items tagged with Gosford Park

In order of bearability ...

LOVE ACTUALLY

If you are to believe the (mostly) glowing responses to Love Actually, writer-director Richard Curtis has compressed material for a half-dozen romantic comedies into one, creating, in the words of one reviewer, “an epic romantic comedy.” But that’s not exactly accurate. For his first directorial outing, Curtis – the clever, funny screenwriter of Four Weddings & A Funeral and Notting Hill – has apparently decided to take every idea he’s ever had, every last one, and blend them into a frothy, holiday-themed confection; it’s less an epic romantic comedy than a romantic comedy shaped as an epic (which isn’t the same).

ICE AGE

Movies with charm have been in such short supply this year that the animated Ice Age feels like a shot of pure oxygen. Visually, the film is lacking the detail of a Shrek or a Monsters, Inc., and it’s a bit on the goody-goody side, but it’s a completely enjoyable, amiable good time at the cineplex, particularly if you’ve been looking for a movie to take the family to that’s less saccharine than Return to Neverland and infinitely smarter than the likes of Big Fat Liar and Snow Dogs.

GOSFORD PARK

In Robert Altman’s Gosford Park, set in 1932 England, a group of well-to-do guests is invited to a country estate for a shooting party, with their numerous servants in tow, and find their weekend disrupted by the murder of their host.