Very Cool!!!

Absolutely Brilliant!

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

The long, arduous journey of a teenage girl in Los Angeles, left without a legal guardian after her single mom is convicted of killing her boyfriend and is sent to prison for 35 years. Intense, powerful adaptation of Janet Fitch's 1999 bestseller, with a superb central performance by Alison Lohman as Astrid, daughter of the convicted artist, her mother, who claims to have raised her child as a strong, willful, independent girl--or is that just how the mother sees herself? Lohman's fragile character amusingly assimilates her own personality to each new foster family she goes to stay with--three in three years--hardening her heart along the way, but expanding her awareness of the secret early turbulence she endured at the hands of her mother, the poisonous white oleander. Mary Agnes Donoghue's screenplay, while patchy in spots (particularly in regards to mother Michelle Pfeiffer's legal affairs), carries us right along on Astrid's rocky path to becoming an adult, while director Peter Kosminsky handles all the changes in her young life with incredible sensitivity and deeply-felt emotion. Performances from the large cast, particularly by the women, are excellent. ***1/2 from ****

White Oleander (2002): Dir: Peter Kosminsky / Cast: Michelle Pfeiffer, Alison Lohman, Renee Zellweger, Robin Wright, Billy Connolly: Dreadful sack of trash hyped by its wasted casting. A teenager goes from foster home to foster home after her mother was convicted of murdering her cheating boyfriend. Ending leaves her future uncertain while viewers are manipulated with a phony redemption theme that comes off as contrived. Setup gives little background and it is followed by predictable and depressing developments. Director Peter Kosminsky seems unfocused in his presentation of these warped relationships. Alison Lohman does her best with a role that is beneath her. Michelle Pfeiffer is unsympathetic in what is easily one of her worst roles. Renee Zellweger is wasted as a failed actress who commits suicide. Or maybe she was upset when realizing that she went from Bridget Jones's Diary to this sh*t. Robin Wright overacts as a drunken stripper who claims to be a Christian. Or perhaps the bottle is her reaction to the film in general. Billy Connolly also wastes his talent in this miserable depressing charade. One could say that this showcase regards the damaging affect of neglect and abuse although nothing is neglected more than the miserable screenplay. This film is all over the place and should only be in one place; a deep dark hole. Score: 1 / 10

A good movie and worth watching. The acting is outstanding. Michelle Pfeiffer does a great job portraying Ingrid Magnussen, a brilliant woman fiercely fixated on maintaining her independence and nurturing her private demons, even to the point of almost destroying her daughter, Astrid. I say "almost." To reveal what is meant by that key term would be to give away the ending. I strongly recommend the reader to see this remarkable movie. Intertwined within the film is the issue of good and evil. Astrid is played with complete conviction by Alison Lohman. Lohman, who in reality was twenty-two during the making of the movie, plays a teenager who at the beginning with her mother in LA is still basically a child. She transforms before our eyes into a beautiful young woman seeking to discover who she is. Placed in several foster homes, she must find her own way and free herself from her powerful and manipulative mother. I found their relationship crushing, but within the context, completely believable. The supporting cast is also first-rate. I rate this movie an 7 out of 10.My only criticism is the movie leaves too much to suggestion, but perhaps this was to preserve its PG-13 rating. Because it does leave too much to suggestion, several relationships are not explored satisfactorily. For example, it would have been interesting to see how Alison behaved when she loses her virginity with Ray, her first foster mother's boyfriend, and her emotions centering around it. With the recent exception of Unfaithful, American films fail to explore adequately human sexuality. Foreign films are way ahead of the American film industry in this regard, and it's really too bad. Y Tu Mamá También, Lucia y el Sexo, and Intimacy quickly come to mind. Maybe there's a lesson to be learned here.I also have a comment. Given the premise of the movie, that Ingrid Magnussen creates a poisonous concoction from Oleander leaves, stalks, and flowers by steeping them in milk, I have to question whether this would be a very effective method to kill someone. Although it is certainly true that Oleander is a rather potent poison, reading up on it, it would appear that the victim would first suffer severe abdominal cramping and nausea, and possibly vomiting. If he did vomit, he might eject enough of the material so that it wouldn't have killed him. If he didn't vomit, one might imagine him going to an ER and having his stomach pumped out. Perhaps Ingrid's boyfriend was so macho that he never would do such a thing. It just seems odd though.7/10

I'm not so attracted to the drama genre but this movie was actually very good. It tells the story of a woman with one daughter who goes to jails due to murdering her boyfriend; now she goes from foster to foster experiencing both positive and negative things. I just saw this movie and discovered what a masterpiece this is; it was entertaining at first but afterwards got depressing which caused me sadness. Then again I felt weirdly sadly happy at the end and didn't know really why. This isn't a light-hearting movie but yet it's good and just succeeds at almost every level. I found the acting to be good and the writing to be well down and as will as the direction and effects and all that stuff, but I wished their wasn't so much sadness in the movie and mostly I found sadness coming from that background music. Anyway, for all those who hadn't seen the film, I encourage you to see this one and I can assure you won't regreet but please don't be a negative viewer, and what I mean about that, the events of this movie runs somewhat slow; their's not that much of action but even though the movie itself is good; I'm usually not fond of movies with slow events but this movie seriously attracted me cause it opened my heart to make me realise how excellent it is. I can't express how I'm in love with this movie I just feel so passionate about it so I would like to thank the whole cast and crew and especially the writer not forgetting the author of the novel which without it, this movie never would've existed.