Ameriatch One of the best films i have seen

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Joanna Mccarty Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

quadrophobia This movie, though honored in many reviews as a perfect view on the life of immigrants in England, sadly becomes a stew out of stereotypes along the storyline. There is just a very little look taken on the social life and integration in the community in Great Britain, but a boring and overdrawn kind of love story, rather making the movie boring than interesting. Unfourtnatly there are no key scenes opening the movie for the viewer. Minute after Minute you fade out of the storyline being annoyed about long, meaningless scenes and less outdrawn , and mostly not further noticed motives.All in all it is more a soft Romance than a reality displaying drama.

selffamily Before I go any further - I have not read the book. I might now do so, however, as I believe with books and movies, it's usually best to see the film first. So much has to be lost when one transfers a story to screen, that the book is almost always an enriching experience. I fell over this almost in error at my local DVD store, so I did not see it on a big screen, which I would have liked. quite apart from the scenery and photography, it might have helped to be able to see the sub titles! There weren't that many of those, not enough to spoil the story.I felt that the early childhood scenes, in their innocence and sudden suicide of the mother, then leading to the point where the father could not keep both daughters at home and so arranged the marriage (my interpretation) to this "educated man" in England, were heartbreaking in retrospect, and there was quite a bit of yearning and retrospection for the poor bride. We met her some astonishing 17 years later, with her teenage daughter and younger child, not sure how old she was. They were not afraid of life, whereas their mother seemed to be virtually housebound from terror. When she met the neighbour who lent/gave the sewing machine to her, it was an enormously liberating experience for her and she began to think and act differently. The young man who was the catalyst in the change for the family, could have had two heads, she was so desperate for the fun and affection that she believed her sister to be experiencing. Her husband, a bumbling poor soul, whom life constantly overlooked was unable to cope with his daughter's puberty let alone the mounting reaction to 9/11. He became more lovable as the film progressed, obviously to both Nazeem and myself.The usurer who tried to blackmail Nazeem into extra payments, the neighbour and the others with small parts in the story were all as exquisitely drawn as the main characters. Nazeem began to understand that her life was her reality and when she held her husband's hand on the way home from the Bengal Tigers' meeting, one had a real sense of her maturity. There is so much more to this story than the top layer. I loved so many aspects of it - the acting, the photography, the story. Maybe it was simplified almost beyond belief, but that is normal. I found it moving, educational and hugely enjoyable. I shall recommend it.

kimmerie-1 My sister, one of my best sources for literature that doesn't disappoint, told me that Brick Lane was one of her all time favorite books. I didn't get to it, but I did get to the movie. After cinematically traveling to India via "Before the Rains" a couple of weeks ago, Brick Lane took me to Bangledesh. With continuous flashbacks to her home country, I followed Nazneem,a young Bangladeshi woman to the London ghetto in the early 1980's.As was common in her culture, Nazneem left home at age sixteen to pursue an arranged marriage She has two daughters, who we meet as young teens, one of whom is as rebellious and difficult as any American teenager we've known (or been). Nazneem is dreadfully unhappy in her new life partly because she misses her sister back home. The other reasons have something to do with never having lived life on her own terms, losing her first born and a touch of early mother loss, too.Let's just say that the different manifestations of love are examined in Brick Lane through the experience of Nazneem. How her heart opens and how she matures is unexpected. Without giving too much away, there is a drop dead gorgeous character named Karim who has something to do with it. Like a good book, and I suspect this is one, there are delicious surprises. Characters endear us in the end that we couldn't stand at first and others we admire, fall from grace. The story is rich.So, I'll be getting my copy of Brick Lane by Monica Ali and will let you know how it measures up to this beautiful movie. Weeks can go by without a worthwhile movie to see, but to have Before the Rains and Brick Lane in the same month. Now, that's a gift.

Seamus2829 Although I've never read the novel, I approached Brick Lane with the same devil may care attitude I always do for films dealing with another culture. What I got was something akin to a Southern Asian soap opera. Nazneen (the central character)had been the unwilling pawn in an arranged marriage to an older Bangladeshi man, who moved her to London's east end. What follows is several years of an unhappy marriage later, she is employed as a seamstress, and becomes involved with another man with a passion for politics. Along the way we are treated to the usual array of emotional outbursts,political leanings, and other cannon fodder that makes for a smartly photographed, but rather humdrum film that will probably be of appeal to the South West Asian community (i.e. India,Bangladesh,Sri Lanka,Pakistani).