Redwarmin This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Glimmerubro It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

ferdinand1932 The source book was a satire on a truly dreadful author of the late 19th century, a sort of Barbara Cartland, but only more schlocky. If the intent was to have fun on this idea it was missed and badly; if it was taken at face value, it is a sign of incipient idiocy.It plays the whole thing very straight and it seems as if no one saw that this is utter complete trash. Douglas Sirk used to take rubbish - real mediocre uneducated garbage - and make a thing with it as Fassbinder extolled him for doing. It looks as if Ozon has done a Fassbinder and taken real nonsense, which has become a joke cliché of romantic fiction and not seen that it had always been a joke; a wry in-joke on the reader, and on the original writer.Why anyone ever signed up to do this is curious - apart form the money. Why it was financed is even more puzzling. No doubt people will watch this in 10 and 50 years and see something else altogether but none of it will do anything for the creative team behind this.The classic, "Cold Comfort Farm" was a parody of the romantic rural fiction popular in the early 20th century and this work is a roman a clef of the same type of demotic garbage that is consumed in bulk.Under no circumstances go anywhere near this and wipe all playback technologies that may have accessed it.

p-stepien A girl has a right to dream. At the beginning of the XX century not much else is guaranteed to a young and frail schoolchild. The wild and uncouth Angel (played by Romola Garai) however has a different outlook, as her dreams are not fantasies, but a prediction of the future. Immensely talented as a writer, despite shallow contempt to reading books, Angel is all-in-all a literary hack with an undeniable way with words and romance. At an early age she is discovered by a publisher Théo (Sam Neill), who becomes so fascinated with her writings, that he agrees to release her first book to critical and commercial acclaim. Angel uses the newly found fame and wealth to purchase her dream house Paradise, marry the man of her desires and become a larger than life as if straight from her novels...Francois Ozon tackles the whole movie with an unmistakable signature delving into the epoque with wit and charm encapsulated by the character of Angel. Multilayered and hard to crack she is presented as an alternative type of rebel without a cause, absolutely engulfed by her own brilliance, that she is unable to break out of her shell to take a gulp of reality. Once she molds her dream-life she seems to believe that this is the end of the story, her life has reached perfection and no further chapters need be written. However the barrier she builds around herself becomes a prison from where she struggles to see that her perfect life is more a projection of her expectations into reality than reality itself.All in all an interesting concept and to a point well contrived. At some stages the movie uses an absolutely pathetic excuse for backgrounds, i.e. while riding in a carriage across London we she varying landmarks of the city rudely apparent to be fake, to highlight the audacity of Angel's dream-life, as if taken from a romance novel. Nonetheless the movie falters in creating a mood to coincide with the premise of the story. Throughout the movie Angel is a hysterically overplayed and pretentious character, which draws multiple laughs in the most awkward situations, i.e. whilst reading her husband's eulogy or when drawing her last breath before death. This odes of course give the movie a certain whiff of freshness, as Angel's eccentrics really get you interested in her character (however unlikeable she may be). Nonetheless this was taken to such an extreme that at times I was unsure whether "Angel" is essentially a pastiche of costume dramas, with a by the numbers script full with often hilarious scenes, as if making fun of the whole genre and its dramatics.All in all an enjoyable movie, but the awkwardness of the permeating funniness of Angel and her undergoing together with the lack of clarity as to the intentions of the director make the eventual reaction to it a meandering mess of drama, comedy and rushed narrative.

i-burgess1 Now I must admit I've not read the book, but I cannot believe that it can be this bad. The dialogue is awful. At the beginning of the film the lead (totally out of her depth) speaks like a 21st century adolescent. What child in Victorian times would have spoken to her mother like she did, stomped off, slammed her bedroom door and not come down to dinner? I was amazed that she didn't switch on her I-Pod. A totally unsympathetic character - gauche is probably a compliment. And the literature she was supposed to be producing? Gothic rubbish (see Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey for a put down of this tripe)? The outcome of the relationship with her husband was totally predictable - oh, how ironic at the end! What a waste of Sam Neill and one of my favourite actresses, Charlotte Rampling. Tyntesfield looked good though - mind you, in these days of 'global warming' we don't get snow in Wraxall anymore.

DICK STEEL Based on the novel by Elizabeth Taylor, this Francois Ozon directed movie was the closing film of the Berlin Film Festival last year, and while it played out like a biography of a fictional character, you can't help but to imagine how close it seemed to the flamboyance of the other Liz Taylor being infused into the titular character.Movies based on biographies, such as Miss Potter with Rene Zellweger and La Vie En Rose with Marion Cotillard, seem to follow a formula of rags to riches, and basically living the dream that no one had imagined was possible. Naturally, being blessed with a talent and a gift helps too, and with Angel Deverell (Romola Garai), hers was a steely resolve of wanting to break out of her poverty cycle through her writing, an aspiring novelist with limited life experience, relying solely on her vivid imagination to paint literary marvels with her firm grasp of language, constructing sentences like a wordsmith many times her age.What made her character compelling to watch and follow, is her living in a fantasy world she constructs for herself, which suits her perfectly as it provides for and fuels her imagination with romantic stories to enchant and endear herself to her readers. It shields her from her insecurities, but in doing so, she slowly isolates herself into her view of Paradise, and becomes a chronic liar, which I felt she's constantly aware of, but is ashamed to admit any stain in the perfect world.Delivered in two distinct acts, things start to change when she meets the Howe-Nevisons. Nora (Lucy Russell), probably her #1 fan who simply worships the ground she treads on, and offers to be her personal assistant, and her brother Esme (Michael Fassbender from 300 who said they'll fight in the shade!), with whom Angel falls head over heels for. And this stifling relationship takes a toil on all parties involved, with shades of possible lesbianism played down in the film (though I'm unsure what became of it in the novel). While Angel had her break from Theo (Sam Neill) the publisher who believed in her, Esme the aspiring painter has none, besides Angel who would probably say Yes to anything he says. And his portrait of her probably was the highlight for me in the movie. If a portrait painter needs to, and can peer directly into your innermost soul and bring whatever qualities he sees in you onto the canvas, then Esme would have succeeded with his god-ugly picture of Angel, reinforces meaning of being beautiful on the outside. but ugly on the inside.The special effects were quite badly done, and perhaps deliberately too, as it's made up of very obviously superimposed shots of backgrounds that no longer exist because of modernization. Other than that, the rest of the production values are high, and the costumes too which Angel decked herself in, are quite a sight to behold, especially when there's a call for a change in colours to reflect the mood of the story as it wore on.But what made this movie very palatable, is how Romola Garai carried the role through the story. You can just about believe the very naiveness and devil may care attitude that her Angel brings, however always seemingly able to hide and bury her true feelings deep within herself, and being a master manipulator also helped loads. Like how Charlotte Rampling's character of the publisher's wife reflected, you just can't help but to pity Angel, despite her pomp, flamboyance and hypocrisy.So if you're interesting in a movie that provides avenue for an intriguing study of a person putting on a very fake mask, then Angel, despite its title, will be the movie for you to examine human traits which are anything but angelic.