areatw '84 Charing Cross Road' is a slow and simple but enjoyable film that relies solely on a great script and strong acting. It is surprising how a film with such a basic plot can be just as, if not even more enjoyable that mega-budget films crammed with action and special effects.This film isn't for everyone, in fact it will probably only appeal to those who prefer their films on the subtle and slow side. Whilst not a film I would consider among my favourites, '84 Charing Cross Road' can be appreciated for its emphasis on script and character and its effective portrayal of friendship.With little plot or direction, this film is still an enjoyable and ideal way to pass the time. It will probably be favoured by older audiences who are more likely to see past the the lack of plot and action and appreciate the film for what it is.

Neil Welch Just after World War II, impoverished New York writer Helene Hanff (Anne Bancroft) takes to writing to London booksellers Marks & Co at 84 Charing Cross Road in pursuit of cheap used books. Her irreverent correspondence comes as a breath of fresh air to Marks' manager Frank Doel (Anthony Hopkins), and the English end of the correspondence gradually becomes less stuffy as Helene's correspondence opens up to include all the shop's staff and their families.The book comprises the letters between Hanff, Doel, and the other people involved. The film does a pretty good job of dramatising what is essentially no more than the contents of those letters. The story is gentle and nostalgic, starting just after the war and lasting about 20 years, chronicling the growing friendship between Hanff and Doel, punctuated by her ongoing (and constantly thwarted) attempts to get to London to meet her friends.I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and it was no surprise that I enjoyed this film too.

jzappa I suppose liking or appreciating 84 Charing Cross Road comes down to what one goes to movies to see. This is the case with any movie, obviously, but for any number of kids disappointed by reaching into the trick-or-treat bag and coming up with a granola bar, there are some who like the granola. 84 Charing Cross Road is cinematic granola. It's no Indiana Jones or Casablanca, but that's not to say there's no sense of wonder or adventure. To some viewers, a film about the love of reading and relationship through written correspondence has that. It may not sound like it, but consider that you can't make a movie about people writing to each other and liking or disliking books unless it's about the situations they're in as they write each other, what causes them to do so, and how their passion for literature defines their lives.The characters in this film are indeed human beings, probably more like the people watching it than is the case with most other movies. How implausibly eventful does a person's life have to be without being interesting or emotionally fulfilling? However slight the story arguably is, Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins are nevertheless deeply connected to the people it's about. Emotion and impulse on a salt-of-the-earth human level are the very wheelhouse of Bancroft. Her ability to be emotionally free and available to various nuances of feeling is key to her talent.There is not one false moment in the whole movie. For the invariably impeccable Sir Anthony Hopkins, he gives his performance the texture of real life with the spontaneity and idiosyncrasy of every one of his transitions, every one of his reactions to every emotional event. And though her role is small, Dame Judi Dench is given the difficult task of being there for many of the emotional events in her husband Hopkins' life, and does it modestly, sparingly, realistically and completely in the daintiest handful of scenes.I can argue in favor of 84 Charing Cross Road on a logical level, but at the same time, I still can't say there's anything profound for me to grab onto when I watch it, which is what I tend to desire from pared down human stories. The story blossoms into a chronicle of a beautiful little relationship that leaves a lasting imprint on the lives involved, my experience was that what happens is just life. No situation seems challenging enough to be anything more than the natural progression of the contact between two uneventful people. But that can also be considered a credit to the film. It seems designed to be for someone in particular, not everyone. You can maybe argue that if it were for everybody, it would then be for nobody in particular. Because it speaks to the tastes of a select audience who would be moved by this tale, and because it's thoroughly effective on that level of integrity, it's destined to be a cherished little critic-proof installment in their personal home entertainment collections.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU Anyone who knows London knows and loves Charing Cross Road that has been able to resist any kind or urban change, even recent urban renovation, since I first stepped into it in 1960. I have walked it up to Tottenham Court Station and Road and down to Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery more often than Champs Elysées in Paris or Broadway in New York. It is for me one street I love discovering every single time I am in London with all its book stores, Covent Garden on one side and Soho on the other side, Leicester square on that other side, and the National gallery at the bottom of the street not to speak of Saint Martin's in the Fields and its underground crypt where you can eat with the ghosts. Fifty years haunting that place, that road, its shops, theaters, churches and left or right hinterlands. The Strand next to it is nothing and I can live without ever setting one toe of one foot in it, but Charing Cross Road… This film is thus nostalgic about what it was, and still is, in spite of the death of two people and the closing of Marks books that I actually visited before it closed, or it might be another one, they were and are all just as beautiful and intriguing. But the film is not about nostalgia for some place you have visited and loved, not even a person you have loved and lived with in a way or another, but about a service you can only get from true secondhand bookstores because they don't sell books but they sell the books they love and cherish to people who love and cherish them just the same. These secondhand bookstores and booksellers have a charm that is not only quaint but is like an accomplice-ship in the crime of loving books, old books, beautiful books, books that have been used, visited and read by what we imagine are hundreds of people. The last book I got from England is from the University Library of Leeds, still with its barcode, its number, its Reference tag, its "not to be borrowed" tag and a book that was published in 1960, precisely, fifty years ago, a book no one can find any more except in university libraries and I have it on my desk, as if I had borrowed it and forgotten to give it back and left the country with it. That's what a second hand book is, and that's what this film is trying to make you feel by exploring the feelings of the bookseller and the customer, one in New York and the other in London, sharing (a perfect word for Charing Cross Street) the love of old books and the hunt and chase for them and the pleasure of a capture that can never be planned out and foreseen. No one can imagine what it means to hold an original edition of Walter Scott's novels and the communion with all those who have turned the fragile pages. Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins are rendering these feelings intertwined with real events from 1949 to the early 1960s, care packages and one coronation, plus plenty of New Year celebrations and Christmases, and we feel that spiritual love adventure among several grownups who will never meet and who are bringing together emotions and passions all connected to those books and the help one can bring to all the others in their hopes and sufferings. You will definitely see more of London than New York but London is the main character brought to life by two great actors and a sweet story.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID