| 100 |
New York Post
It ranks among Robert Altman's best work ever, and that its many satisfactions derive in large part from a superbly written screenplay by Julian Fellowes that has no equal this year.
|
| 100 |
The New York Times
A virtuoso ensemble piece to rival the director's "Nashville" and "Short Cuts" in its masterly interweaving of multiple characters and subplots.
|
| 100 |
LA Weekly
At his best, Altman turns us into interlopers who have stumbled into a world that seems to predate us and persuades us it will continue to teem with life long after we leave the theater.
|
| 100 |
The New Yorker
Altman achieves his dream of a truly organic form, in which everyone is connected to everyone else, and life circulates around a central group of ideas and emotions in bristling orbits. [14 Jan 2002, p. 92]
|
| 100 |
USA Today
The movie is so fun that it wouldn't need the mystery to be top-notch entertainment.
|
| 100 |
Chicago Sun-Times
At a time when too many movies focus every scene on a $20 million star, an Altman film is like a party with no boring guests.
|
| 100 |
Slate
The exhilaration is slow to build. It doesn't come from any one thing but from countless crosscurrents, tiny bits of color that fill out the portrait.
|
| 100 |
Rolling Stone
Gosford Park abounds in scenes to savor. It's a feast, and one of Altman's best.
|
| 100 |
Christian Science Monitor
This territory is familiar if you remember the great BBC miniseries "Upstairs Downstairs," but Altman gives it a new twist with his restlessly roaming camera and incisively satirical approach. He's still near the peak of his powers.
|
| 100 |
New York Magazine
A love affair between performer and filmmaker. The director shows off his ardor by eliciting from his actors aspects of their gifts that they themselves may not have known they had.
|
| 100 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
In the best Altman manner there are no real heroes and villains, only people trapped by their vanity and ambition and the straitjackets of classism.
|
| 100 |
Boston Globe
Never has a film taken such relish in between-the-wars malice as Gosford Park.
|
| 100 |
Chicago Tribune
It's a scintillating comedy-drama and one of Altman's most richly moving and entertaining pictures.
|
| 91 |
Entertainment Weekly
The movie might almost be winking at the fact that any single one of these performers could easily be the featured star of his or her own upper-crust period piece.
|
| 90 |
Variety
Taking advantage of a splendid cast, a sharply focused script and the fresh English setting, "Gosford Park" emerges as one of the most satisfying of Robert Altman's numerous ensemble pictures.
|
| 90 |
New Times (L.A.)
Altman's technique also allows his huge cast to act up a storm, in the best sense. Gosford Park has roughly half the best actors in England in it.
|
| 90 |
Washington Post
Without hesitation, I hand the comic award to Smith. She plays a pinched guest known as Constance, Countess of Trentham, to such a hilarious tee, her tee runneth over.
|
| 90 |
Wall Street Journal
A wickedly astute and beautiful comedy of manners-cum-murder mystery, it's too dense, and occasionally confusing, to grasp fully the first time around. How lucky, then, that it's also too much fun to see just once.
|
| 90 |
Salon.com
Isn't much more than marvelous entertainment -- but then, that's a lot right there.
|
| 90 |
Los Angeles Times
It's the style of the thing, not the plot, that is the attraction here, the great way the cast has with the snarky dialogue.
|
| 90 |
Chicago Reader
There are even more characters of interest here than in "Nashville."
|
| 88 |
Miami Herald
So deliciously absorbing and well done.
|
| 88 |
Baltimore Sun
What a relief to see a movie in which an audience responds with peals of laughter to subtle facial shifts as well as punch lines.
|
| 88 |
New York Daily News
No matter which floor you're on, the huge cast is extraordinary, and Altman gives the actors free rein to bring their characters to life despite such close quarters.
|
| 80 |
Washington Post
It's a very funny movie in that sniffy Brit way.
|
| 80 |
Newsweek
A fine, well-groomed entertainment, but the road it takes has already been well paved.
|
| 80 |
Village Voice
As with Altman's best movies, Gosford Park is above all an entrancing hum of atmosphere and texture.
|
| 80 |
Film Threat
We have an authentic Old Master working in our midst, and Gosford Park will at the very least remind everyone how masterful a helmsman Altman can be.
|
| 78 |
Austin Chronicle
It isn't about where you get, but how you get there -- and the getting there is a chewy delight.
|
| 75 |
Charlotte Observer
Qualifies as a solid double, maybe a triple.
|
| 75 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
At its best it is one of the most dynamic movies from a most dynamic filmmaker, now 76.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Carla Meyer
A British costume film that's funny but not at all fusty.
|
| 50 |
TV Guide
Such a glorious cast, deployed to such trivial effect!
|
| 30 |
Time
Tedium overwhelms caring well before this endless film finally concludes.
|
