It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

A Brilliant Conflict

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Having seen this film several years ago, I am now somewhat hazy on the details. However, it left an indelible impression and I really want to see it again. The friend with whom I watched it hated it, but I was more positive, being a big fan of Toni Colette and Daniel Craig. The creaky old hotel was perfectly and appropriately disgusting, and cast expertly limned the miserable staff with gusto. The somewhat grotesque scenes in the bowels of the hotel (sorry!) were, as some reviewers have noted, not altogether pleasant, with the hotel's sewage bubbling through ancient pipes, but they were hysterically funny. And as a part of a satire of various misguided schemes to advance loony notions of healthful lifestyles, it works quite well. As Kath, Toni Colette brings a spark of sanity to the hotel and its downtrodden employees, and her attempts to introduce edible food lead to predictable conflicts. This is a role Ms. Colette took on only about six years after her career-making turn as Muriel in "Muriel's Wedding." It marks an interesting phase and perhaps a transitional moment in what is a brilliant career. However, it appears that the film is available on DVD only in a non-U.S. format. Does anyone know why? Are there other options?

This film is so bad I can hardly believe it. It has no point, no humor and lacks any creativity at all;the movie, so called, sums up what is wrong with the UK and the type of films coming from there. Take a group of talentless actors, a ridiculous script and mix that with a brand of toilet humor concentrating on bowel movements and you will get some idea what this garbage is about. Possibly the ugliest actors I have ever seen in one film. How on earth any one can getting funding for such a load of rubbish, goodness knows. Everything is wrong with the film; the era it is set in....are we in the 1920's....see the gramaphone, or modern day see the hair-styles? Whatever non-entity created this drivel must have a fixation with either his mother, his digestive system...or more likely..... his sanity. Dear of dear: trash unlimited.

A brilliant feature debut by Terry Gross - a monstrous main course to follow his deliciously gross entree "The Sin Eater." Mr. Gross's twin leitmotifs - food and sex - are wonderfully combined in this outrageous exercise in romantic, tragi-comic, grande guignol... It's pointless to try to precis the plot or to attempt to outline the characters, you have to see the picture. YOU HAVE TO SEE THE PICTURE!

I love this film. It is stunning, visually and aesthetically beautiful, works perfectly as a whole and is perfectly crafted. What negative things could possibly be said about it? Well, the problem is, we've seen it before. In the films of the french duo Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro.Hotel Splendide is, in its essence, a typical Jeunet/Caro-film; you'll find that virtually all the characters and aesthetics are lifted from "Delicatessen" and "The City of Lost Children". A hint of Greenaway perhaps, and a fairly large portion of Britishness... what we end up with is an extraordinary, beautiful, funny and moving film. In itself, the film is fantastic. What brings it down a bit is the fact that you find 90 % of this film in the two films by the French duo (J&C), which suggests that although transformed, the ideas weren't originally the writer/director's own. However, if we go beyond the surface of the film we find a nicely crafted story and some subtle philosophical symbolism - the characters' inner struggles and their blind faith (that makes them unhealthy and miserable, although believing the opposite) can be seen as a a statement against fanatic religious or political believes, and the repression of individualism and the free mind. It's not profound in any way, but it's there, conscious or not.The ending is, I'm afraid, exactly what you expect. I wish it wasn't, but apparently that's how it has to be in a film like this. The music is most of the time very annoying because it's obviously synthesizers trying to sound like an orchestra, and it's not very well done. Utterly bad use of an oboe-sound in the lead melody so stale it is laughable, and some tasteless pizzicato-sounds that scream out "cheapness" (and what's with that crash cymbal?). All in all the synths don't blend very well with the warm and very well played live violin that occasionally appears and brightens the day.Finally, a word on the acting. It is overall superb. Hugh O'Conor's portrait of Stanley Smith is spot-on, intense but never over-acted. Katrin Cartlidge too gives a moving performance, and last but not least, Toni Collette is amazingly spellbinding as lovely Kath.Well acted, well directed and well done, although not as original as it might seem. A good film, though. See it.