Libramedi Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

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

Wyatt There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

richardmarquis-149-126832 Since this is a film of The CHIMNEYS of Green Knowe, any reviewer mistaking it for the CHILDREN of Green Knowe will naturally be disappointed. I saw the 1980s series The Children of Green Knowe, and I loved it. It inspired me to go out to the house outside of Cambridge (where I live) where Lucy M Boston lived, and I loved that too. But this film had a much more exciting story to tell, and a much more wonderful cast to tell it through, and I thought the screenplay and direction by Julian Fellowes were perfect, as were the performances, especially those of Alex Etel and Maggie Smith. For some reason I never read the Green Knowe books as a child, so I came to the TV adaptations (both the 80s series and this masterful new one) fresh, and could enjoy them without preconceptions. Although I love Julian Fellowes' Downton Abbey very much, it has never moved me the way From Time To Time has. I wept happily throughout the last twenty minutes, and I am a large hairy tweed-clad old man with a bristling moustache and (I'm told) a somewhat forbidding manner. It introduced me to a whole new world, or several worlds, all so life-like that it was like inhabiting them myself. It is late now, I am going to bed soon, and I hope to dream myself back to it.

HillstreetBunz When I saw the writer/director was Julian Fellowes, and the cast included his 'Downton' alumni Hugh Bonneville and the ever fabulous Maggie Smith, not to mention such great British actors as Dominic West(of 'The Wire'fame) and Pauline Collins ('Shirley Valentine' herself)and the perennially interesting Timothy Spall (Secrets & Lives) it seemed that all the omens were good....For me though it only went to show that success as a writer does not automatically translate into success as a Director. The great writer was unable to let go of the desire to tell the story as if it were being 'read'. Everything was articulated (Pauline Collins character at one point almost iterating her own movements out loud ('I think i will just move this cup from her'...we know, we can see you moving the cup!).The juvenile 'slave' character had an absurdly modern American accent (and a rather refined one for such a character) and only Maggie Smith seemed able to rise above the poor direction (naturally). The story idea has merit, but for Ghost story it lacked atmosphere, and the language was clunky. The characters were often stereotypical and one dimensional, no wonder this movie disappeared as soon as it was released!

Leofwine_draca This rather uninvolving time-slip film was made by Julian Fellowes to use sets and cast members left over from his popular period TV drama, DOWNTON ABBEY. It's ostensibly an adaptation of a '50s children's book called The Children of Green Knowe, about a boy living during the Second World War who finds a way to travel back into the lives of those in Regency England. I remembering seeing a Children's BBC adaptation of the same book, made back in the 1980s, and it was a hundred times more successful than this production: spooky, creepy with a genuine sense of wonder.FROM TIME TO TIME is subdued and subtle throughout. It has a decent cast and a not-bad script, but it lacks the oomph to make it memorable. There's nothing spectacular or scary here, and the atmosphere is non-existent. The biggest fault lies in the casting of Alex Etel as the teenage protagonist; he makes for one of the most unlikeable child leads I've ever seen. The supporting cast, including such luminaries as Timothy Spall, Maggie Smith, Dominic West, Carice van Houten and Hugh Bonneville, is excellent, but none of the actors are what you could call stretched and the story plays out with nary a twist in sight.

clarissat Of all the things which irritate me when watching films of books which I have read the one which irritates me most is the script writer who thinks s/he can improve on the original. Of course a very long book has to lose characters and sub-plots, but "The Chimneys of Green Knowe" is not a long book, and for every character lost Julian Fellowes has invented a new one. I have great respect for Julian Fellowes as an original screen writer, but the arrogance with which he has sought to 'improve' on Lucy Boston's novel really sets my teeth on edge. I suspect that someone who has never read the original will thoroughly enjoy this film, but the book is much better and much more subtle in both the relationships between the characters and the nature of the 'ghosts' which Julian Fellowes has made so much more conventional than Lucy Boston's unusual take on the nature of time and mutability.