Fluentiama Perfect cast and a good story

Dotbankey A lot of fun.

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Python Hyena Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001): Dir: John Madden / Cast: Nicolas Cage, Penelope Cruz, John Hurt, Christian Bale, David Morrissey: Mandolin refers to peace with hardship. If that is really the case, then I could have used one during the screening of this stupid charade. Nicolas Cage stars as Captain Corelli who arrives in town with his fellow German soldiers. He will house with a local doctor who is against the arrangement until they accommodate him with medical supplies. Then he asks, "Where will I sleep?" to which the doctor responds, "In my daughter's room." Then Cage asks the million dollar question, "And where will your daughter sleep?" She hisses, "It's none of your business where I sleep!" Such pitiful advertising, as if anyone cannot figure that out. Yes, they fall in love, war breaks out, tears are shed, blah, blah, blah. It's about as entertaining as a bag of horse crap. Similar to John Madden's superior Shakespeare in Love but doesn't contain his same skill. John Hurt as the doctor deserves better than this. Cage sounds dumb-ass stupid with that German accent, and his parading about for Cruz's affection is embarrassing. Penelope Cruz plays this obvious bimbo whom the audience can figure out long before she can get a clue. This is about as stupid as that pathetic Pearl Harbor was months earlier. War and romance presented with whorehouse clarity. Score: 2 / 10

bertodecordoba Okay, I finally just got through the whole thing. I wanted to see this movie because I knew it had musical connotations and was about being in love with Penelope Cruz. Which isn't hard to do.When there is a good script and good story you would think that "top" actors like Nic Cage and Christian Bale would seriously buff up on their local talk. If you are going to do a foreign movie in English with an accent of the local language then you got some serious work to do. Nic apparently didn't do enough training for his accent. He goes from one sentence saying something like: hey man, surfs up dude!, to aye mama mia, no hay pizzaria. If you pay attention to his accent it is all over the place.If you watch an A actor like Leo Dicaprio, he will seriously study the local vernacular and slang and bring it into his character and make the audience believe it. Look at his accents in Blood Diamond or Gangs of New York. He nails it. These two guys Nic and Christian completely blow it. It gets better towards the end of the film but come on guys, do your homework. Jeezus, it is so distracting and hard to get into a movie where the characters have clearly not done their homework.My overall feeling about this movie is very conflicted. I loved the story and loved the classical guitar piece that Nics' character recorded but, the accent thing I obviously cannot ignore. They should have done this movie with real Italians, Spaniards, and Germans and kept it real, or otherwise brought in an actor that does his homework like Leo Dicaprio. So there.. That is what I think, take it or leave it....

Kieran Wright OK, so what really, really frustrates me about this movie is that it could actually have been great. Let me start by saying that the book engaged me to the point where I got so frustrated with the two central characters - Captain Corelli and Pelagia - that I actually hurled the book at the wall. Rarely has any book touched me so deeply. You really get to know and love the characters. Therefore, to try and incorporate the book into just over two hours is just insane, as for one thing, you don't get the scale of this love affair which goes on over decades. When I found out that Nic Cage was to play the Captain, I was thrilled. When I then found out that Christian Bale was to play Mandras, John Hurt to play Pelagia's father and David Morrissey to play Weber, I was ecstatic and couldn't wait for the film to be completed. Effectively, all the right ingredients were there for this to be a classic. When I subsequently went to see the film, I was underwhelmed, annoyed and disappointed. The film actually looks beautiful but it only has about half the story in it. The development of the Carlos' character is sadly lacking. Major liberties have been taken with some of the central events in the book. For me, this should have been at least 200 minutes long in order to adequately do justice to the book. A Greek tragedy but not in the right way.

silverkissed When I first saw the trailer for this movie, I was under the impression that Nicolas Cage's character was an American soldier, and that Penelope Cruz was the Italian. This was thought because of Cage's horrific attempt at an Italian accent with the line "Bella bambina at 12 o'clock" (or something like that). I assumed he was trying to fake an accent to be silly as he was marching around what I thought was Italy. The accents were horrible, and as always, Penelope Cruz sounds like a squeaky chihuahua trying to squeeze out her lines. And lets not forget about Christian Bales accent, wow, sounded like he was trying to speak through a ball of cotton stuffed in his mouth. And if the accents weren't bad enough, during the love scene between Cage and Cruz, you get a glimpse of pit hair from not Cage, but Cruz! Maybe that was the norm for women in Greece back then, but that's not what just doesn't fly in a love scene these days. Put this DVD back on the shelf at the video store and walk right past, you can't get the wasted 2 hours of your life back.