Excellent film. 10 minutes in, I was afraid the film was becoming too stylish and the camera too absorbed in itself, but then the story itself picked up. Once Moore joined the screen, it became golden. The Firth-Moore segment in the house is one of the best scenes of the year. To me it's some Far From Heaven and some In the Mood for Love (especially the music and the Wong Kar-Wai type of mood). Very nicely done.

It's not a film of story and characters so much as it's one of mood and feeling and thought. My friend complained that the narrative wasn't fleshed out enough; it's not a novel, though! I thought it was pretty much perfect as is. It's exactly what you'd expect from a Tom Ford-directed film with the production team behind Mad Men. Beautiful, stylish, glamorous, and solemn. Plus, Jon Hamm voice-cameo!

Brilliant! It's smart, political, artsy, spiritual, bold, well written, acted, shot, and directed. It's by no means a commercial film, but this is why I love movies. Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, and the cute Matthew Goode are all superb. as well as the supporting cast. but this is Tom Ford's baby and I hope he gets some recognition at oscar (at least nomination wise).

I loved this. Just a work of art- every detail on screen was so well done.

A

The direction is a bit ham-fisted, let's be honest, and the ending sucks, but the movie is quite sad and I liked it.

A beautiful, heartbreaking film. Colin Firth is amazing and deserved to win the Oscar. I found the style choices very interesting. No idea why this didn't receive more technical awards. And the score music is stunning. It's the best score music I heard all year.

It starts out a bit slow, but it really picked up when he goes to Charley's house for dinner. That's when I started loving this film. I even teared up during this sequence (I almost did during the painful phone call scene).

My only real complaint is the ending. I don't know what I wanted or expected, but I was quite disappointed by it. I was expecting something more powerful, but in a more subtle/understated way.

Besides that though there's a lot to love here. It's a terrific, intimate picture with a great lead performance that succeeded in moving me. Its style and deliberate pace will likely alienate more casual film watchers, but if you're open-minded and don't mind a film taking its time getting to where it's going then "A Single Man" is well-worth watching.


9/10 (A-, maybe an A. I need to watch it again.)

Gorgeous cinematography, score was brilliant as well. A visually orgasmic film that was a highlight from 2009, even though it slipped below the radar for the most part.


B+

A Single Man is a beautiful film to look at thanks to the cinematography and wonderful editing and with a great performance from Colin Firth, the film works. This is definitely one of Firth's highlights as an actor as he makes the film entirely his own and rightly deserves the Oscar nomination he earned. Julianne Moore is strong here as well though her performance isn't that outstanding that it should of gotten awards recognition. She also doesn't fall flat though and keeps the film rolling in her important scenes to the film. Nicholas Hoult is surprisingly strong as Kenny and the scene him and Firth share walking around the college campus is one of the best scenes from 2009 as there is a definite sense of realism there. The story itself is a bit patchy and could of used some improvements but the look and the performances throughout those patches make up for a good part of it. The ending is a bit abrupt as well and while it had the strength to take an ending as such, it could of been stronger and a little less odd as seen in the last few seconds. Overall though, director Tom Ford puts out another strong and worthy film here. ***

He hasn't done any other films .

I thought he had done other stuff actually and then I looked at his imdb page.

He certainly should do more though .

Saw this recently, totally blew me away. It's brilliant. Best movie of last year, I'd say.

The phone call scene was just heartbreaking. It's a tragic, solemn portrayal of grief that Firth really brings to life with his spot-on performance.

A+

Really enjoyed this. It freaked me out how much Nicholas Hoult has turned into a "pretty" young man. I always assumed he was destined for Haley Joel Osment-esque adult uggo-ness.

A-

Yeah, Hoult has never been prettier. Though he did look good on Skins.

8/10 -> B

Very good film. But I'm afraid it's missing something that would make it sizzle. The scenes with Julianne Moore come closest to that. But even still, the acting is superb and the story, while very simple, has great depth and believability.

Really? While watching the movie I was thinking how he looked bit more uglier than in Skins.

B


I thought this was missing something, so I don't get all the raves it got. Colin Firth is great in it, the best he has ever been (though I have yet to see The King's Speech of course). I actually wasn't really stunned by Julianne Moore here who has been better before in the past. She really has just one major scene with Firth and that's about it. Now that scene is probably the film's best, though not so much for Moore's acting itself, but more for the interplay between Firth and Moore.

Technically it is impeccable. A nice score is accompanied by great visual style. The cinematography is wonderful, the costume design is superb, the feeling of the 60s is perfectly captured. But I just didn't find it to be emotionally involving at all and considering the film's subject matter that means that something somewhere went wrong, at least for me. Its artistic merits are without doubt, but the film just feels like a beautiful shell with not much inside. I suppose xiayun's comparison to Far From Heaven is apt because that's a movie I felt in a similar way about.

I never posted my thoughts? Strange.

This, along with Bright Star, An Education, The Last Station, The Road, Up in the Air, and The White Ribbon, is one of my enduring favorites of 2009.

I find it devastating, full stop. The one line in the narration, where he's describing fleeting moments of emotional clarity:

"I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything--they fade. I have lived my life on these moments, they pull me back to the present, and I realize that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be."

So poignant.

Colin Firth should've won the Oscar (since Viggo wasn't even nominated). I can't wait for Tom Ford's next film, whatever it may be.

It was very amateurish, entirely graduate film school playing around with fundamentals. The shifting of lighting, coloring of firth's face and the scenery to create gloomy or lavish atmosphere depending on the situation. The super-slow pans of bright blue shoes or a very sexy hispanic man smoking his cigarrate. It's all overtly obvious and blunt, but it is quite mesmerizing in its unpolished way. Ford shows his fashion roots, and in a movie far more concerned with mood than thought, emotion than philosophy, it is somehow quite fitting. I really love this gorgeous, tantalizing, devastating little film.

where have i read this before?