Rating: 
Summary: Terrific Film, Terrific Book: Buy Both
Review: If you love books you can't go wrong with either the book or the film
Rating: 
Summary: One touching movie
Review: In the great brittish tradition of similar items as A brief encounter or The Browning version, we find this treasure in the middle of the eighties.
Only the overwhelming presence of two giants actors as Mrs. Bancroft and Sir Hopkins could this work was a winner.
The film presents multiple challenges that only two legendary actors as them were capable to play and even go far beyond the script.
The script talks about the fraternity and the reciprocal admiration that these two long distance friends feel, their letters are a powerful inspiration motive to reveal much more issues than a simple intelectual exchange of wisdom and points of view.
The hidden feelings of love are suggested with elegance and nuance, a wonderful sense of rapture without affection, in that sense this relationship reminds me to Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms.
Watch this DVD , because this film is now part of the romantic cult eighties movies.
A winner.
Rating:
Summary: Friendship with Depth and Love
Review: In these days of e-books, and bland books constructed from franchised ideas and formulas, we are presented "84 Charing Cross Road," a story about a relationship begun because of a mutual love of old great books.Hopkins and Bancroft share a film highlighting both of their genuine personas. Like Hopkins in "Shadowlands" and "The Remains of the Day," we see him in full glory, as a quiet man of grace and sophistication. He owns the English bookstore, and Bancroft's character mails him a request for a book. Correspondence and a relationship begins. Contently and confidently married, Hopkins responds as an older brother might, and the two grow to cherish each other despite the distance. As they care for each other, and slowly, their local friends and family become aware, we see how love transcends the sea. Neither character has an agenda, and this left me feeling a little less cynical about the world around me. Like so many of today's e-mail- and chatroom-only friendships, they learn to appreciate each other, though knowing only the other as they choose to describe themselves. This isn't a story about books or bookstores, despite the honest representation of their demeanor and personality. Any booklover knows the search for a book, and the texture of a bookseller's knowledge and connection with his books. This is a movie about the depth, trust, and love of one unexpected relationship. Book lovers will enjoy the context, and good friends will smile knowingly.
Rating:
Summary: Authentic and heart-warming
Review: It's nice to see a simple story told well and beautifully acted. There are no explosions or audience-baiting Hollywood touches in this quiet film--unless you account Bancroft's throwing a copy of Pepys diary across the room because it was "only excerpts, not the real thing." The only liberty I felt the filmmakers took with Helene Hanff's collection of personal correspondence with a British bookstore was to imply that she was carrying a torch for her primary correspondent, Frank Doel (played by Hopkins). While any relationship can be see as tinged with erotic tensions of some sort, I always felt from the book that Helene had a good grasp on reality (an opinionated and driven New Yorker, yes, but one that I doubt would ever have seriously endeavored to cross the Atlantic in hopes of busting up Frank's marriage.) In fact, Hanff never reveals much about her personal life in the book. (Perhaps she married but the fact was never documented in her correspondence.) The movie has her surrounded by numerous coupled friends, perhaps unintentionally supporting the stereotype that bookish women are asexual and unlovable. But Bancroft resists this stereotype and presents Helene as a vital and engaging personality. There is nothing pathetic about her. One amusing moment in the film was seeing Sir Anthony Hopkins and Dame Judy Dench as Mr. and Mrs. Doel watching the coronation of Elizabeth II on their black and white television...the very queen who would one day bestow titles on these two accomplished actors. Although it would have been nice if the film had been put on DVD in widescreen format, it probably doesn't matter that much. There are no sweeping vistas here, nor are there many scenes of two characters sitting across a table and conversing with one another. (In fact, they have the entire Atlantic Ocean between them.) Pan and scan works just fine. This film will not be everyone's cup of tea, but for anyone who enjoys watching a couple of veteran actors playing everyday people with great subtlety, this makes for a very pleasant 100 minutes.
Rating:
Summary: Good adaptation of the book
Review: Like many people I saw a movie first. Naturally due to media constraints, you expect certain amount of the book to be homogenized. So I wanted to read what was missing. To my amazement very little was missing or modified. I don't normally read this sort of book. So I was surprised at finding myself wanting more when it finished.
Also until I read the book I did not realize that Charing Cross Road was a real place. The whole book is based on a collection of correspondence between Helene Hanff, an avid book reader, and Frank Doel an agent for British bookseller.
My wife has taken this one step further and is collecting all the books that were mentioned in the correspondence. Some of these books appear to have been reprinted due to this publication.
If you can find it there is a book called "The Library of Helen Hanff."
I wonder what became of all the other people described in the correspondents after the book.
Rating:
Summary: Read the book!
Review: Read the book before you see the movie. I think you'll agree that the forward written by Anne Bancroft is as touching a story as the book itself. Her passion for this book is clear in her performance, but how she came to play the part is an incredible love story. As I've always suspected, Mel is the MAN!
Rating:
Summary: YOU'VE GOT MAIL, 1940s STYLE.
Review: She leads a lonely life in NY. He dwells in a silent marriage in a London suburb. She, a self-taught book connoisseur, is intereseted in out-of-print books advertised by his company (Marks & Company Antiquarian Booksellers, 84 Charing Cross Road) in a US newspaper. So she sends for the books. And thus with a quaint common literary interest begins an epistolary addiction for 30 years that weaves a tapestry of mutual admiration and love. Sounds like a somewhat flimsy strand to base a movie on, but this is anything but a maudlin trans-atlantic love story. When he writes of the devastated post-war England, she sends him care packages of ham. He sends precious hardbound editions of Boswell, Chesterton and Cardinal Newman. After many years, he dies. She finally goes to London and visits the now-empty bookstore. A sweet pang of unrequited love. By turns witty and romantic, the letters themselves carry the movie! The times are beautifully captured with the immaculate cinematography (ps: 4 Oscars) and the implied contrast between NY and Britain is quite evident (as it was in the book). For bibliophiles like myself, the very idea of seeing a sauve Hopkins behind his dusty register is reason enough to swoon about this movie. But the film's stunning achivement is in the absolutely platonic love that the two protagonists evoke. Without ever needing to meet they create a microcosm of their own that infuses something special into their lives. A wonderful look at how simple love really has to be. A MUST for your collections.
Rating: 
Summary: One Great Love Story
Review: Thank you Columbia for finally releasing "84 Charing Cross Road." It would have been better if you had released it as the director envisioned it in wide screen. This is one of only a handful of films that I would buy no matter what screen proportions they are issued in (UNTIL A PROPER PROPORTIONED FILM IS RELEASED - as Helen Hanff would say). A marvelous love story via the postal services across the Atlantic. Read other reviews for the story line. A nice crisp, clean DVD. Widescreen would have gotten to two more stars from me. Come on Columbia be true to the director's intent. At least give us the option between widescreen or full frame.
Rating:
Summary: A movie for people who love books.
Review: The perfect mixture of a movie for people who love books and England. The writing is superb, such funny witty banter.
Rating:
Summary: A movie for people who love books.
Review: The perfect mixture of a movie for people who love books and England. The writing is superb, such funny witty banter.
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