Problem: This review is like what?

Review:Charming doesn't even begin to describe "Saving Grace;" it's absolutely irresistible! Anyone who ventures into this movie will leave with their spirits soaring high (haha).

Grace Trevethyn (Brenda Blethyn) has just lost her husband, but her problems are about to get a whole lot worse. Her dearly departed has left her with no money and outstanding debts. Faced with losing everything, she has to find out a way to get a lot of cash...fast! She gets an idea when her gardener, Matthew (Craig Ferguson) asks the town-famous horticulturist to give him advice on a plant he is secretly growing. Grace immediately realizes that his plant is marijuana, so they decide to use her gardening skills to grow a lot of top-quality weed, and then sell it to pay off her outstanding debts.

The most notable quality about "Saving Grace" is its likability. Every character is extremely sympathetic, and, save for the first 20 or so minutes, the film is non-stop good cheer. Everyone wants a happy ending for everyone, even if it means turning a blind eye to some rather illegal activities.

The acting is top-notch. Brenda Blethyn is one of Britain's finest actresses, and here is why. She turns what could have been a caricature into a fully living and breathing individual. She's a nice lady, but she's not stupid. Craig Ferguson is equally amiable as Matthew. He's a deadbeat loser, but he's so likable that it doesn't matter. The rest of the ensemble cast fits in this category as well, but special mention has to go to Tcheky Karyo. The French actor always has a aura of menace about him, and that suits him well, but he also has great comedy skills.

Nigel Cole finds the perfect tone for "Saving Grace." It's all about the charm. One of the problems I have with British humor is that all the energy seems to be drained out of the film. Not so here. The film is thoroughly likable and always amusing. That's not to say that "Saving Grace" is just a likable movie that will leave you with a grin and a good feeling. While this movie is not an out and out comedy, it does boast two or three scenes that are nothing short of hysterical.

If there's any problem with the film, it's that the climax is a little confusing. The questions are answered though, and the ending boasts an unexpected twist.

See "Saving Grace," especially when you're having a bad day.
+++++++++
A: positive

Problem: This review is like what?

Review:I'm starting to think that there's a conspiracy, all right: one that involves a wallop of money paid to those who have access to published columns in newspapers and film and art magazines to ensure that this or that film, despite its obscurity, will reach a higher status via a ratings point which will tag it with a "universal acclaim" or something within that range, thus ensuring unsuspecting folk (like me) will wander into theatres or rent the bloody thing, expecting a surprise, only to find myself racing to the bathroom to upchuck.

This movie is one of them. It has definitely make me bypass any and every posted article I come across because it's rather clear that two things might have happened: either I didn't get the message that is so hidden beneath this film's inner realms as to be impossible to access, or they and I watched two entirely different movies that happen to share the same name. 4 is a dirty trick on the audience. It's no wonder that it appeared and disappeared faster than you can say "smorsgabord" and that despite the rating it got on Metacritic, no one had heard of it. It's terrible with sugar on top.

Firstly, there is the ever-present number four from start to finish. While having a little symbolism here and there is okay, and it's been done with various degrees of success in many well-known movies, this movie is panting with it. Four dogs at the start of the movie, looking at the camera in a heretofore empty street when suddenly, machinery drops onto the foreground and proceeds to rip open the asphalt. Four people in a bar, although one of them is a non-entity. Three of them go their separate ways but are linked nevertheless, not only to each other but to what their lives are not. While this concept may work, the movie meanders so much -- particularly with the story of the would-be model played by Marina Vovchenko which goes into the territory of the extremely bizarre, and not in a good way -- that the initial theme gets lost in translation. Or maybe, like I said before, I just "didn't get it." The problem also lies in that so much time is spent on Marina's story (which revolves on the death of her sister, from bread-chewing, no less, and the subsequent, shrill mourning which follows) that any interest in the inherent Surrealism dissipates without a trace. So what if the same horrifying tales that the three strangers interchanged in a bar seem to have a truth of their own? The director doesn't invest much time in truly tying them together, or weaving a tighter story that could, in a David Lynchian way, intersect either with the past-present, or within alternate dimensions, or even as a straightforward, mundane science-fiction story. This is an uphill battle against an insurmountable wall that only a saint (or someone into the weird for weird's sake) could endure.
+++++++++
A: negative

Problem: This review is like what?

Review:Piece of subtle art. Maybe a masterpiece. Doubtlessly a special story about the ambiguity of existence. Tale in Kafka style about impossibility of victory or surviving in a perpetual strange world. The life is, in this film, only exercise of adaptation. Lesson about limits and original sin, about the frailty of innocence and error of his ways.

Leopold Kessle is another Joseph K. Images of Trial and same ambiguous woman. And Europa is symbol of basic crisis who has many aspects like chimeric wars or unavailing search of truth/essence/golden age.

Methaphor or parable, the movie is history of disappointed's evolution. War, peace, business or lie are only details of gelatin-time. Hypocrisy is a mask. Love- a convention. The sacrifice- only method to hope understanding a painful reality.
+++++++++
A:
positive