way really disappointed me...
Rating: 
Summary: Terrific movie hobbled by deplorable DVD transfer
Review: I've been waiting and looking in the stores for this marvellous movie for a couple of years, and was delighted to be able to ...order it from Amazon. This terrific movie has been marred by a DVD transfer which is simply one of the worst I have seen. MGM should be ashamed to release something which is so obviously technically flawed. The entire movie is out-of-focus, and there are ghost lines of the film frame's edges at top and bottom of the screen. Do they not have somebody with 20/20 eyesight to proof these things before they are mastered? There are also digital line artifacts throughout. Also, the Dolby 2.0 soundtrack is poorly done, with voices not properly placed in the center speaker, even when the character is centre-screen. This I can adapt to much better than the deplorable video, which ruined the stunningly beautiful cinematography. A disappointment, to say the least!
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Summary: Excellent costume piece!
Review: If you are at all interested in the 19th Century, particularly the incredibly beautiful, incredible impractical, incredibly sexy clothing of upper class women, this is a must see. James Tissot could have painted many of the stills from this film. Besides that, what really struck me -- far more than the unusual sexual practices of the family -- was how housemaids hid their faces against walls when their betters passed. It was expected that these poor women would abase themselves. I was repulsed. (I understand some contemporary celebrities, including people who champion human rights causes, do similar things to their staff and servants.)It was a nice touch in that it reminded us of how, much more than now, it was hell to be poor, which, of course, the protagonist is. The acting was first-rate, and there was a distinct erotic undercurrent which was restrained enough (well, most of the time) to keep up the tension.
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