People are voting emotionally.

best movie i've ever seen.

Best movie ever!

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

If you liked Alan Rudolph's "Choose Me", "Remember Me", "Trouble in Mind", "Afterglow" or "Welcome to L.A.", if you especially liked his movie "The Moderns", if you like film scores by Mark Isham, if you liked Robert Altman (who produced this film and a few others by Rudolph) and if you like Jennifer Jason Leigh (great, great, great, with no Oscar, while one or two other hags flaunt two), do not miss, if it ever comes your way, "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle", a fascinating cinematic biography of the even more fascinating writer Dorothy Parker, and her circle of critics and authors of the New York literary scene who were integral part of the "round table" of the Algonquin hotel in the city in the 1920s. A deluxe cast: Campbell Scott, Matthew Broderick, Andrew McCarthy, Jennifer Beals, Nick Cassavetes, Lily Taylor, Martha Plimpton, Wallace Shawn, Stephen Baldwin, James Le Gros, Rebecca Miller, Sam Robards, Gwyneth Paltrow, Peter Gallagher, Heather Graham, Stanley Tucci, Keith Carradine.. For those who love the literary world and writers of "brilliant pen", "sharp tongue" and smart repartee in debates, this is your motion picture. I rate it 10/10. Those who don't, it's up to them to raise objections. Beautiful film. Memorable performance by Leigh and, by the way, a very good one by Andrew McCarthy too, as Mr. Parker: considering his previous works (all pretty eyes and little substance), he truly made a good impression on me.

If one was going to get drunk on something during prohibition, what would it have been? Well the ensemble of Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle do, in fact, chug down a great deal of hooch but the Vicious Circle of the title does in fact refer to a number of things, not least the large circular dining table which forms the centre of many of Alan Rudolph's set pieces. Naturally there's but a short step to 'circles of friends' which is the sober bedfellow of the inebriated co-owner of the title, the avarice which possess everyone to sleep with one another.A pre-Oscar Gwyneth Paltrow is the chief draw of this perigee of the narrative, dragging Matthew Broderick's Charles into the well of sin. With the exception of Peter Gallagher's Alan Campbell, this is the absolute ceiling of the male cast... and even they are lost in the dust created by Jennifer Jason Leigh's deceptively intense Dorothy Parker. The problem I have is that she's too drole. I suspect her characterisation is highly accurate, literate; however I find her relationships, love and outrage rather incredible, a little like that of Helen Mirren's Ayn Rand. 4/10

I think that this film was meant to be realist and naturalistic. However,there is the reality that this is an entertainment, and the audience has to hear and understand the lines. Supervigilance is required to do this in this movie. Not only does JJL's imitation of Dorothy Parker's speech affectations make the speech and musing of the main character difficult to understand, but the inclusion of background noise, overlapping dialog, and frequent muttering and mumbling of the performers make every character difficult to even hear, much less understand.Since so much of this movie is about legendary people mouthing famous aphorisms, it is frustrating to only hear snippets of their lines. I suppose the idea was to toss these famous lines away to add naturalism. However, without spotlighting the conversations of the legendary characters, however contrived this might be performed, this is just a very sad movie about a bitter, unhappy, self-destructive, unproductive writer. Not very easy to watch nor very interesting.

I am a fan of many of the writers who flit in and out of this movie, but I confess I don't know much about their personal lives and habits (except perhaps for Benchley, and Thurber who is only barely mentioned in this film). This film gives the viewer a good sense of what it must have been like to be part of the wildly creative crew that surrounded the legendary Algonquin Round Table, but a very confused picture of Dorothy Parker's life. Only someone who already knows her story, and can keep her various husbands and lovers in order, can piece this mish-mash together. And none of the performers are strong enough to seem like anything more than walk-ons dressed as famous people. (The "gang" scenes work because of the fast pacing; the movie drags when we spend time with the individuals.) According to comments recorded here, Miss Leigh is doing a good vocal impression of Dorothy Parker. Maybe so (I've never heard Parker), but Leigh's delivery is so totally annoying that it's enough to drive the AUDIENCE to suicide. Is she trying to do Hepburn on downers? Sometimes her mannered accent veers toward Transylvanian.Throughout the movie, Parker herself denigrates her little "doodad" poems, but that's all the film offers us of her creative output. We never really find out about the contents of her books and plays, and how she ended up in Hollywood (and what she wrote there). After a few of her doggerel verses, they become trite. I began to wonder if people think these poems are funny because they know they're SUPPOSED to be funny.I'm sure there's probably a good movie in Mrs. Parker's life, but I don't think this is it.