RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Twilightfa Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

mraculeated The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

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.

darken-4 I came to this film fairly late. Anyone who loves Maggie Smith or enjoys movies with romantic European settings should have an opportunity to understand what they are getting. Beautiful settings, nice camera-work, believable characters, nicely stitched together story until we get close to the end when the main character (was this the directors intention???) reveals that she has a serious problem with alcohol, so much so that it puts a bizarre & uncomfortable twist to a scene in the uncle's bedroom in which we see a boozed up post-cougar woman who appears to expose herself & throw herself at an unwilling & terrified victim. A whole scene that is oiled by the bottle of booze she is cradling. My main question at the end of the film is why this uncle would surrender his beautiful niece to the tender mercies of an old woman who smokes too much & is clearly an alcoholic with a load of unresolved issues. A strange & unsettling ending.

Philby-3 It is interesting that Chris Cooper should show up in this glossy HBO production (as an uptight American college professor) – he was later to play a leading role in "Adaptation", Charlie Kaufman's brilliant and quirky take on the perils of adapting fine literary properties to the silver screen. What seems to have happened here is that two veteran TV hacks, Richard Loncraine and Hugh Whitemore have got hold of an elegiac novella by the fine Anglo-Irish author William Trevor and turned it into something suitable for Sunday night HBO TV audiences. I was going to say "mush", but that would do a disservice to the cast, who are excellent, and the great location shooting. Definitely though, this film is less that the sum of its parts and much of the poignancy of Trevor's novella has been lost. Yet apart from the final scenes the producers have stuck fairly closely to Trevor's storyline, and Maggie Smith in particular manages to create a character, Emily Delahunty, at least recognizable from the novel, a vibrant but rather hollowed out survivor of a tough and colourful life.It is 1987 (according to the novella, anyway – the film is a bit vaguer about time) and Mrs Delahunty "56 years old" lives in Umbria where she lets out rooms in her magnificent country villa and churns out "Romance novels" a la Barbara Cartland. She is unlucky enough to be caught in a bomb explosion on the Roma-Milano express which kills several passengers in her compartment (though no-one else). Recovering in hospital she invites the survivors back to her villa, where she (and they) are looked after by her staff, including her general factotum, an eccentric Irishman called Quinty (Timothy Spall. The survivors are an elderly English gent, called the General (Ronnie Barker), a young German man with severe burns, Werner (Otlar in the book and played here by Benno Furmann) and Aimee (Emmy Clarke), a beautiful eight year old, who is physically unharmed but unable to speak after her parents have died in the explosion. The healing effects of the landscape and good living restore the spirits of the survivors but then Aimee's uptight pill of an uncle (Chris Cooper) arrives to take her back to America. Mrs Delahunty, haunted both by dreams of her own past and other things, tries desperately to keep Aimee. In the meantime the Italian plod, in the person of Inspector Girotti (Giancarlo Gianini) is investigating the bomb blast, and the finger of suspicion is pointing at Werner.I won't reveal the ending but pretty obviously it is at variance with the book's. If it had followed the book, this would have been a minor gem. As it was made, it is indeed further evidence of the perils of the adaptation of literary properties to film. The acting's faultless, the scenery lovely, but the ending's a cop-out.

MarieGabrielle This film, while the theme has been done, has a cadence and beauty to it. Maggie Smith as romance writer Emily Delahunty is sympathetic and believable, a woman who survived many travails in Europe, including childhood abuse. She comes out of it okay, and is now the hostess to five other victims of a terrorist attack, the only survivors on board the train.The child Amy becomes autistic, and Dr Innocenti attempts to help her, and much debate is over where she should be returned. To the U.S. to her uncle? (Riversmith, very well done by Chris Cooper). An anal- retentive professor who, while at dinner discusses his career. The habits of the red carpenter ant. His wife, he emphasizes, has a completely different line of work. She studies the black carpenter ant. The expressions on some of the guest's faces are priceless.There are a few patchy areas, the detective Giancarlo Gianinni, inquiring about the terrorists, this part of the story is never really fleshed out for the audience. There is an embarrassing scene with Smith drunk on wine and Riversmith is repulsed by her. It is sad, as she is merely a kind, older, and lonely woman.Overall a curious story, with beautiful shots of Siena and Umbria. Good performances especially by Smith and Chris Cooper. Do not miss. 9/10.

moviemaster I gave this movie a generous "6", although it is so uneven that it probably deserves less. Yes, Maggie Smith is good to great.... and most of the acting is good. But the plot meanders badly. Plus, Mrs. Delahunty has a curious gift... her dreams are visualizations of reality, or as close as she ever come to it. This was an aspect which could have been used to much better advantage. As it was, we just assumed the dreams were just her fantasies after another drunken binge. Werner's character is complex and of course one suspects him immediately... he's the only one who could have any reason to blow up a train. But does someone who wants to blow up a plane (ooops, they got the wrong vehicle) just camp out at a palatial country home, planting flowers... or rather would he try to escape back to Germany? Would Mrs. Delahunty continue to embrace him even though she knows he's a monster? But it's worth it to watch Maggie Smith. She gives, for the most part, a very nuanced performance.