Words and Pictures

Clive Owen is so extraordinary. He has such chops, this movie made me really like him. Cute story about art, but the actors really make it something SPECIAL. 4 stars instead of five, because I didn’t like the music. For that I took away a star.

I found this one so bad, it was actually painful to watch. Clive Owen was particularly dreadful, even his charm and good looks couldn’t save the film. Same for Juliette, who I adore! Bad writing, bad film, don’t waste your time.

Great movie if you are interested in art history and literature. The references to literature are fantastic. Nice love story.

In my opinion the actors perfectly suited their roles. And did a bang-up job on portraying the issues of the story. It was funny in the right places and heart-wrenching as needed. There was plenty of believable conflict. And we saw into the heart of the characters. The story structure was in place. Five stars in my book!

this is a terrible movie

Abstract art takes no skill. Sure it’s art, it’s just ugly bad art. We’re supposed to be interested because she’s passionate about making hack art? Anybody can crap on a canvas, but it takes soul to make real beauty, to actually say something. If movies were abstract there would be no plot, no character, and no visuals that made any sense. NO one would watch it. Why do people accept movies about these faux artists?

This film starts out well—teachers struggling with their own arts—painting and writing. They are drawn to each other. Everything is going along until the end-when the film falls into the kind of easy triteness that no film should fall. The whole competition scene at the end of the film is a mess. The art students have new art. The writing students have no new writing just spout classic stuff. This is odd and confusing as this was not what the contest was set out to be-and then the two main characters walk out into the day and say some very ridiculous dialogue. It was like all the work from all the actors was for not. And then the film does have other issues in that it deals with way too many issues when it should have just focused on what it means to struggle with creation.

How wonderful to have an intellectual movie.

Romantic and intelligent movie. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

First, I’d like to say I love a good rom/com. But in order for it to be good, the writer has to connect the dots believably to construct (in order) the plot, the characters and then their actions in creating the romance. This script skipped all sorts of the things required on all accounts and seldom resembled any sort of believable psychology and motivations on the characters’ parts. The premises presented were mostly hanging by the thinnest of threads and you had to take the writer’s word for far too much that didn’t resemble circumstances and consequences in the real world, in the least! As a 30 year veteran casting director, I regularly have to read scripts and give notes on them. Even more so, I’ve had great difficultly on occasions getting good, name actors to commit to far better scripts than this one. As such, I’m really astounded that Clive Owen and Juliet Binoche and their agents didn’t see the tremendous holes in what should have just been a bad TV movie on Lifetime and skipped this whole mess. Anyway, I’m really not trying to sound elitist here. But I’ll never get those two hours back and I wrote this so that you don’t find yourself in the same position….