“I grew up, and I lost my way. And I blamed you for my failures.”
A melancholic masterpiece.
There’s some goofy second-lead comedy and fleeting noughties nastiness in there, sure, but the film’s treatment of lost love, lost dreams, lost men is profoundly affecting – and never more so than when Efron says his piece in the divorce court, improvising an honest, last-ditch letter to the woman he both saved and failed. His delivery; Mann’s expression; Steers’ use of subjective…
A truly lovely rom-com with two unusually mature leads. Monty Woolley (55) is a legendary British painter who fakes his own death so he can live in peace, and falls hopelessly in love with plain-spoken Gracie Fields (45). But their Putney idyll is threatened by his secret, especially when his work becomes the subject of a court case.
Nunnally Johnson’s script is warm and appealing rather than terribly funny (do you think a debate in court about two neck moles…
You can take your Juno, your Scott Pilgrim, even your Heathers, and chuck them in a skip, because Ghost World just does it all so much better. Well, all of it that's worth doing. I'm beginning to think this melancholy, bitingly hilarious crystallisation of teen ennui might be the only film I'll ever really need.
Wine is probably the most boring subject on Earth, so how come Payne’s film about a lonely, bitter best man (Paul Giamatti) taking the soon-to-be-groom (Thomas Haden Church) on a week-long tour of vineyards is so bloody good? Perhaps because of Giamatti’s astonishing characterisation, which imbues an arrogant, self-destructive, self-hating pseud with a completely disarming humanity. Or perhaps because it’s not really about wine at all, but love and friendship and the choices that people make that end up deciding…
