CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

kosmasp A bunch of great actors portraying a bunch of great writers (plus a publicist, though that would be an understatement for the role he played). As you can imagine the acting is superb, male and female talent have a lot to bite and chew off with their roles. The dialog is great and I was surprised this didn't do better or was promoted better (at least in Germany).Then again it's not an easy watch, what with lots of dialog and drama. But the tension it builds (especially concerning the relationships of the characters within) is really great. Flaws are here to be exposed and the actors cherish them, playing them perfectly. It's a period piece and therefor may interest some people more than others. But if you like good drama, you could do worse

Robert J. Maxwell It's difficult to make a movie about a writer. After all, the only thing they do is sit there and write. Look at the disaster that was "Hemingway and Gelhorn," with Big Ernie played by Groucho Marx. Or "Julia," with Jane Fonda throwing a typewriter through the window. There's the soap opera about F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Beloved Infidel." I mention "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" only in passing.This effort to capture Thomas Wolfe the way he captured metaphors is more successful than the others. And his writing isn't just alluded to; it's integrated meaningfully into the plot. I haven't read any of his novels. They do go on. Ars longa, vita brevis. But I did skim some shorter work of his many years ago and, without at all trying to, I had one of his more striking images burned into some long-term memory cell -- something about a setting sun over Brooklyn hanging in the sky "like a hot copper penny." It ain't bad.Neither are the performances, all of which clear the bar. Nicole Kidman is Tom Wolfe's married lover who has sustained him over the rough patches. He discards her when he no longer needs her, but who can blame him? A theater person, she is hysterical half the time and rude the other half. She gobbles pills in a fake suicide attempt and pulls a pistol on docile Max Perkins. It all began to remind me of my marriage. Guy Pearce has a small role as a distraught F. Scott Fitzgerald and is perhaps a bit robust for the part. Laura Linney is fine but doesn't have much to do as Perkins' wife.The film belongs to Colin Firth as Max Perkins, the editor as Scribner's publishing house, and to Jude Law as the passionate, loud, Byronic Thomas Wolfe, shouting ecstatically, waving his arms about, recklessly drunk. His prose is, as they say, sheer poetry. But he has a genuine problem with his writing. Everything he writes goes on too long. If a minor character makes an appearance, say, a railway porter, Wolfe gives us his whole life story. Perkins' job is to winnow the prose until it's golden. When discussing the fourth chapter of one of the novels with Wolfe, Perkins explains why the text is prolix and makes observations and criticisms that would benefit a high school lit class. It's clear without being challenging. Nicely done by screenwriter John Logan.Throughout the film, Perkins wears a fedora. He doesn't take it off when he's at the office or at home having dinner. There's no indication that he removes it when he goes to bed. He's a prim, stuffy, urban bourgeois who is introduced to rhapsodic displays in what would have been called Negro night clubs. I thought Perkins always wore that conspicuous hat because he was hiding a bald spot, but no. He wears it so that in the last scene, after Wolfe has passed away, he can reveal the depth of his affection for his lost friend by removing it for the first time. In this final scene there is a slow pan across the book shelf in Perkins' office. The modern classics are all there, cheek by jowl -- Hemingway, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald and the rest -- and Wolfe's novels are among them. All except one, "You Can't Go Home Again." It was Wolfe's ultimate work but was patched together by a different editor.This is a rare, successful movie about a writer and about his editor. What could have been either extremely dull or extremely phony, isn't either. It's not a masterpiece but it's pretty good.

siderite At first you think that the movie's title comes from the bombastically exuberant Thomas Wolfe, the writer who couldn't stop talking ans writing and living at his fullest, but in truth he is just another histrionic wild man who needs the straight man to keep him on the path.Great performances from all involved. Jude Law was perfect for the role. It is almost unimaginable to think that Michael Fassbender was the first choice for the film. Colin Firth was Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman played very well a tragicomic character, the person who lives at the feet of greatness, feasting on someone else's brilliance.The structure of the film was a bit formulaic, a dramatic cliché of men focused on their work while their women nag and wail, but as far as I know it may very well have been the case. It's one of those movies about crazy writers that makes you want to write yourself and to question your comfortable yet bland life.

alanpgini Having recently seen and reviewed, "The man who saw infinity", I didn't expect to see another drama biopic so soon, that could come close to equaling it. This one does come close, but doesn't quite swing it. Jude Law is acceptable, but he struggles here in the role of Thomas Wolfe. You get the impression of a vapid man, who could not be close to someone who could have written Wolfe's novels. It gave the impression of an inadequate portrayal. The accent might have been giving him trouble. Wolfe was one of that great generation of American writers, that produced works the like of which will never be seen again. Firth did a great job in the role of Perkins. So much so, that you weren't listening for the British accent. Kidman was good, but her Australian accent was a little too evident, for a realistic portrayal of a Jewish New York woman. This film, along with the infinity movie, gives me hope that we will see more of these drama biopics, in the times to come. If Law's performance had been better, or Kidman's more realistic, I would have rated it higher than an 8 of 10.