Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Matylda Swan It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Fulke Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Maddyclassicfilms Directed by Richard Attenborough,this 2007 tale of loss and friendship is touching and boasts a fine cast. Sadly there's not a lot else making this worth a look.Belfast,Ireland 1991,on a hill two men find the wreckage of a crashed World War Two American bomber plane and the elder of the two,Quinlan(Pete Postlethwaite)remembers the event and not being able to help the airmen involved.They also discover an inscribed ring which the younger man,Jimmy(Martin McCann)decides to return to the wife of the dead crew member.Branagan,Michigan,1991,Ethel Ann(Shirley MacLaine)and her best friend Jack(Christopher Plummer)attend the funeral of Ethel's husband Chuck,a former US airman.Her daughter Marie(Neve Campbell)is devastated by the loss,however Ethel doesn't seem so saddened.She and Jack know that she really loved someone else all these years.During the war the young Ethel(Mischa Barton)was married to airman Teddy Gordon(Stephen Amell)and along with Chuck(David Alpay)and Jack(Gregory Smith)the four were an inseparable group.However when Teddy was shot down and killed,Ethel shut down emotionally and later she married Chuck with Jack left on the sidelines also in love with her.So we've got the war,a love affair striving to overcome big challenges,and some IRA action thrown in as well.Sadly not even Richard Attenborough or his cast can disguise the fact that this is afternoon movie material,with an extra slice of cheese on top.While MacLaine,Plummer and Campbell are superb the script is riddled with clichés and you'll see where it's going ages before it's over. It is enjoyable thanks to the cast just don't expect too much from this and you may enjoy it.

hall895 Closing the Ring opens in a small Michigan town in 1991 with the funeral of a World War II veteran. The dearly departed man's daughter delivers a poignant eulogy to a church full of veterans. It is obvious that this man was rather beloved. But curiously the wife of the deceased seems not at all interested in the proceedings. She's not even in the church, rather sitting outside smoking a cigarette. When offered condolences she acknowledges that her husband was a good man. But she says she won't miss him. She appears to be not the slightest bit bereaved, content to sit there and wait for them to wheel her dead husband out. Obviously there is something going on here that we're not aware of. And we spend the rest of the film jumping back and forth across fifty years of time and across an ocean as long-buried secrets are revealed and everything becomes clear.The newly widowed woman we meet in the opening scene is Ethel Ann. And after the funeral we are transported back to a much happier time. It's 1941 and young Ethel Ann is in love with a young farmer named Teddy. Complicating matters is the fact that Teddy's not the only one who loves the beautiful, vibrant Ethel Ann. His two close friends Jack and Chuck have a thing for her as well. But she's Teddy's girl. Everybody knows that, everybody accepts that. So Teddy and Ethel Ann should be destined to live happily ever after. But Teddy, Jack and Chuck will soon be going off to war. And lives will be changed. We begin to understand how the young Ethel Ann, so full of life, could become the old Ethel Ann, utterly defeated by life, whom we saw in the film's beginning.The story constantly jumps back and forth in time from the 1940s to 1991. And it also jumps back and forth between Michigan and Northern Ireland. It is in Belfast in 1991, set against the backdrop of the IRA blowing things up, where the second key strand of the plot unfolds. An old man named Quinlan and a naive young teen named Jimmy dig up the wreckage of a B-17 which crashed there decades ago during the war. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the Teddy/Ethel Ann story and the Quinlan/Jimmy story are somehow intertwined. With all the skipping around in time and place the movie does have a bit of a challenge sustaining its momentum. It's a movie of fits and starts. But ultimately it works.The movie is helped by a generally excellent cast. Shirley MacLaine, playing the older version of Ethel Ann, and Christopher Plummer, portraying the one character who knows Ethel Ann's secrets, are nominally the leads and they're quite good in their roles. But it's really more of an ensemble piece. Mischa Barton as the young Ethel Ann makes a very good impression. Neve Campbell as Ethel Ann's daughter and Pete Postlethwaite as old Quinlan are good as well. And Martin McCann captures Jimmy's wide-eyed naiveté perfectly. Stephen Amell seems a little forced and unnatural in playing the young Teddy but that's the only minor quibble with the cast.The story is a good one, very sentimental and told in a unique way. You get the sense the movie would benefit from a second viewing. Once you have all the times and places sorted out in your head you could probably appreciate the story even more. As it is, on a first run through, the story is a little confusing at times. There's a lot going on, at times maybe a little bit too much. Did we really need the IRA storyline for example? In the end I guess that plot point serves its purpose in helping the story to get itself to the finish line. But along the way it slows things down and adds another layer of confusion to the mix. In the end though all's well that ends well. Everything does finally come together well enough to make this an ultimately satisfying movie, an overlooked little gem.

phd_travel First of all this movie is worth watching. A historical film with a good director and attractive cast are the redeeming qualities.Mischa is lovely and her young beaus are fresh faced and earnest. It's a bit of a stretch having Shirley McLaine as her older self. Neve Campbell's character is annoying and she is too sulky looking.The storyline is a little over ambitious and confusing. The story should have been told without so much flashbacks - it was confusing because so much time and incidents and places are covered. Also the WWII element is a little bit of a let down since no real action takes place its just an accident in Ireland. Maybe it was too much ground to cover with the IRA storyline as well but they were trying for an epic.

TxMike Shirley MacLaine over her years has quietly gone about her business as one of the best actresses ever to grace the screen. She does it without much fanfare but is flat out good. Here she is Ethel Ann, in her 70s in 1991, at her long-time husband's funeral. But she seems detached, not only from the ceremony itself, but the rest of the world. Even Neve Campbell as her daughter Marie can't figure out what is going on.At the same time a couple of men far away in Belfast, Northern Ireland are spending their spare time rooting around the hillside outside town, salvaging bits and pieces of an American B47 airplane that had crashed there nearly 50 years earlier. We suspect there is a connection between this plane crash and Ethel Ann's unresolved issues.This is a good movie with very little "action" but a good story with fine acting. Christopher Plummer is her same-age friend Jack. The movie is told in both present 1990s time and 1940s time, cutting back and forth as appropriate. Mischa Barton is the young Ethel Ann in the 1940s, friends with young soldiers as they prepare to go to war as pilots and crew members.SPOILERS FOLLOW: Ethel Ann had fallen in love with a young enlisted man, Chuck, who was building a house and told her it was for her. Even though he was shipping out, as a gunner, they had a ceremony and got "married" by a seminary student, but was not a legally recognized union. Still, they had a gold ring engraved inside with her name, and Chuck carried it with him on his mission. Chuck was killed in that plane crash, due to faulty navigation in bad weather, but Ethel Ann never received proof that he died. She had still held hope all those years that the "love of her life" had somehow survived, and never really loved or committed to the husband she was burying at the beginning of the movie. Only when the Irish men found the wedding band in the dirt of the hillside, and brought it to her, was she able to move forward with her life.