Rating: 
Summary: It's No "Brief Encounter"
Review: This British soap-opera weepie tries very hard to be an expanded BRIEF ENCOUNTER, that Noel Coward gem that I've reviewed and rated five stars. There is the same understatement, which I actually like very much. But the director had to throw in extremely boring graphic scenes of lovemaking that look like a pathetic attempt to get the British equivalent of an R rating. If all the tussling in bed were cut out, if the long lingering shots of the rain and the restaurants were reduced drastically, if the direction didn't seem so turbid, turgid, and sleepy, then maybe this would rate three or four stars. Instead there is the sophomoric re-telling of the story, where you have to watch the same painfully slow scenes a second time, and sometimes a third time. It's as if the flashbacks have gotten into a fight with the flashforwards and had it out on the playing fields of Eton. But the main problem I had with this movie--a problem I have with nearly every Graham Greene novel--is that what is set up as a suspense/detective story a la Agatha Christie turns out to be far, far less than that. You think that a real revelation, a startling change in point-of-view, etc., will happen, but all you get is a pedestrian revelation and a mild change in point-of-view. It's all set-up and no delivery. Bottom line: the fact that some people (who have nothing better to do) may well enjoy this movie is why I'm breaking my heart and giving it the colossal total of two stars instead of just one.
Rating: 
Summary: An Utter Disappointment
Review: I honestly can't believe I sat through this whole movie and for anyone who hasn't seen it- DON'T! This is nothing like The English Patient romance that I thought it would be. There is no chemistry at all between the two leads- Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore. In fact, there seems to be no emotion at all- certainly no love or jealousy as the dialogue would suggest. Instead, this is simply an excuse to put pornography on movie screens. The graphic sex in this movie is absolutely disgusting, not to mention the purposeless nudity. The entire movie is just really bad.
Rating:
Summary: Boring romance with a twist ending.
Review: Ralph Fiennes once again suffers in doomed passion - as he didin THE ENGLISH PATIENT. This time he's thrown over for a reason thatmight have been a shocker in the fifties but comes as an unconvincing spiritual conviction at the turn of the milennium. The Cinematography was Oscar nominated as was Julianne Moore's leading performance - neither deserved in my estimation. The film is rather leaden and tacky looking - one wonders why anyone thought it would be interesting to today's audiences. The one overlooked gem is Stephen Rea's supporting performance - he does a wonderful job making a bore actually appealing.
Rating: 
Summary: beautiful romantic tale
Review: One of the great joys in movie watching lies in stumbling across films that, by their very nature, should be nothing more than clichéd, hackneyed versions of stories we have seen a thousand times before yet, somehow, through the insightfulness of their creators, manage to illuminate those tales in ways that are wholly new and unexpected. Such is the case with Neil Jordan's "The End of the Affair," a film that in its bare boned outlining would promise to be nothing more than a conventional, three-handkerchief weepie centered around the hoary issue of romantic infidelity, but which emerges, instead, as a beautiful and moving meditation on the overwhelming force jealousy, love, commitment and passion can exert on our lives.Ralph Fiennes stars as Maurice Bendrix, a British writer living in 1940's London, who has an affair with Sarah Miles (Julianne Moore), the wife of Maurice's friend, Henry (Stephen Rea). Based on a Graham Greene novel, the film achieves far greater intellectual and emotional depth than this skeletal outline would indicate. Part of the success rests in the fact that both the original author and the adapter, writer/director Neil Jordan, have devised a multi-level scenario that utilizes a number of narrative techniques as the means of revealing crucial information to the audience regarding both the plot and the characters. For instance, the film travels fluidly back and forth in time, spanning the decade of the 1940's, from the initial meeting between Bendrix and Sarah in 1939, through the horrendous bombings of London during World War II to the "present" time of the post-war British world. This allows the authors to reveal the details of the affair slowly, enhanced by the even more striking technique of having the events viewed from the entirely different viewpoints of the two main characters involved. "Rashomon" - like, we first see the affair through the prism of Bendrix's limited perspective, only to discover, after he has confiscated Sarah's diary, that he (and consequently we) have been utterly mistaken as to the personal attributes and moral quality of Sarah all along. Thus, as an added irony, Bendrix discovers that he has been obsessing over a woman he "loves" but, in reality, knows little about. The authors also enhance the depth of the story through their examination of TWO men struggling with their overwhelming jealousy for the same woman and the complex interrelationships that are set up as a result. In fact, the chief distinction of this film is the way it manages to lay bare the souls of all three of these fascinating characters, making them complex, enigmatic and three-dimensional human beings with which, in their universality, we can all identify. Bendrix struggles with his raging romantic passions, his obsessive jealousy for the woman he can't possess and his lack of belief in God, the last of which faces its ultimate challenge at the end. Sarah struggles with the lack of passion she finds in the man she has married but cannot love as more than a friend, juxtaposed to the intense love she feels for this man she knows she can never fully have. In addition, she finds herself strangely faithful, if not to the two men in her life, at least to two crucial commitments (one to her wedding vows and one to God) yet unable to fully understand why. Henry struggles with his inadequacies as a lover and the strange possessiveness that nevertheless holds sway over him. Even the minor characters are fascinating. Particularly intriguing is the private investigator who becomes strangely enmeshed in the entire business as both Bendrix and Henry set him out to record Sarah's activities and whereabouts, a man full of compassion for the people whom he is, by the nature of his profession, supposed to view from a position of coldhearted objectivity. (One plot flaw does, however, show up here: why would this man, whose job it is to spy on unsuspecting people for his clients, employ a boy to help him who sports a very distinctive birthmark on one side of his face?). "The End of the Affair" would not be the noteworthy triumph it is without the stellar, subtly nuanced performances of its three main stars. In addition, as director, Jordan, especially in the second half, achieves a lyricism rare in modern filmmaking. Through a fluidly gliding camera and a mesmerizing musical score, Jordan lifts the film almost to the level of cinematic poetry; we sit transfixed by the emotional richness and romantic purity of the experience. "The End of the Affair" takes its place alongside "Brief Encounter" and "Two For the Road" as one of the very best studies of a romantic relationship ever put on film.
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful and intelligent love story
Review: If you're the kind of person whose idea of a good movie is an action film, and you don't care for movies where almost all the action happens inside the characters, this movie is not for you. But if what you look in the cinema its a film with a perfect cast, directed by an artist filmmaker, with a brillant screenplay, based on a novel of one of the best writers of the century: The End of the Affair is a sure bet. Based on a Graham Green's novel, The End Of the Affair was originally made in the 50s with Deborah Kerr as the unfaithfull wife and Van Johnson as the jealous lover. I confess that I saw the 90s version completelly virgin because I haven't read the book, or seen the earlier version, so with nothing to compare Neil Jordan's version, I absolutelly loved this film. Why? Let me count the ways: First the screenplay: beautiful dialogues, one liners and silences; all the characters are extraordinary and the plot is full of surprises; Second: The cast; They are perfect: Ralph Fiennes as the jealous lover is better than in The English Patient, maybe because Julianne Moore, as the enigmatic Sarah, makes believable all the passion felt for her by the men on the story(and the boy too); and I shouldn't forget the unpassionate husband(why did she married him?), the clumsy and sentimental private detective, and his marked boy, and God, who is the big antagonist of the film. Neil Jordan, always a great director, never have been better than with The End of the Affair, making a strange jewel: A beautiful and intelligent love story.
Rating: 
Summary: sad and touching
Review: I thought the movie was very good even thow some of it was a bit sappy but it was a touching hart felt movie. But this is a chick flick guys will hate it.
Rating:
Summary: I can't believe I sat through the whole thing.
Review: The movie starts off with a good concept. Ralph Fiennes in a WWII love story. This should have been a good movie. It was neither a love story nor a good movie. The plot was hard to follow. It was a movie about nothing. And if it's a movie about God then what's with the sex? The sex was one step below porno! Even though the actors were wonderful and the costumes and music beautful that can't save this poor example of a movie.
Rating:
Summary: Not as good as I expected
Review: With actors like Ralph Fiennes, Julianne Moore and Stephen Rea, I really expected a lot more here, and finished the movie a little depressed and not really engaged by the characters or the plot. Rea is Henry, who suspects his wife Sarah (Moore) may be having an affair. He tells Maurice (Fiennes) who actually HAD an affair with Sarah, although she abruptly ended it two years ago. Maurice, still obsessed with Sarah, hires a private investigator, and in the end finds out what really happened that day when he found Sarah, who doesn't believe in miracles, praying for one. Considering these are two people who love one another beyond passion, I found both Maurice and Sarah very detached. They spout off and declare inane things to each other, but I never got the feeling that these were two people who could really be together without all the dramatics. Sarah's choice, which she makes that fateful day, is tragic, but again, I didn't feel her loss aside from the fact that she says she loves Maurice and writes it all in her diary. I found her cold, as was Maurice. Henry is only allowed to have one expression throughout the movie. A much better movie on this very topic is, of course, the brilliant English Patient.
Rating:
Summary: Both Sexy and inspiring!
Review: The sexiest part which I like the best is where Ralph,scaractorslips on a Nylon Stocking on Julianne,s caractors leg. Also thebackground music isalso too inspiring!A must see!
Rating:
Summary: A slow romance to nowhere
Review: Despite having a fantastic cast and spot-on wardrobe, set decoration and cinematography, THE END OF THE AFFAIR flounders because it tries so hard to be a morality play, it forgets to give us interesting characters. Each of the three leads is locked by their respective world views into senses of propriety that largely prevent them from communicating. They all believe they are acting in the right way, according to their own system of beliefs, and so feel no need to explain their actions. Consequently, very little actually *happens* in the film. It is a film ultimately about reactions. And that's fine stuff for a novel, like the Graham Greene basis for the screenplay, but it hardly makes for a satisfying night at the movies. It's made particularly unsatisfying because we're never really introduced to the characters. We don't know why Julianne Moore's character married Stephen Rae's. And we need to know. There's certainly nothing in the present of their relationship which explains why they would have married. They seem to have nothing in common, and Stephen Rea acts so completely joyless throughout, it's hard to see why they'd even be good friends. We likewise don't see the root of Ralph Fiennes' atheism, nor indeed Julianne Moore's Christianity. To be sure, this is somewhat faithful to the novel, which has all events transpiring before the eyes of Fiennes' character, who doubles as the story's narrator. Given that, it makes sense that there would be a certain incompleteness of vision about the other characters. But the dearth of exposition in this film is far more than can be explained by narrative perspective. It's simply missing, and there's no good reason for that. Without that vital character background, we don't care about them--and we're certainly unimpressed by the moral their story aims to teach. In fact, the groundwork laid for that conclusion is so sparse, and the conclusion itself so controversial, that we're left feeling as if the filmmakers have committed a form of gratuitous blasphemy. (DVD NOTES: This product has an above average collection of extras, including two audio commentaries, a making-of featurette and an isolated music score. The featurette is rather forgettable, but the audio commentaries are significant and interesting-more engrossing than the film itself. IMPORTANT NOTE: There's a double-feature version of this product that has both the original film and this remake on it. It's more expensive, but worth it.)
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