JamesG
12-14-2009, 01:45 AM
Movie Reviews: A Single Man
Critics have turned the directorial debut of fashion designer Tom Ford with A Single Man into a celebration.
Claudia Puig in USA Today calls the movie “an aesthetic wonder.”
Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News writes that it “is so unusually beautiful it would be easy to dismiss it as superficial.”
What saves it from becoming so, most critics agree, is a stunning performance by Colin Firth as the title character, a closeted gay college professor, wracked with heartbreak by the sudden accidental death of his longtime lover.
“Without [Firth] to provide the soul, all that saturated beauty would count for nothing,” writes Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times.
“A Single Man is more than a pretty movie,” comments Linda Barnard in the Toronto Star. “Its power comes from Firth.”
But Manohla Dargis in the New York Times credits the director for presenting his star’s performance to shattering effect “as when he sets the camera in front of Mr. Firth’s face in one critical scene and just lets the machine record the tremors of emotion cracking the façade.”
Indeed, the critics suggest, Ford has fashioned his film in much the same manner that he has designed his fashion attire -- to enhance and complement.
Rick Groen in the Toronto Globe & Mail bestows the ultimate acclaim on the result: “Every movie is a performance, but very seldom is a performance a movie.”
-IMDB News
Critics have turned the directorial debut of fashion designer Tom Ford with A Single Man into a celebration.
Claudia Puig in USA Today calls the movie “an aesthetic wonder.”
Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News writes that it “is so unusually beautiful it would be easy to dismiss it as superficial.”
What saves it from becoming so, most critics agree, is a stunning performance by Colin Firth as the title character, a closeted gay college professor, wracked with heartbreak by the sudden accidental death of his longtime lover.
“Without [Firth] to provide the soul, all that saturated beauty would count for nothing,” writes Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times.
“A Single Man is more than a pretty movie,” comments Linda Barnard in the Toronto Star. “Its power comes from Firth.”
But Manohla Dargis in the New York Times credits the director for presenting his star’s performance to shattering effect “as when he sets the camera in front of Mr. Firth’s face in one critical scene and just lets the machine record the tremors of emotion cracking the façade.”
Indeed, the critics suggest, Ford has fashioned his film in much the same manner that he has designed his fashion attire -- to enhance and complement.
Rick Groen in the Toronto Globe & Mail bestows the ultimate acclaim on the result: “Every movie is a performance, but very seldom is a performance a movie.”
-IMDB News