- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
50It has a lovely score by Thomas Newman, stunning production design, striking costumes and gorgeous cinematography. Unfortunately, it just doesn't jell.
-
No matter how hard the filmmakers work their narrator (Geoffrey Rush, as Oscar's great-grandson), he can't make the damn thing explicable, much less bring it to life.
-
75Here there is a dry wit, generated between the well-balanced performances of Fiennes and Blanchett, who seem quietly delighted to be playing two such rich characters.
-
75Despite some obvious overplotting, Oscar and Lucinda is a mostly effective and often affecting motion picture that touches our hearts while daring our minds to balk at its implausible coincidences.
-
75In a sometimes misguided narrative, their scenes together are right on track -- they add lightness, even a shimmering hint of humour, to a symbol-laden drama. Theirs is a unique romance that has a sparrow's frail beauty -- it beats with a trembling, fluttering heart.
-
50While Blanchett glows with intelligence, passion and a quirky kind of beauty, the movie she is in fails her in a number of essential ways.
-
70Richly imagined and resolutely unpredictable, this dark and profoundly optimistic paean to passion -- for glass, for horses, for the thrill of the moment after a coin is flipped but before it falls -- is held together by Gillian Armstrong's solid direction and by strong, if occasionally strident, performances from Fiennes and newcomer Blanchett.
-
50There's a lot of talent in this offbeat drama about two odd balls from Down Under, but somehow all the pieces don't quite fit together.
-
89Keeping with the spirit of its lead characters, Oscar and Lucinda is a movie best met with a gambler's faith: You may not be certain what it means in the end, but its magnificent payoff is nevertheless a sure thing.
-
91It exchanges the narrative fluidity of the page for visual composition of such strong beauty that the slowness of the storytelling becomes its own eccentric strength.
-
90As directed exquisitely by Gillian Armstrong in a headstrong spirit that recalls her debut feature, "My Brilliant Career," this elliptical tale makes up in visual beauty whatever it lacks in universal meaning.
-
90Its business is to turn sure-thing expectations into a game of chance, and provide us with that rarity--a genuinely eccentric yet deeply insinuating film.
-
90Armstrong and Jones smoothly navigate the magical tale through numerous shocking twists and turns until they bring it to a most logical, emotionally satisfying conclusion.
-
80It accumulates weight as it goes along, ultimately becoming as thoughtful and emotionally involving as it is beautiful to behold.
-
70Whatever the reason, Oscar and Lucinda winds up feeling like a collection of bits in search of vision and an emotional surge.
-
50One reason why it disappoints is that it comes across as more the work of screenwriter Laura Jones ("An Angel at My Table," "The Portrait of a Lady," "A Thousand Acres"), who's lately been specializing in high-minded literary adaptations, than of Armstrong, who tends to do better and more nuanced work with more intimate and domestic material (e.g., "The Last Days of Chez Nous," "Little Women").
-
40As to be expected, it's all very beautiful; too bad it's also often annoying, save for a heartbreaking final half-hour.
-
50Armstrong is usually a strong and original director of actors (her 1979 "My Brilliant Career" launched the inimitable Judy Davis). But here, her taste seems to have deserted her. [31Dec1997 Pg.30]
-
50The film version is gorgeous to look at and contains amusing performances from Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett in the title roles. But it fails to get inside the minds of gamblers as Peter Carey so admirably did in his Booker Prize-winning novel.
-
50But for an epic set up to trace two life stories, there's a lack of dramatic focus, and the leads fail to evince any particular chemistry as friends who come to have a deeper emotional connection. [31Dec1997 Pg.02.D]
-
90Flawless contributions by Armstrong's crew make Oscar and Lucinda a vibrant period piece, buoyant yet incisive, and easily sustaining interest, if not generating deep involvement, throughout a just-under two-hour running time. [31Dec1997 Pg.8]
-
50Oscar and Lucinda seems like the perfect story for director Gillian Armstrong, that of a free-spirited proto-feminist chafing at the strictures of tight-laced colonial Australia. But in the end, she's created a beautiful but annoying Victorian-era melodrama. [30Jan1998 Pg.D.06]
User Score
tbd
No user score yet- Awaiting 1 more rating
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 1 out of 1
-
Mixed: 0 out of 1
-
Negative: 0 out of 1
-
Vocecita8I like this movie. Excellent performances by Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchet.