savixa Unless you meet both of the following criteria: sex: W age: +60do not watch it!

gradyharp Writer/Director Giuseppe Tornatore ('Cinema Paradiso', 'The Legend of 1900', 'The Best Offer', 'Everybody's Fine') has created a love song to Italy, science, astronomy, writing as an art form, communication and that fragile love between an older professor and a student. In other's hands this combination may come saccharine and a silly treatise on life and whether we die or become part of the universe spirit. Tornatore makes it a sensitive and delicate poem of a film.Amy Ryan (Olga Kurylenko), a young student and stunt woman for films and Ed Phoerum (Jeremy Irons), a highly respected astrophysicist have an affair for 6 years, primarily an affair over distance. When Ed goes out of town, both of them keep in touch by text and video chats. All seems well and carries a light touch of humor as well as longing until Amy discovers Ed died 2 days back due to cancer. But still she receives messages and gifts under the name of Ed. Amy meets Ed's family (Shauna Macdonald, Oscar Sanders) and gradually assimilates with them. She ceases to feel lonely with the frequent input of videos she receives at strange intervals but remains surprised about the mysterious messages and gifts. How Amy copes with her life and how is Ed texting and sending gifts even after his death forms is brought to a satisfying if over long conclusion to the film. Ed suggests that she will find another man and very briefly in the end Amy encounters an old acquaintance Jason (Simon Anthon Johns), suggesting that Ed's last prediction will be fulfilled. Tornatore's writing includes some wonderful information about the stars and the theories of their life span as well as other Astronomical insights and mixes these with love poems that are radiant as delivered by both Irons and Kurylenko. Though the film opens with a passionate love scene we both hear in darkness and eventually see as the film progresses, the remainder of the film is a conversation via cell phone and video and for those of us who have problems with the obsession with those forms of interaction in today's society, Tornatore manages to soften the mechanical emptiness of their use.Ennio Morricone provides the musical score and Fabio Zamarion the exquisite photography of Italy, Scotland, and the UK. The film is in need of some editing but the spirit is there and Tornatore's little gem restores our faith that fine films are still being made.

Boristhemoggy If you like Olga, watch it for her. Shauna McDonald is wasted with a trivial part. Jeremy Irons, he's such an anachronism and he's fine for period dramas and parts that need pretentious Englishmen in them. Outside of that his skills are limited and his attraction non existent. Typical male fantasy of young beautiful woman loving an old man, and Irons makes me want to vomit with his 'love voice' where he speaks eloquently about his love for the beauty that he sees only rarely. So, he's a cheat, to his wife and to his kids. He's also one of the most banal and boring orators I've ever known and his constant talking as he reads the texts and she views his videos is enough to drive me mad. He dead but from beyond the grave all he does it try to control her and not let her grieve. And the final monologue? Oh dear God in heaven, probably one of the very worst in cinematic history.I absolutely wasted 2 hours of my life over this appalling film and although I was never a great fan of Irons, I'm put off him for life now. I'll never watch another film with him in again. Watch this if you love pretentious, boring movies that are as romantic as working overtime in an abattoir.

Sara S Years and years ago, Pier Paolo Pasolini would have solved this 116 minutes film with one sentence: "Death does not mean a lack of communication; it is the impossibility of being understood." And while this concept (twisted, distorted, disfigured) still remains interesting enough, Tornatore's prolix (plain redundant right there in the middle) writing swings between borderline creepy and full-on cheesy.Among the tear-jerking treacle, his pseudo-philosophical, re-adjusted to the contingency, take on astronomy -- dead stars and all -- is accurate and poetic enough, and really the only element (almost) giving the movie an appearance of tightness, thickness and consistency in its back and forth, back and forth rhythm.