Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Helllins It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Roman Sampson One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Michael Neumann A once famous Czech actress, fallen on hard times since emigrating to New York City in 1968, finds the strain of maintaining her professional integrity beginning to take its toll after too many humiliating off-Broadway auditions. But unlike its title character the film of the same name is (thankfully) far less neurotic, presenting a fresh mix of otherwise familiar narrative elements. It's part show-biz satire, part fish-out-of-water drama, and in large part a cross cultural variation of 'A Star Is Born', with the melancholy Anna sheltering an impoverished but attractive peasant girl from the Old Country (Paulina Porizkova) whose unexpected (and unsolicited) success begins to eclipse her mentor's own fading career. The relationship is given added resonance in the young protégé's naive ignorance of Prague Spring, giving the domestic show business story a richer European perspective, which no doubt came natural to screenwriter Agnieszka Holland, an accomplished filmmaker herself. But after having created such memorable characters (rewarded in the title role by a performance to match, from unlikely Oscar nominee Sally Kirkland) it's too bad Holland's script then had to settle for such an abrupt and artificial ending.

tavm Unable to sleep late at night, I got one of my brother's old VHS tapes and played something called Anna. This 20-year old movie made by European artists in America for the independent film company Vestron Pictures starred Sally Kirkland in the Oscar-nominated title role as a former Czech movie actress who's now struggling off-Broadway as an understudy for seven roles in an art-house play. Robert Fields plays her writer boyfriend Daniel, Steven Gilborn-who I remember as Kevin Arnold's math teacher in "The Wonder Years"-her ex-husband Tonda, and supermodel Paulina Porizkova is Krystyna-Anna's protégé. When I read the end credits, at the last name on the cast list was Francis' daughter Sofia Coppola as Noodle though I don't remember her or the character. Anyway, this movie began amusingly enough with Anna suffering an audition reciting a nursery rhyme while standing on one leg and shouting but as the film went on we feel for her as she suffers a breakdown after Krystyna steals Anna's life story for her own as she-with Anna's help-rises in stardom. Kirkland deserved her only Academy Award nomination that I felt was even better than the one who actually won in the Best Actress category that year: Cher in Moonstruck. Porizkova was also pretty good for her ingénue role as we see her and Kirkland initially bond. Since Vestron no longer exists, this movie may be difficult to find now but Anna is definitely worth a look.

George Parker Once a film star in Czechoslovakia, a middle-aged Anna has to settle for the humiliation of an off-Broadway understudy role only to watch her inexperienced and recently emigrated young protege (Porizkova) find sudden success in Hollywood. There is probably only one reason to watch "Anna", a clumsy slice-of-miserable-life story, and that is Kirkland's wonderful portrayal of her courageously vulnerable character. Likely to have only narrow appeal, "Anna" is a Czech flavored indie worth a look and a must see for Kirkland fans. C+

Richard Tasgal (tasgal) "Anna" is the movie with perhaps the greatest disparity between my opinion and everyone else's, so seems appropriate for my first comment on IMDb.Anna (Sally Kirkland) was a legendary actress in Czechoslovakia, and in New York suffers a career in shabby productions with avant garde or artistic pretensions. Krystyna (Paulina Porizkova), an immigrant from Czechoslovakia with acting aspirations, spends her first days on the streets of New York searching for Anna, fainting from hunger virtually on her doorstep. Anna takes her in, and they become intimate friends.Porizkova's Krystyna is as compellingly ambitious and wily as any of Werner Herzog's roles -- and this in an area calling for a subtler social sense. Krystyna seems not to be Anna's daughter, given up for adoption at a young age. But the malleability of memory -- Krystyna's in an obvious way, though perhaps also Anna's -- is treated more interestingly than in some of Agnieszka Holland's better known movies, such as "Olivier, Olivier" or "Europa, Europa." Almost as interesting as some real life cases: The erstwhile mental illness "fugue" comes to mind (see, for example, the Times Literary Supplement, 16 July 1999; as this is a movie database, I'll also point to "Paris, Texas" for a portrayal of the phenomenon). So does the case of Benjamin Wilkomirski. I could but won't extend this list.On the negative side, the description of Jewish life in New York is a mixture of inappropriately projected Christian norms and condescension (maybe due to unfamiliarity, or laziness of imagination).