sebkarlsson First the good: the actors can't be faulted and neither can the cinematography. The bad: everything else! Scenes are not introduced and leave you guessing as to who is whom, what lead to these events - why was the brother in jail in the final scene; how did he get there? Filled with random scenes that didn't add to the storyline, the movie also had strange back and forth scenes that felt pointless. Worst of all is the music. It made it feel like a horror flick. I suppose they were going for 'angst' when instead it jarred with the context. Hugely disappointed in what could have been a good movie. I will look out for the director to make sure I avoid his movies in the future!

gavin6942 The familiar tragic story of Vincent van Gogh (Tim Roth) is broadened by focusing as well on his brother Theodore (Paul Rhys), who helped support Vincent. The movie also provides a nice view of the locations which Vincent painted.There is no overstating the acting talents of Tim Roth. While American audiences may not have really noticed him until "Reservoir Dogs", he had been acting since 1982 and this film may have been his first great role. He makes Vincent his own, fully becoming the character.Robert Altman had a great decade in the 1970s, slumped a bit in the 1980s, but came back hard in the 1990s with this one. He was a master and utilized Roth to the fullest.

Michael Neumann Robert Altman's flawed but compelling biography wants to explore the gap dividing creativity and commerce, but outside of a few temper tantrums the troubled relationship between the two Van Gogh siblings never quite finds the elusive balance between the business of art and the art of business. Brother Theo, the dealer whose passion for Vincent's work was equaled only by his inability to find a market for it, is presented in the role of Jekyll to his brother's unstable Hyde, and the tension of their mutual dependence on each other is reflected in a pair of dynamic performances. Both are shown to be equally neurotic and compulsive, but Altman clearly identifies with the under-appreciated artist, introduced in a stunning prologue contrasting his poverty with a multi-million dollar posthumous auction of one of his paintings. Altman can't sustain the same energy over the film's punishing 140-minute length, and his portrait of the artist can only take us as close as the brushstrokes on one of Vincent's canvasses. But if nothing else the unique cinematic style is unlikely to displease the director's many admirers, who at the time had been waiting for him to make a genuine film again.

Cosmoeticadotcom Vincent & Theo, a 1990 film by director Robert Altman, may be the worst film ever made by a major director who has made a great film. Watching this two hour and twenty minute abomination left me, and my wife, stunned by its wretchedness. From the nonexistent narrative, to the indulgence of every artistic cliché imaginable by screenwriter Julian Mitchell, to possibly the worst soundtrack, by Gabriel Yared, ever used in a film (even worse than the estimably bad Robot Monster!), it's a wonder Altman ever crawled his way out from under the odium of this horrorshow, the nadir of his career- even more so than Popeye a decade before. Yet, his very next film, The Player, somehow relaunched his career. If I can indulge a cliché, maybe it really can be darkest before the dawn! I have still yet to see a successful film made on the life of a real artist, where all the clichés were not utilized. Perhaps the closest to that ideal was Amadeus, save for the fact that its protagonist was not Mozart, but Salieri, and the story was the latter's envy of the former's talent, and the truth was that that whole film was an almost total fiction.This film, however, does not even address the artistic impulse, and the paintings, which is the ONLY reason anyone gives a damn about Vincent Van Gogh, his suffering, or even his brother. Altman states, in the featurette, that what interested him were Vincent's letters to Theo, yet we NEVER get a hint of what they say, only one ridiculously melodramatic scene where a raving Theo bitches at his wife's opening up of the letters.Altman's always been at his best in ensemble pieces, like Nashville, M*A*S*H, The Player, and Gosford Park. He seems utterly adrift in this intense de facto two person stage play where both actors wildly overact, as if they were in a Roger Corman 1960s comic-horror version of Lust For Life, save with British accents, not Dutch.Vincent & Theo is a horrible film, in its own stolid way as bad as Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan or Schindler's List, but it seems even worse because Spielberg's never come within a light year of a film as complex as Nashville. There is no progression nor insight into Vincent Van Gogh in this film, nor even his brother. When the brothers die we do not care, nor do we have an iota of insight into Altman's ideas on life and art. Vincent's graffiti that 'I AM THE HOLY SPIRIT. I AM WHOLE IN SPIRIT.' are not only dull and trite, but not given a shred of evidence one way nor the other by Altman. I could go on and on, and list a few dozen other reasons why this is easily Altman's worst film, and a terrible film, period, but hopefully I've earned enough trust with my readership that I can tell them to simply skip this one and watch Lust For Life instead. It's a better film, and more intellectually honest, to boot. OK, exhale!