C- |
** |
+1-2|
Adults
Yet this
Brideshead Revisited ultimately subverts Waugh’s subtlest and most subversive achievement: It offers all the foibles and puzzlement of the Flytes’ religious world, while all but obliterating the threads of grace running through their lives.
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A- |
***½ |
+2|
Kids & Up*
This is no slight to the BBC miniseries; its glory is precisely its wonderfully literary quality. By contrast, the 2005 film is wonderfully non-literary. The BBC miniseries is peopled with living, breathing characters; the 2005 film is peopled with living breathing human beings. This is not to diminish the definitive achievement of the BBC miniseries, but to appreciate the freshness of a retelling that does something new.
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B- |
**½ |
+0|
Teens & Up
Now Nair’s compatriot Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham) takes a
much more thoroughgoing approach to Pride and Prejudice,
going so far as to tweak the title to telegraph that this is Jane
Austen gone Bollywood with a capital B — i.e., Bride and
Prejudice.
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C+ |
**½ |
+0|
Teens & Up
Mira Nair’s
Vanity Fair is many things, but a howl to a congregation of fools isn’t one of them.
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A- |
***½ |
+1|
Kids & Up
If love makes the world go round, the dizzily whirling globe in the opening title credits of Douglas McGrath’s
Emma is a clear statement of intent regarding the film’s theme. And when we see the globe is a painted model spinning on a thread in the hand of Emma (delightfully effervescent Gwyneth Paltrow), it’s clear how Emma sees herself — pulling the strings, orchestrating the happy convergences that make the world go round.
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