Dinner with Friends

Great Writing, Good Cast, Great Film
I loved the original play that the film was based on. I found it to be a wonderfully intelligent exploration of monogamy and marriage that put other like plays and films to shame. The movie does the play justice (although the play is still better). Be warned, this is a VERY "talky" piece. Not necessarily much plot action. It is mainly people sitting around talking about what is important to them. I LOVE THAT. If its not your bag -- you were warned.

Casting is just short of great. I can't remember her name, but the blonde is very good, as is Greg Kinnear as the couple who split up. Nice work all around. ... Andie MacDowell ... takes what is a very interesting character and does her usual walk around and whine while looking pretty routine. Awful awful awful. However, this is surprisingly made up for by one of the gutsiest casting choices I've seen in awhile with Dennis Quaid. Anyone who thinks Quaid can't act should see this film. This character is VERY unlike anything he's done...

Interesting
Synopsis: A happily married couple with two sons and great jobs learn some shocking news, that their fellow best friends and spouses, are separating. What ensues is a look at the strength of their marriage, in comparison to the one that is disintegrating before everyone's eyes.

Review: A friend and I had a conversation about the state of Hollywood movies today. That for every Swordfish and The Grinch remake (an obnoxious film at that), a small film like Sexy Beast or another will go virtually unnoticed by the likes of big Hollywood business. In today's profit driven society, smart films are finding their home on cable. In "Dinner With Friends", this drama is riveting, not for any kind of suspense, but for a study of what people really are, and what they do in life. Adapted from a stage play, the words seem real right down to the very last word. As the film's writer and director bring the film's situations to your own judgment, as to who these people are and what they can...

Good dialogue movie with good dialogue!
As an accidental rule, I love movies with 6 characters or less; the ones stripped down so that each characters personality can come through in a way that can not be enhanced by effects, special settings or other frills.

I've watched this movie twice now and I can already say that I've picked up on several of the many, I'm sure, nuances here. Four characters, two mairrages, one divorce and each is remarkably done. I especially appreciate that none of the characters (even Kinnear's adulterous character, which he seems typecast for now) is presented as flawed, spirited and in a way, noble. Gabe (Dennis Quaid) is heartbreaking as he has taken back-seat in a mairrage to a strong woman (McDowell) who, while wanting, nay demanding, her husband talk to her more, always manages to tell him how stupid the things he says are. Also the contrast between the pairs is phenomenal. Tom is the confident divorcee, Gabe is the soft-spoken married one. Beth is the free-thinking, and maybee too...

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The Life and Death of Peter Sellers

and the winner is: Geoffrey Rush
Geoffrey Rush will no doubt win every award available to him in this bravura performance for this BBC/HBO production. Based on the rather tabloid-sleaze biography by Roger Lewis, it presents a portrait of a demented, self-obsessed man who hurts everyone he comes in contact with. Taking into consideration the final facts stated in the film (he left his children $ 2,000.00 apiece) there is probably more truth than one would care to believe in this account of Peter Sellers, which starts with his appearances on The Goon Show, shows his twisted relationship with his mother, the women he abused in various ways, his difficult behavior on the movie sets, and ends during the time of "Being There", the award-winning 1979 film about a gardener who becomes a politician.

Geoffrey Rush is phenomenal as Sellers; and I especially like the scenes when he becomes his mother, as well as Blake Edwards. Rush is made to look somewhat like Sellers, but it is the body language and the verbal...

An engrossing portrait of an unforgettable comic icon
"The Life and Death of Peter Sellers," directed by Stephen Hopkins, looks at the remarkable life of the actor who triumphed in such films as "Dr. Strangelove" and "Being There." The film covers Seller's early days in British radio, his troubled personal life, his marriages, his relationship with his parents, his box office successes, his craftsmanship as a performer, and his relationship with director Blake Edwards. "Life and Death" opens up with a colorfully anarchic animated sequence (done to a swingin' Tom Jones song) and never loses its energy.

It takes a brilliant chameleon to play a brilliant chameleon, and Geoffrey Rush is amazing in the title role. He creates a remarkable portrait as he not only portrays Sellers at different stages of his life, but also recreates some of Sellers' most famous screen roles. Rush is ably supported by a stellar cast that includes Charlize Theron and Emily Watson. In one of the film's most striking motifs, Rush temporarily takes...

The complex, crazy world of Peter Sellers
Who was Peter Sellers? According to Stephen Hopkins film he was anybody his director and public wanted him to be; a little boy trapped in a man's suit who could adopt any persona and "be" that person. Geoffrey Rush gives a brilliant performance as Sellers. Unlike most movies, we see the most important moments in Sellers' life from his perspective; when a traumatic event happens (whether it be his wife saying she's leaving him, his mother dying, etc.) we "see" Sellers become that character and injecting what that moment meant to him. Ultimately, Sellers comes across as a self centered child who could and would become anyone to please those around him.

Hopkins complex but riveting film begins while Sellers is a member of the cast for The Goon Show on radio. Trying to break through to films, Sellers realizes the only way he can land a role that he wants as an elderly, daft gentlement is to show up already in character. Nobody knows who he is and he's immediately offered the...

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