Excellent but underrated film

Best movie ever!

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

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

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.

BUT NOT FOREVERHad this movie been released in the last few years, it would have swept the Oscars. Most of us were still reeling from 9/11 when it came out...So many factors make it a hidden gem:Spacey's performance -- Great plot and brilliant script -- The entire cast -- Hauntingly beautiful soundtrack -- Breathtaking scenery and cinematography.Watched it for the first time the other day, and gave it 9 out of 10. It has transfixed me so much that I must now give it a 10.Thank goodness I found it on Netflix. Still spellbound.

On paper this should be a winning romantic matinée - but then, on paper, My Big Fat Greek Wedding should have gone straight to video. It's a rather good yarn this, an outlandishly plotted but nonetheless credible romance set in a modern Newfoundland community. It's well-acted and Lasse Hallström moves the story along briskly. So where's the problem?I think it's to do with Hallström's determination not to fall into the clutches of piratical-style yarn-spinning. Me hearties. There are an awful lot of little stories just waiting in line to reveal themselves. In the context of a superstitious coastal community one is always a bit circumspect about whether tales are about to be debunked as myth or simply manufactured, especially as the central prepubescent is painted as borderline clairvoyant. Consequently, none of the plot threads are given the chance to really take hold and stir the emotions. For a sincere film it's emotionally over-restrained.Neither does it help that Kevin Spacey slightly misjudges his homecoming naïf - he goes from being spectacularly stupid, to sagaciously adult in far too short a space of time. All the others have the developmental mettle of their roles better managed. I enjoyed the film but I get the impression that Proulx's novel isn't meant to be quite as breezy. 6.5/10

"The Shipping News" is a fairly good movie which starts out strongly, but about halfway through edges into TV drama territory in style. It's the sort of movie that becomes middle of the road despite good performances and here and there shows some solid photography. The problem at the core are the main characters, especially Spacey whose simpleton-type character wears pretty thin over the duration of the movie. Along with that is the run-of-mill romance with Julianne Moore's small town widow. Their development is rather unbelievable and uninteresting as well as Spacey's acting with his character's daughter at times OK, and at other times painful. The movie luckily has some fine supporting cast, particularly Rhys Ivans and the great Pete Postlethwaite as well as Judi Dench. Overall the movie isn't really a disappointment with some great seasonal appeal, but unfortunately runs long.