terrible... so disappointed.

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

Blistering performances.

Quoyle (Kevin Spacey) is a meek man struggling in life after his domineering father. He falls for hard-partying Petal (Cate Blanchett) and they have daughter Bunny together. She sells the six-year old to illegal adoption for $6k and dies in a car crash with her boyfriend. Quoyle's father dies and his half-sister Agnis Hamm (Judi Dench) comes to steal his ashes. Quoyle decides to leave upstate New York to live in the ancestral Quoyle home in Newfoundland with Bunny. Despite being only an inksetter, local paper owner Jack Buggit (Scott Glenn) forces him to write the Shipping News and local car wrecks, real and fake. Tert Card (Pete Postlethwaite) is the hard editor. Beaufield Nutbeem (Rhys Ifans) and Billy Pretty (Gordon Pinsent) are fellow reporters. Quoyle falls for widowerer Wavey Prowse (Julianne Moore). Quoyle struggles to write in the morbid newspaper style until he writes about the Hitler boat. Jack gives him his own column.This is a story of pirates, outlandish tales, and shocking reveals of family traumas. The material is there for something with an unique voice. Kevin Spacey doesn't fit as the meek Quoyle. He's a great actor but he has to really act it up to be this much of a walkover. This movie struggles to find that appealing quirkiness out of these fascinating morbid tales.

The Shipping News (2001): Dir: Lasse Hallstrom / Cast: Kevin Spacey, Judi Dench, Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett, Pete Postlethwaite: Intriguing title symbolizes persistence. After his bar hopping wife is found dead in an auto accident, Kevin Spacey and his daughter go live with an aunt in a house that bares a painful past. Flimsy subplots include incest, murder, false heart attacks, unfaithful spouses, etc. This distracts from core issues and hinder as oppose to develop character. Director Lasse Hallstrom has vision but no payoff. It is below his work in Chocolat but certainly an improvement over the overrated abortion drama The Cider House Rules, which, for some strange reason was given undeserved praise for being a disjointed piece of sh*t. Innovative performance by Spacey who survives the bland subplots by being genuine. Judi Dench plays the aunt who might have been more interesting had she not gotten caught up in useless melodrama regarding the past. She eventually resorts to pouring ashes down a toilet. Julianne Moore plays a withdrawing kindergarten teacher who predictably must get involved with Spacey then open up with a long speech about her past that we've long lost interest in. Cate Blanchett steals scenes as Spacey's sleazy wife. She delivers the most interesting performance in the film. Well made drama featuring a strong theme of healing traumas. Score: 7 ½ / 10

This was a film I hadn't seen before and I hadn't read the book, so I could assess the film on its own merits. I was interested to see Kevin Spacey was starring as I have enjoyed a few of his productions at the Old Vic in London. It was on late and I had been watching a programme on TV abut Judy Dench. I found the film engaged my attention from the start. I had no idea how the story would develop. By the time the bleak landscape of Newfoundland was revealed I was completely engaged in the film. With its undertones of child abuse, incest and neglect, this film was disturbing in some ways, but the portrayal of the village newspaper, the remote community life, the bleak landscape and the stormy coast, gave it a powerful impact, which stayed with me long after it was finished. There were top notch performances by a strong cast, not least, the child who played Bunny. In fact a lot of it deals with how children cope with abuse and neglect and can come to terms with it, even when they are adults. The last words in the film, spoken by Kevin Spacey, "A broken man can heal", perhaps sum up the film's ultimate message of the triumph of the human spirit against all odds.

This movie has everything the book couldn't capture. Stellar performances from all of the cast. Brilliant screen play based on a dark, enigmatic novel brings a little hope to the end of the day. You feel Newfoundland in this movie and you know the Atlantic perhaps better than you understood it in A Perfect Storm. There are curses to be overcome in this story and who better to lead you through them than Kevin Spacey with endearing performances from Gordon Pinsent, Pete Postlethwaite, Scott Glenn and Rhys Ifans. If you couldn't get through Annie Proulx' novel, you owe it to her and the crew of this movie to watch this! Lasse Hallström did well, boy!