Zen-2-Zen One question kept coming up while watching this. Why on Earth pay for so capable actors and then waste them on clumsy adaptation and catastrophic direction. We are talking Paul Newman, Robin Wright and Helen Hunt in one place, which will never happen again, and even Ed Harris is too good for this production.There is a reason why writers who don't write cinematic novels are normally nor allowed to write adaptations of their own work - they are in love with their own writing and turn a movie into an audio book.That's exactly what happened here. Long, unwieldy scenes with a narrator essentially reading the book and footage serving as a mere illustration. Doesn't HBO have anyone to review this stuff and keep sending it back to square one till it actually becomes cinematic. It even spells out book chapters and has things like "this will be in the latter chapter" which is plain pathetic.Good director can usually rectify this kind of mess but Fred Schepisi has shown such ineptitude that's it's painful to watch how he stumbles, neglects character development and uses multiple copies of prior sequences to the point that it becomes annoyingly noticeable. He also seems to be incapable to compose sequences of the right length to convey sub-plots. He either makes them ridiculously long and boring, all the way to having the book being read into your face, or he cuts them short, doesn't finish the park and makes the final cut look random.Particularly annoying aspect is that he doesn't have the first clue how to visually separate scenes that are long memories serving as sub plots from flashbacks (short and dramatic) and from the main/present scenes. They are all just equally flat, not even a change in the lighting or set decor to depict two different times.

TxMike "Empire Falls" is a fictional town along the river in Maine. (Several different Maine locations were used for the filming.) This town was originally settled by Algonquin Indians, but the Whiting family over the generations owned everything worth owning.Ed Harris plays the central character Miles Roby, who runs the local café owned by Francine Whiting (Joanne Woodward). Ms Woodward's real-life husband and perhaps the best actor of modern times, Paul Newman, plays the grizzled old dad Max Roby. Rounding out their family are Miles' brother David (Aidan Quinn) and Miles' daughter "Tick" (Danielle Panabaker). The estranged mother Janine is played by Helen Hunt, who divorcing from Miles is planning on marrying Walt Comeau (Dennis Farina) who claims he is in good shape for 50, but really is over 60 she eventually finds out. In this small town everyone knows everything about everybody, and word spreads fast.So, what's the story about? Roughly, Miles' being stuck in a rut, being predictable, and not being able to step out and take a risk. All the other characters affect him in some way. Even as a boy, seeing his mother develop a relationship with another man, because Max just wasn't there for anyone.Philip Seymour Hoffman is good as Charlie Mayne , the man who befriends Grace, Miles' mother, played well by Robin Wright Penn. There are lots of side stories, and that is why it takes a 4-hour movie to tell all of them well. Some involving the school kids. Some involving Max's quest to get to Key West, even though he was always broke. But most important are the ones that involve Ms Whiting, who promised Miles the café when she dies, but Miles could be in his 70s when that happened.MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW. The man who claimed to be Charlie Mayne was in reality CB Whiting, husband of Francine. While Max was in jail for a stint, CN fathered Miles' younger brother David, and when he returned the last time to Francine, wicked and controlling, he went out to the gazebo by the river and shot himself through the head. Miles eventually got fed up with Francine, took things into his own hands, broke out of his predictability, abandoned the café, and began his new life.Superb acting all around.

sacusanov As an acting smörgåsbord, few films of the last year compare to Empire Falls. And I mean Smorgasbord in the sense that not everything is of the same quality, but, damn, sometimes bounty is its own reward. Ed Harris is an actor who only ever plays a few notes in a film, and you have to go back over the films to see the breadth of his talent. Paul Newman seems to have gone out of his way to pick a role that expanded his body of work, but there are some scenes where you see the mechanism creaking. Helen Hunt takes a giant leap away from her solid and likable safe zone into the most unlikable and outrageous character in a film of unlikable and outrageous characters and somehow makes the character both the most real and sympathetic. She seems like an actor poised for artistic greatness, if only there were any roles out there for her to sink her teeth into.

Jay09101951 They go where they must, not where we want them to go. With those words from this totally terrific movie, you get touched for the 1st of many times in a simple movie about simple , plain people who like the rest of us, must struggle with the things like a difficult childhood, a bad marriage, feeling like your life didn't turn out they way you would have wished and all the other things that make life the up and down adventure it is. All of the acting is first-class, as good as any film made today. However, I must single out Ed Harris, Helen Hunt and Estelle Parsons who to me deserve Oscar nominations but of course won't get one in this made-for-HBO classic. This film is almost like therapy as one might identify their own troubles with some of the characters and see how they learned to overcome their troubles. I short, this is a real throw-back to the days 40-50 years ago when classics like this were common. This is a rare film for 2005.