Reviews

This is one of the worst films I've seen in a while. The pace is way too slow. I didn't give a rip about any of the characters. The dialog is boring. The plot is boring. How did some big names such as Juliette Binoche and Paul Giamatti get mixed up in this worthless movie? At the end when Paul Giamatti is holding his super duper gun to Robert Pattinson's head, I wanted him to pull the trigger to put both him and the audience out of its misery. There might be some intellectuals or pseudo intellectuals who will say there was some meaning to this that I obviously missed, and they're entitled to their opinion. Avoid this waste of time at all costs. I can think of better ways to waste 109 minutes of my life than this.

With this film, I set a new personal record for fastest quitting of a movie. I watched the first 3.5 minutes and I decided I'd had enough. What did he kill his dog for? WTH? What's his problem? I decided I didn't want to know. The gratuitous cruelty to animals is completely unacceptable to me. No one was holding a gun to my head to force me to watch this, so I quit. I got the DVD from the public library, so I wasn't out any money. How this got an IMDb score of approx 7.5, I'll never know. I won't be checking this film out at the library again. This film I'm pretty sure is not for me although a number of people apparently thought it was worthwhile.

I watched the first 40 minutes of this and then quit. It was supposed to be a comedy, but it's just a story about a stupid woman who wants attention. I didn't laugh once in the 40 minutes, and the movie didn't seem to be going anywhere, and frankly I didn't give a rip about the main character because she is so bloody stupid. **Spoiler Warning** When she finds the gun in the river, she shouldn't have touched it because it might have still had fingerprints or other forensic evidence. But that's right. She decides to confess to a murder she didn't commit, just to get some attention. Do yourself a favor and skip this waste of time. Fortunately, I borrowed this from the public library so I wasn't out any money for admission or rental fees. Oh, and yes, I want the 40 minutes of my life back! 2 out of 10 is generous.

I figured out the plot in the first 20-30 minutes.

The chess scenes are well done. At least we don't see the common goofs of having the board 90 degrees wrong (white on right), or the king and queen on the wrong squares (queen goes on its color). The mate in two problem is accurate. Kudos to the chess technical adviser.

Some pretty nice photography of the French (or is it Corsica?) countryside. Kevin Kline's character is well drawn. They could have developed the teenage daughter a little more.

All in all, a nice chess fairy tale, even though I found the film very predictable.

As listed in the errors section, Hypatia couldn't have known from the observational equipment available to her that the earth's orbit was an ellipse rather than a circle, (which is a special case ellipse). It was the work of Kepler using the very precise measurements of Tycho Brahe that proved that the earth's orbit is in fact an ellipse, however the deviation from a perfect circle is very minute.

The seasons are caused by the tilt of the earth's axis 23.5 degrees with respect to the ecliptic, the plane that contains the earth's orbit. In the northern hemisphere, in the summer, the northern hemisphere is tilted at a better angle, thus the warmer weather. The opposite for wintertime. The earth is actually closer to the sun in the winter than summer due to the earth's orbit being a (nearly circle) ellipse.

*** Spoiler warning *** I got this flick from the public library, expecting a chick-flick about teenage/high school angst. That is pretty much what the film delivers. There are some references to John Hughes' '80s flicks, which might go over the heads of a teen audience.

As other posters had said, it is a stretch and perhaps too much of a suspension of disbelief that Emma Stone's character would be one of the "invisible" people in high school culture. A woman who is that good looking with her spunk would be a shoe-in for the popular or A-list crowd for whom high school is fun and games and a huge picnic.

As is typical of Hollywood, this film takes its turn making fun of Christians. In the liberal democrat tradition, any religion is acceptable except Christianity. Imagine the uproar if the film made fun of,say Muslims. I hadn't heard of any Christian groups protesting it, but perhaps they chose not to give this film free advertising or to dignify it with a response.

Overall, not bad, but not great. Emma Stone is certainly gorgeous. 6/10

***Spoiler Warning***

This is one of the dumbest films I've seen in a while. Is watching a mentally ill person's missteps supposed to be funny? I want the 107 minutes of my life back. From the beginning of the film, I was wondering "Who are all these people? Do I care?". This POS just goes downhill from there.

Ben Stiller's character is obviously mentally ill, so we give his dumb ass behavior a pass. Are his complaining letters supposed to be funny? Writing American Airlines because the buttons on the seats weren't right? Just OCD. What's funny about that?

Greta Gerwig's Florence is really nice, and she has a warm personality in spite of the fact that apparently she was never fond of her father. Why is she the least bit interested in Greenberg? My guess is it's the same type of thing when you're driving down the highway and you see a nasty, ugly wreck. You can't help but stare at it right? Rubbernecker syndrome.

Nasty ugly wreck pretty much sums up this "film." 2 out of 10 is generous.