Just yesterday I was lamenting to myself that I wasn’t even at the 50%* mark on Gemma Arterton's filmography. Then I thought, “No, that’s good. It means she’s working, so there could be good stuff in the future.” Tonight I landed on this while channel surfing! Please excuse my enthusiasm at cable tv, I've been living a Netflix existence, which while much, much better for content, lacks that chanced upon feeling when watching movies.
I’ve never read the book, it even took me a long minute to realize why the title was familiar. Book adaptations these days, they’re underwhelming. This one is plagued by some bad accents and teenage acting. What it looks and feels like is a TV movie.…

So, what, are we finally going to learn about the "First Tango in Halifax"? This may be how Derek Jacobi puts an unfortunate end to "Last Tango in Halifax", because the role that he took to go against type has now become one of his types. Well, he's not such a lovable old loner here, being a regretful coot who is still trying to find solace in thoughts of his estranged great love... as well as their son. I guess this breaks from "Halifax" with (Series 3 spoiler!) Jacobi's knowing about his illegitimate son(You're good), though it seems like he would have a much easier time getting to know the boy through Facebook than a real book. The quest starts…

Based on the popular 2005 novel of the same name by Nicole Krauss (which I have read but not so recently that I can meaningfully compare it to this adaptation), this is a try-hard epic drama that sometimes comes so close to greatness it's painful how bad it is when it isn't working. Derek Jacobi is a hoot as a crotchety old man, but the other lead Sophie Nélisse is awful. The rest of the cast is equally uneven: Gemma Arterton is game but miscast, Elliott Gould is a delight, etc. And so it is for the whole movie: some wonderful imagery, a magnificent (or manipulative) score from Amar, some thematic depth, some moments of truth and beauty, but also…

Oh i wanted to love this movie. I really wanted to. I really admire some of Mihailleanou's movies so my expectations were high from the beginning. Well, the movie didn't live up to it.
The setup was sloppy, cheaply produced and with a mediocre acting quality that deprives us of the identification with the protagonist, midparts seem downright unfinished in regards to directing, making me suspect whether production might have been rushed or producers were unfittingly invested in certain parts of the editing process. The teenage acting resembles the usual american garbage- which is rather unheard of with Mihailleanous previous work. The overall ark of storytelling in this movie does not seem as wholesome as I've come to expect- in…

Just yesterday I was lamenting to myself that I wasn’t even at the 50%* mark on Gemma Arterton's filmography. Then I thought, “No, that’s good. It means she’s working, so there could be good stuff in the future.” Tonight I landed on this while channel surfing! Please excuse my enthusiasm at cable tv, I've been living a Netflix existence, which while much, much better for content, lacks that chanced upon feeling when watching movies.
I’ve never read the book, it even took me a long minute to realize why the title was familiar. Book adaptations these days, they’re underwhelming. This one is plagued by some bad accents and teenage acting. What it looks and feels like is a TV movie.…

"Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering." So begins the film adaptation of Nicole Krauss' acclaimed 2005 novel, The History of Love.

The opening words hint at a fairytale romance between Leo Gurski (Mark Rendall) and Alma Mereminski (Gemma Arterton) and, whilst their tragic love story underpins the overall narrative, it's mostly shunted aside for two less interesting parallel storylines, that of the older Leo (Derek Jacobi), now a retired locksmith living in New York City's Chinatown, and Alma (Sophie Nélisse), a teenager named after a character known as the "most loved woman in the world" in her parents' favourite novel,…

So, what, are we finally going to learn about the "First Tango in Halifax"? This may be how Derek Jacobi puts an unfortunate end to "Last Tango in Halifax", because the role that he took to go against type has now become one of his types. Well, he's not such a lovable old loner here, being a regretful coot who is still trying to find solace in thoughts of his estranged great love... as well as their son. I guess this breaks from "Halifax" with (Series 3 spoiler!) Jacobi's knowing about his illegitimate son(You're good), though it seems like he would have a much easier time getting to know the boy through Facebook than a real book. The quest starts…