FemaleFirst.co.uk: DVD: Lovely And Amazing [DVD] [2002]

Lovely And Amazing [DVD] [2002]
enlarge	Director: Nicole Holofcener Actors: Catherine Keener, Brenda Blethyn, Troy Ruptash, Emily Mortimer, Raven Goodwin Studio: Metrodome Distribution Category: DVD List Price: ~~£7.99~~ Buy New: £1.67 as of 25/11/2009 17:32 GMT details You Save: £6.32 (79%) New (8) Used (4) from £1.65 Seller: offshoredirect Rating: 6 reviews Sales Rank: 47525 Format: Anamorphic, PAL Language: English (Original Language) Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over Region: 2 Discs: 1 Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Number Of Discs: 1 Running Time: 87 Minutes Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2 Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6 EAN: 5055002551437 ASIN: B0001E5T06 Theatrical Release Date: August 2, 2002 Release Date: April 5, 2004 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days


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Customer Reviews: Showing reviews 1-5 of 6 1 2 Next » "Like what do you mean?" July 7, 2003 3 out of 10 found this review helpful I watched this movie 3 times already(at the cinema) and now I'm buying the DVD as well as the soundtrack...call me obsessed...brTo me is a personal thing. This is all about why movies are a great invention. They give pieces of someons else's life. brUnfortunately it's rare to watch something so honest(no profit for the fat pigs)and so "simple" nowadays... Catherine Keener and Raven Goodwin are so good... Men might avoid this film, but it is about people, not women January 30, 2003 A. Whyte (Scotland) 27 out of 32 found this review helpful The characters in "Lovely Amazing" are not terribly likeable to begin with. They just seem unfairly rude and cynical and they are certainly not perfect. I found myself worrying I would have to spend an hour and a half with these people. pLuckily, though, the characters grow on you. They grow on you because we understand why they are cynical, and why they are often rude. They follow a path, during the movie, the never feels unrealistic. When the characters make decisions we feel not that the screenplay is telling them what do to, but that the characters are choosing what to do - the writer never lets his ego stop their evolution. Soon into the movie I began to sympathise with the characters and not long after I found myself liking them, too. pThe main characters in "Lovely Amazing" are all women - but this is not a 'chick-flick', a term I would consider either sexist or a pathetic way to excuse bad writing. Anyone can sympathise with these characters, regardless of the technicalities. There is the mother, Jane Marks (Brenda Blethyn), her two daughters Michelle (Catherine Keener) and Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer) as well as her adopted African American daughter, Annie (Raven Goodwin), considerably younger than her sisters. pOther characters diffuse in and out of their lives. Michelle is married to a man who seems to have lost all interest in her. She has no job, but passes the time by making little chairs out of twigs, and attempting to sell them to uninterested shops. When her husband tells her to get a job, she does - an eight-dollar-an-hour job at a one-hour photo stand. Her 'boss' is Jordan (Jake Gyllenhaal), a teenage boy with a crush on her. They have an affair, which goes disastrously wrong. pElizabeth is an unmarried actress (so to speak), but is in a relationship with a man. Unfortunately, she is far more interested in dogs than being married. Or being an actress. Or having a boyfriend. Jane is divorced (we never see her ex-husband) and spends most of the film in hospital, having cosmetic surgery on her gut that keeps having complications. She has a crazy dream that the doctor taking care of her will fall in love with her after the surgery (when she thinks he is flirting with her, she telephones her daughter to share the news). pAnnie, still a preteen, is having difficulty coming to terms with her skin colour. She is arrogant and rebellious, but not un-likeable. She is also becoming more grown up - perhaps at too early an age - she is overweight, but tries to pretend she is attempting to lose weight: she is found in McDonald's with vast amounts of food before her and says she was not planning to eat it all, she "just couldn't decide what to choose". pIf I have made this movie sound dull, it is because I have not mentioned its sense of humour. We laugh at movies when there is a victim of the comedy - someone we, the audience, can sympathise with. All of the characters in "Lovely Amazing" are realistic and therefore when they are hurt we feel sympathy and we laugh. And I'm not just talking about the main trio of characters. pConsider, again, the relationship that forms between Michelle and Jordan. It's not even a relationship, really: more of a joke. Michelle is only doing it because she is bored with her husband and wants to try something new and exciting. Jordan, young and naïve, mistakes her lust for love. Their relationship climaxes with Michelle being arrested for statutory rape, and Jake, not trying to make excuses, claiming that they are in love and "she didn't even rape me!" In most comedies an older woman with a younger boy is comic and not taken seriously, but if you flip the genders around it is always taken very seriously - here is a movie that is not nearly as sexist. pThere are many other memorable scenes, such as the one where Annie, too perceptive for her own good, points out all of the things wrongs with her too older sisters, and is surprisingly accurate in her observations. And another where Elizabeth stands nude in front of a movie star she dates, and asks him to give a full analysis of her body, including all the good and bad points. And... but I don't want to spoil it for you. See "Lovely Amazing" if you're tired of the 'chick-flick' cliché, or if you just want to see into the lifestyles of other people, which is basically why we go to the cinema in the first place, isn't it? "Lovely and Amazing" shows an interesting view into a family of women June 29, 2007 Jenny J.J.I. (That Lives in Northern Nevada) 1 out of 2 found this review helpful This is the second film that writer/director Nicole Holofcener has made, and I think that she has succeeded very well in making a highly original film with very interesting characters. Some people feel that the dialog is very good, although on occasion it felt a bit off to me. The story doesn't really go much of anywhere, but that's not really the