Simply A Masterpiece

Crappy film

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It's 1942 Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. Otto Frank (Iain Glen) brings his wife Edith (Tamsin Greig), his daughters Margot (Felicity Jones), and Anne (Ellie Kendrick) to hide in a secret annex above his food and spice warehouse. They must keep quiet during the work day. Only the office staff Miep Gies (Kate Ashfield), Bep Voskuijl (Mariah Gale), Mr Kugler (Tim Dantay), and Mr Kleiman (Roger Frost) know the secret. The Franks are joined by Hermann Van Daan (Ron Cook), his brash wife Petronella (Lesley Sharp), and their son Peter (Geoff Breton). The final addition is dentist Albert Dussel (Nicholas Farrell) who becomes Anne's roommate. In the confined space, the personal conflicts mount. The Allies are closing in and freedom is almost at hand.This is like the Titanic. The sinking is inevitable but the story is still so compelling. Anne's modern humanity is undeniable. The performances are pitch perfect. Each character is well-defined and engaging. Ellie Kendrick is terrific in the lead. The mini-series ends with their capture. It makes no speculation about their informer. Their tragic ends are spelled out in text. I guess their horrific endings are subject for another time.

''The Diary of Anne'' (2009) is an accurate adaption of Anne Frank's diary. It's a very nice movie. I am very much interested about Anne Frank and I've seen six movies about Anne Frank. The 2009 adaption of Anne's diary is a fine one. Although it is not as excellent as ''Anne Frank: The Whole Story'' (2001), it is a very moving miniseries and can give the audience a clear idea about Anne Frank. The casting was excellent. Ellie Kendrick- I have no words to describe her- gave an amazing performance as Anne Frank. Really, Ellie is a talented young actress. I'd also like to praise the performances of Felicity Jones who played Margot Frank, Geoff Breton who played Peter van Daan and Tamsin Greig who played Edith Hollander Frank. And Nicholas Ferrell, who played Albert Dussel, also gave a wonderful performance. Lesley Sharp who played Petronella van Daan and Kate Ashfield who played Miep Gies also gave wonderful performances. The casting was, in short, excellent. The story was also arranged in such a way that we liked the movie very much. But I'd like to say that ''Anne Frank: The Whole Story'' and ''The Attic: The Hiding of Anne Frank'' were better than ''The Diary of Anne Frank'' (2009), but still, the 2009 adaption was indeed a nice one and I liked it. I'd like to give the movie: 7 out of 10.

This new TV adaption of the story of Anne Frank produced by BBC is what I had been looking forward to for a long time. However, after watching all of the five episodes this week, I felt a bit disappointed.As a big fan of Anne Frank all the time, certainly I have read her affecting diary that nearly everybody in the world knows about, as well as the memoir written by the attic-helper Miep Gies and the biography written by Melissa Muller. Besides this new BBC version, I also had watched three videos of her story before: one is a film and the other two are made for TV. The film adaption was made in 1959 by Americans, which is the first work about Anne on screen. Though I don't like this film at all since the cast and the set are far away from the truth in history, it still hold the value and importance for its first attempt of adapting her story. The second is a TV adaption made in 1988 by US, and compared to the film adaption, this one stepped forward quite much in any aspect. For the reason that it was mainly based on the memoir "Anne Frank Remembered" written by Miep Gies, this little-known TV adaption only adopted the view of Miep Gies and thus overlooked most of the details in the attic as well as the content of Anne's diary. The third one "Anne Frank: The Whole Story" is still a TV adaption made by Americans in 2001, despite the fact that most of the characters are from Britain. This is the only adaption I am totally satisfied with and I can't help to watch it over and over again. It is based on the biography of Anne Frank written by Melissa Muller and covers the whole life of our little Heroin including her joyful life before hiding, the hard days in the secrete attic and the tragic last period in the concentration camp. I have to say the cast and set of this adaption are so appropriate and exact that it is just as authentic as the history. The plot is intense, compelling and heart-warming, thereby making you feel like that you were trapped in the attic too and could be caught at any time.This new BBC adaption, however, is more like an English soap than a serious historical drama. Anyway, the little star Ellie Kendrick looks very witty and enchanting, but some of rest characters are quite boring especially her mother who looks just like suffering from the mental disease. Moreover, Mrs. Petronella Van Daan, her lips are always as red as cherry, and her untimely humor is extremely annoying and unnecessary. Even the Sergeant in the last episode looks so kind and so English that we can't think him as a Nazi devil. On the whole, this diary based adaption gets some improper humor and the act of some roles are a bit exaggerated in my opinion. It seems like they were threatening themselves deliberately rather than revealing the fear in their own heart naturally.

First-class. Soap-length and almost soap-like, the great strength of this series is it's day-to-day realism. Free of invented sentiment or the sobriety of guilt or hindsight, writer Deborah Moggach and director Jon Jones work something believable and vital out of Anne Frank's eponymous journal. Rather than watch one finds oneself living through the action with its absurd pettiness and meagre (but treasured) consolations, with familiar tensions and thrills in circumstances not only unfamiliar but inconceivable.The cast are as high-calibre an ensemble as one could imagine. Impossible to identify favourites, I found the women most memorable. Ellie Kendrick is an ideal Anne, conjuring all the highs and lows of a girl forced to experience a compressed adolescence but leaving something terrifyingly real for the inevitable climax. Leslie Sharp and Tamsin Grieg play perigee and apogee of the Jewish hausfrau, pantomime dame and ashen-faced mouse: their Parthian ability to charm or bite can turn the experience of an episode inside out.Everything about this project seems to have worked - the perfect episode length, carefully-pitched drama of the highest calibre and broadcast at a time when everyone can absorb and, yes, even enjoy it. Highly recommended. 8/10