Perfect cast and a good story

best movie i've ever seen.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

An existential parable of a wistful journey to ones heady youth with the excitement and bitterness of the time trapped in the mind. A former romance is re-evaluated by the rose coloured filter of time but confronted by the present. Time has moved on but the past has trapped the author. This is wonderfully written and played. Apparently not one word was added or removed from the book/poem of the same name. The words and style encapsulated an era, a culture and a place. From my perspective it was authentic but for a North American audience the language may not travel as well.To enjoy, ignore the characters they are not important, the moment you root for one character over the other the poem will fail (they are called He and She). What is important is the story of the words they are saying to each other. For me I strongly identified with the nostalgic myopia. However I wonder how a younger audience would embrace it? My only criticism was that the colour grading was a little cute.I was captivated by it.

Alan Rickman plays a jaded publisher meeting a past flame (Emma Thompson) at an old haunt, now impersonally renovated. The publisher has a one-track mind and views her every move as erotic.This is a dramatised narrative poem. I'm sceptical about modern poetry but this one's quite good. It may be familiar ground but a lot of the phrases are actually quite good: consciously poetic but a concise description. Fans of Alan Rickman might find it hard to control himself as his character is aroused by everything: a squeezed hand, a glass of wine meeting his lips, a comely waitress, even a pepper shaker. The story is told through his perspective, much of it as voice-over. The switch between voice-over and dialogue really works, creating tension and drama in what is a fairly undramatic scene. It's like a short play.Both Rickman and Thompson speak the blank verse (with the occasional rhyme) very naturally. Their characters are intellectual people and the talk comes naturally to them, particularly Rickman's emotionally/creatively/sexually frustrated character.It's only 50 minutes so it's worth a watch. It would have been nice if it were part of a series of poems.

This would have been unwatchable (and even unlistenable) had it not been for Rickman and Thompson. The writing is tedious, clichéd, and overwrought and every "insight" banal. There is even a slight mystery whose solution you can see from space. Why anyone would have decided to film this ridiculous poem is beyond me; I suppose the poet had some good connections. As it is, Rickman is too perfect for the role. His looks and his voice too easily lend themselves to the pathetic and the desperate. He gets to both too quickly, partly because the language and narrative take him there and partly because the language, bad as it is, made me feel worse for him, made me pity him as an actor, thus creating another uncomfortable distraction. All that pity so soon and in one layer too many made me lose patience with the whole production. I kept hoping for something more, thinking that Rickman and Thompson would never have been involved with something this bad unless it offered something real and true. Instead, I think their participation has to do with the work ethic of the English actor: you must never take a break, you must always be acting. And if you can do a well-produced project with another excellent actor, then why not do it? Maybe other friends or respected colleagues were on board. I can't think of any other reasons why Thompson and Rickman would have done this. Sigh.

This is the worst thing I've seen since My Dinner with Andre over thirty years ago. It's worse than Hook, worse than Australia, worse than the worst action movie I used to take my teenage son to see to humor him.Is he supposed to be unlikable, or merely a bore?What could she have possibly ever seen in him?Who cares about his "poetry"?The lines are unbearable, not to mention childishly vulgar, when not being unintentionally laughable. Is this what "art" has become, ridiculously pretentious, lacking in content, causing one to itch with utter boredom?