point of a film like this. The acting in this movie was uniformly very good among the women. br / br /"Lovely and Amazing" documents several days in the life of a mother and her three daughters. The mother, Jane (Brenda Blethyn), is in the midst of a mid-life crisis and decides to service herself through a liposuction treatment. As she is going through with the procedure, she asks her daughter Michelle (Catherine Keener) to take care of her younger, adopted sister Annie (Raven Goodwin). Michelle is a house-wife/artist who becomes so enthralled in her work of home-made miniature chairs that she asks ridiculous prices for them before storming out of stores at their disapproval. The third sister, Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer), is rescuing homeless dogs in between visits to her agent. Having just completed her roll in a Hollywood film, Elizabeth does her best to stay a humanitarian en route to what she wants to be success. br / br /Eventually, all four women's problems are projected in full effect. Jake Gyllenhaal reprises his role as the adolescent roué who somehow ends up bedding Catherine Keener (just like Jennifer Aniston in "The Good Girl"). He is perfectly cast with his dark, sultry looks, and wild puppy eyes. Raven Goodwin played her part naturally well and shined on every scene. She is clearly a very talented actress and I've notice recently a lot of child actors on screen are really getting better in their roles. Finally we have Aunjanue Ellis who I believe is one of the most underrated African-American females on the screen today who has dramatize her role just as well as the rest of the cast, she seriously needs to have bigger parts to show off her full abilities. The men in the film have smaller roles because this is a film about (but not exclusively for) women. They include Jane's cosmetic surgeon, Michelle's husband, Elizabeth's boyfriend, Kevin McCabe (a star who Elizabeth reads for a part with, played by Dermot Mulroney). br / br /"Lovely Amazing" is a crazy entertaining movie. It has everything, liposuction, statutory rape, fast food, show business, and possibly rabies. Director Nicole Holefcener apparently had a lot to say and I quite enjoyed it. If you're a fan of any of these actors, then I would recommend this movie to you. br / Interesting Little Movie July 16, 2007 Kasey Driscoll 0 out of 1 found this review helpful Lovely and Amazing is a feminine picture (albeit still watchable for a man) and it is also a deeply depressing story that briefly peaks into the lives of two women and their mother. It is slow and somewhat awkward but it retains it's positive side at the end with notably almost no resolution whatsoever. The film paces itself very slowly, yet somehow works well because it is written and handled with a refreshing eye. Nicole Hilofcenter (Sex and the City) directs. br / br /Catherine Keener plays one of the daughters, Michelle, a 36 year old unemployed mother of one young daughter. Her husband is easy to relate to for a man and his patience as a character is exceptional because Keener's character has a highly volatile temper and she is for what it's worth completely unreasonable, yet somehow likeable at the same time. She sees herself as an artist and we watch her fail at that and then become a clerk at a one hour photo. There she has an affair with her 17 year old boss played by Jake Gyllenhaul. Things unfold for her as expected and I for one feel she gets what she deserves. br / br /Her insecure younger sister Elizabeth, played by Emily Mortimer, on the other hand is originally dealt a fair hand and ironically gets it taken away as her insecurities are realized. She sleeps with an actor who is boorish enough to be honest about whether she is sexy or pretty enough to be an actress. You see, her being self-centered is seen as a requirement and that actually made it more fun for me to watch her fail. She is finished with her one night stand with this actor, and asks that he critique her body. She stands naked in front of him in a surprising, awkward and daring (for Mortimer) sequence. Mortimer is certainly attractive enough to watch her fully nude for this long but it's such a cold and bleak scene that really comes out of nowhere, it is certainly not meant to be sensual. She comes as who she is, vulnerable and probably not ready to enter the world of acting. The film is loaded with moments like this that go against the grain and ultimately help the characters get used to themselves as much as they may resist. br / br /Their mother is in the midst of getting liposuction and the risks of surgery do indeed show themselves. She has adopted a young African American girl which makes for some interesting comments regarding race as well as she is enrolled in a "Big Sister" kind of program to get exposure to another black person. It's unfortunate that so little is said about their mother's past because she really ought to be the center of the film. Her story and her adopted daughter's story may have been intended to be delved into further...perhaps some was left on the cutting room floor. br / br /All of the characters' fits of selfish vanity are always answered. That seems to be the running theme and it gives you a different outlook on these things despite these characters being fundamentally good people. Is it really so wrong to ignore or displace blame for your own vanity so easily? If so, isn't it society that is doing it to us or should we be accountable for it? Do we create our surrounding culture enough to pay the price for being ingrained within it's sins? Is there anything we can do about it? I know one thing, my latest job interview may go a hell of a lot better if I comb my hair and where a really nice suit then if I don't. Then again just like anything, vanity has it's excesses. Just as Lovely and Amazing finishes it's value in helping us ask interesting questions, it ends as unconventionally as it unfolds. It's no classic, but it is films like this that if other filmmakers take note it can certainly provide different avenues for expression. Oh dear! Poor Brenda June 5, 2006 B. D. Milford (UK) 3 out of 8 found this review helpful We rented this movie as Brenda Blethyn is one of our favourite actresses - oh dear! What on earth was it all about? We didn't feel anything towards any of the characters - even dislike would have been some emotion. But the whole film left an indelible blank in our minds. What a waste of a good actress! Showing reviews 1-5 of 6 1 2 Next »

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