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

Best movie ever!

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

The Oxford Murders is a quasi-sophisticated murder mystery attempting to combine philosophical mathematics with a series of murders. The movie has the feel of an attempt to emulate the Da Vinci Code without the action and excitement. The writer of the script clearly misused chaos theory in professor Seldom's lecture. Being able to predict hurricanes has nothing to do with the limitations of mathematics as the script would have us believe, but is rather a failure of our inability to gather enough data points to the precise measurement that is required to make those calculations. Anyway, This is a murder mystery who-dun-it. As such it is best just to list the characters then to speak profusely about the plot:Martin (Elijah Wood) is an American at Oxford wanting to be sponsored by the famous Arthur Seldom. He is a border at Ms. Eagleton.Arthur Seldom, retired professor, author of philosophical mathematics. WWII decoder.Mrs. Eagleton- Wife of a colleague of Seldom's. She is in a wheel chair, terminal, and the first victim. Her husband and Mrs. Seldom died in an auto accident some time ago. Seldom apparently rejected Mrs. Eagleton as a would be lover/ second wife as he prefers younger women, although they remained close friends.Beth, Ms. Eagleton's daughter and caretaker. She inherits her mother's wealth. She is in love with Martin, throws herself at him, and he rejects her. She plays a cello and is clearly unbalanced, imagining a relationship with Martin that does not exist.The guy who studies with Martin- He is also a bit crazy. He hates Seldom and claims his ideas have been stolen. For some reason his lips clearly don't match what he is saying most of the time.Nurse- She works in a hospital that Arthur Seldom goes to frequently to visit old sick colleagues. She throws herself at Martin and they become lovers. Later we find out she was once Arthur Seldom's lover. She is familiar with his work and writes murder mysteries.Crazy guy- He believes Jesus came back to revenge his death. He is clearly unbalanced. His daughter is dying in the hospital in need of a lung transplant, but there are no matching donors. He hangs out in the same hospital as the nurse and Seldom and buys books on Pythagorean society.All the characters are interconnected and it would easy to assign a motive to each one. There are very minor clues or hints as to what is happening, although nothing that would completely tip who the murderer is...or does it? I will give you a clue that may help you try to figure out what is happening, one scene fuels the next one although it may not seem to. It is a butterfly effect, which is what the "genius" of this film is about or maybe it is about mathematicians should never write murder mysteries.Nudity, sexual scenes, and language.

Rarely a film fails on so many levels. The film tries to say "deep things" but clearly neither the writer nor the director have a clue what they are talking about, so all the "profound" stuff is merely ridiculous (low point: Wittgenstein during WWI writing in his notebook, and that's only the introduction to the film). As a Monty Python sketch that might have been funny, but since the film is pretending to say something serious, it's just embarrassing. The acting is abysmal, the plot is silly and full of holes, for some incomprehensible reason there are two girls who suddenly fall in love with the main character, but there's no way to understand why (or how, since there's zero chemistry). For me, the worst part were the dialogues, though. At the beginning, the American student who just finds a boarding room with some woman who used to know a number of famous mathematicians, picks up a photo and then explains who the people on the photo are, why they are famous, and a short Wikipedia biography of their lives. Subtle. "Well," says the woman, "you did your homework". If only the scriptwriters, the director and the actors would have done the same.

Well, Oxford reminds me of Hoggwarts and the encrypted messages and symbols make me think to the Dan Brown. But as it deals more with logic and science, it's would be more "Angels & Demons".Actually, despite being French, i got a British chromosome for everything truly Brit rises my interest : Oxford as Cambridge has always been big names for college and one of my regrets in life is that I didn't live a college courses like this: stunning campus, prestigious history, fraternities, night of the prom! French universities lack all this! With this movie, I intended to take a tour inside and I am pleased: reality is always less gratifying than imagination because I found Oxford ancestral and Gothic but also old and not very magical.But the movie is interesting and asks good questions for those who like to ponder: numbers, maths exist by themselves or only in man's mind?For those who like crime stories, I think this movie is rather unique because the twists are really great! At last, the cast is wonderful: Wood as McGuire has good manners thus seem sympathetic fellows, Hurt bears wisely his age and Waitling is hard to forget when like me, you watch the movie on a hot summer night!

Never in one movie could I have expected to hear about the golden ratio, chaos theory, the Tractatus Logicus Filosoficus, coding theory, numerical series, fractal geometry, Fermat's conjecture, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, the Liar Paradox, and the Gödel Incompleteness Theorem. One would think that I was watching something like A Beautiful Mind.But, this was a murder mystery - a hunt for a serial killer. But, was it? With philosophy, logic, and mathematics ever present, we can not be sure what it was.What is sure, that the selection of John Hurt to play the professor was brilliant. I could not imagine anyone else in that role, and he did it to perfection. I also have a greater appreciation for Elijah Wood after seeing this film. He really came through. I found a new actress to watch in Leonor Watling. I had seen her in a couple of Pedro Almodóvar's films, but didn't appreciate her at the time. I'll have to go back and re-watch them. One can never watch his films enough anyway. I'll have to re-watch another Almodovar film to see more work by writer Jorge Guerricaechevarría. Great music, too.