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5 articles from 2009

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Amelia | Film review

14 November 2009 4:06 PM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Amelia Earhart, the great pioneer aviatrix, has been impersonated on screen by numerous actresses, among them Katharine Hepburn, Rosalind Russell, Diane Keaton and Amy Adams. But never as convincingly as she is by Hilary Swank in this immensely enjoyably biopic from the Indian director who made her name with Salaam Bombay!. With the right short haircut, some orthodontic effects and sporting her regular radiant smile, Swank bears an uncanny resemblance to Earhart and the film borrows the device Billy Wilder used in his Lindbergh film, Spirit of St Louis, of telling her story in flashbacks from an epic flight. In her case, it's the doomed round-the-world trip she embarked on in 1937 in her 40th year, accompanied by ace celestial navigator Fred Noonan.

The film chronicles her early fascination with flight, her companionate marriage to publisher and publicist George Putnam (Richard Gere at his most charming), her two record-breaking transatlantic flights, »

- Philip French

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Amelia

23 October 2009 7:48 AM, PDT | FilmExperience | See recent FilmExperience news »

The review... If you’re going to make a film about an aviatrix, it better soar. Mira Nair's Amelia seems to understand this with reverent voiceovers about flight sprinkled throughout. It even begins by prepping for liftoff as we see Amelia Earhart (Hilary Swank) waving from her plane’s wing, about to embark on a historic flight. Unfortunately it's the historic flight, as in her last. Argh! The movie has opted for that musty old biopic framing device: Start at the famous end, jump backwards in time to see how it all began, count down with us to the famous celebrity death! When a biopic begins this way, you have to worry that it has nothing fresh to say, being closer in spirit to a Wikipedia entry than a movie.

From that initial take off, complete with an overzealous score that assumes every moment's a climactic one, Amelia the »

- NATHANIEL R

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Movie Review: Amelia (2009)

23 October 2009 3:34 AM, PDT | Rope of Silicon | See recent Rope Of Silicon news »

Hilary Swank, Richard Gere and Christopher Eccleston in Amelia

Photo: Fox Searchlight Mira Nair's Amelia is no more a story of the famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart as it is a standard by-the-book fourth grade telling of her life. Starting from the end and then giving us the Cliff's Notes on how she got there, Nair's film never once attempts to dig into what makes Earhart's story a story worth telling and instead just boils down to a woman that flew planes and got married. She's inspirational because we're told so and she's quite poetic when it comes to describing her time in the air as Hilary Swank's banal voice over reminds us every five minutes.

Swank stars in the title role, a role assumed to be a likely third Oscar nomination for the two-time winner as soon as it was announced, but now she may be struggling to »

- Brad Brevet

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Review: Amelia

22 October 2009 11:30 AM, PDT | Slackerwood | See recent Slackerwood news »

It's Oscar contender season, when the studios trot out the films they hope will capture the attention of the bearers of golden statuettes, and the box office revenue those little gold men bring.  One has to wonder just what Fox Searchlight was thinking when they chose to release Amelia.

It seems like a perfect match: Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding, The Namesake) directing a cast of heavyweights, including Hilary Swank, Richard Gere, Ewan McGregor, Christopher Eccleston. Stuart Dryburgh had an Oscar nod for Best Cinematography for The Piano amongst his list of nominations and wins. Both editors, Allyson C. Johnson and Lee Percy, are seasoned professionals, and Johnson has worked on several Nair projects. The writers, Ron Bass (Rain Man, The Joy Luck Club) and Anna Hamilton Phelan (Girl, Interrupted, Mask) each have an Oscar nod. Two books about Earhart are used, including Susan Butler's East to the Dawn and »

- Jenn Brown

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Updated: 'Amelia' is On Everyone's Mind

19 October 2009 11:27 AM, PDT | Rope of Silicon | See recent Rope Of Silicon news »

From left, Hilary Swank in Amelia and the actual Amelia Earhart in 1928.

Photo: New York Times Update: I have now been informed Seattle will have an earlier screening on Wednesday morning. So I will have a chance to see it before Thursday night, which will certainly help in putting together a more thoughtful review.

Last week I got my last second invite to see Amelia this Thursday, one day before it hits theaters. Considering it's a film many are looking at as an easy choice for Oscar with Hilary Swank in the lead role as aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, the fact Fox Searchlight has only held a couple of screenings to this point and is showing it to critics so late in the game typically doesn't bode well. However, there are a few in the tank for the film sight-unseen and the first reviews arrived just today.

In the worst »

- Brad Brevet

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2009 | 2007 | 2006

5 articles from 2009

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