Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Jason Shaw A magnificent enchanting and deeply touching tale of class and hypocrisy surrounding the young inhabitants of a history English public school. This is a highly moving expose of the supposed teenage school days of infamous spy Guy Burgess is rich, deep and luxurious. It is aesthetically pleasing with authentic although slightly mixed locations and the moody atmospherics employed heighten the enjoyment factor no end. The running undercurrents of class, breeding, expectation and tradition are the key features of this moving and entertaining story showing the underbelly of a traditionally British educational establishment.Rupert Everett stars as both an old Guy Bennett in a small apartment in snowy cold Moscow recounting his school days to a young female writer as well as the fresh faced young man he was in 1931. His performance bristles with the authenticity of class and ability. He is perfect as the too clever by half and defiantly too clever for his own good schoolboy Guy heading toward his last year of school, hoping to receive the adulation and power of school god. Such dizzy heights seem well within his grasp, after all, this is what his entire school days have been building up to, plus it's the level his ancestry achieved in generations gone by. His best friend is the broodingly attractive Marx reading communist loving Tommy Judd, played with skill and passion by the young Colin Firth, already demonstrating the skills that have taken him to the very top of the British acting profession. Guy and Tommy are friends, mainly because they are on the outside of the establishment, in that they simply don't follow the accepted norms of behaviour. Guy simply for his open homosexuality and Judd for his communist Marxist leanings and beliefs. Their friendship is one of surprising depths, based on mutual respect and affection, a respect that would later have far-reaching implications. The public school setting of the 1930's could really be anywhere in the United Kingdom and at any decade of the last one hundred and fifty years or so, such is the timeless charm of tradition, still played out in many schools up and down the country to this day. A master on his way somewhere hears a noise and stumbled upon Martineau, an endearingly cute blonde haired lad and a boy from another house engaged on a sexual act in one of the school changing rooms. It is a mutual act, which we are lead to believe is commonplace in the darker places of a school of this type and time and is usually ignored, a blind eye turned to it. However, there are no blind eyes when it comes to the masters and Martineau faces expulsion for the most scandalous of reasons, a fate he just cannot allow to endure. Thus, the poor troubled boy takes his own life in the school chapel.Master and pupils alike are aghast at this course of action and they must pull together to prevent a scandal striking at the school, for all their sakes, they pull ranks and tighten the positions and time to rule with a rod of steel. What follows is essentially a power-based annihilation of homosexuality that may or may not be prevalent in each house of the school. Bennett, who is rather more open than most about his preference, is subject to increased scrutiny and investigation. The unspoken message seems to be that no gay boy will be allowed as a school god; it is a simple as that. No commies and no queers..... Read more and find out where this film made it in the Top 50 Most Influential Gay Movies of All Time book, search on Amazon for Top 50 Most Influential Gay Movies of All Time, or visit - http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007FU7HPO

treeline1 As the story opens, a British traitor is talking about the beginnings of his rebellion at a posh public school in the 1930s. In a flashback, we follow classmates Guy and Tommy (Rupert Everett and Colin Firth); Guy is struggling with hiding his homosexuality and Tommy is a budding Marxist.This fictionalized story of infamous spy Guy Burgess' youth is a fascinating look at that very British institution, the public school with its young aristocrats luxuriating in their privileged lives. Though the movie moves very slowly and has little action, I still enjoyed the ambiance and the gorgeous scenery in and around Oxford. Everett and Firth are amazingly young and give excellent performances. It is interesting to note a youthful Earl Spencer playing one of the students (good job!) and some filming was even done at Althorp, the Spencer home.On the downside, the story fails to fully explain why Guy became a Russian spy and his "old man" hair and make-up are truly ridiculous, but I still recommend the movie as an enjoyable look at traditional school life.

Sebastian (sts-26) Another Country was one of those films that both captured the spirit of an era and helped define it - in the best possible sense. While one can easily lump all 80s pop music and fashion together as over-styled and kitschy, it is not possible to do so with the films of that decade, certainly not the British ones, not with Chariots of Fire, Educating Rita, My Beautiful Launderette and Another Country so vividly remembered. These were works of art, perfectly weaving style and substance together. Another Country presents a complex tale with - what was/is to some - unpalatable subject matter, and indecipherable detail (the life of the British upper class is, and always was, amusing, bizarre, implausible. Gilbert and Sullivan built careers on this fact). Yet, there is no sign of attempts to simplify, or strip out the seemingly unnecessarily intricate, or to moralize - either way - beyond the context of the story, the homosexuality depicted. The result is a film that is detailed, rich, compelling and (in a strange way, despite the historical facts upon which the story is based) apolitical.

xenofil Why did this one Guy Burgess, of the multitudes (according to the movie) who engaged in gay sex at prep school, end up betraying his country and class to the Stalinist soviets, and why should we care? You'll never learn from this movie. As best I can tell from it, Burgess cared nothing about the rights of the working classes, and had no particular issues with the extreme privileges of the oligarchy in England. Homosexuality certainly wouldn't have stood in his way if he had been more discreet. In fact he seems to have ratted out of a fit of pique over being outmanoeuvred in the competition for the most privileged rank.I saw no reason to admire the Burgess character. The villain Fowler was only guilty of petty stiff-neckedness, as far as I could see, Judd was perhaps admirable, but flat, and in fact the most interesting character was Barclay, the reasonable prefect.This was an interesting introduction to the intricate politics of elite British boys' schools. The boys were certainly good looking, but it was not a sexy movie, the drama fell pretty slack towards the end, and I'm just as ignorant of the interesting career of Guy Burgess as I was before.