63 out of 63 people found the following review helpful:

Slow first movie

Benhuczek from , 3rd January, 2010

Tom Ford's directorial debut is painfully slow as it unfolds. It's compounded by periods of slow motion, just in case you felt giddy at the pace. You know, the luvvies are going to love this but I'm guessing it's going to be on DVD very soon and pretty much a box-office disaster. Jaw-dropping experience when Julianne Moore opens her mouth to speak, The voice coach needs to be shot, although to be fair it's not a full Dick Van Dyke moment! Any upsides? It's quite a short film. Best advice is to wait for the DVD and not bother to make it a high priority item. Good Luck.

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40 out of 40 people found the following review helpful:

A Single Man

axelorourke from , 9th January, 2010

While we have to deal with these Hollywood 'gay movies trying to cash in on cash in in the artsy fartsy and politically correct pink pound while do they have to pick a sexless straight guy - what's the matter Hollywood to frightened to cast a gay guy surely they're plenty in Hollywood...and i'm straight.

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7 out of 7 people found the following review helpful:

art

A Customer from Wimbledon, 12th February, 2010

Mr Ford transmits a beautifull story about tragic lost love and suicide in this his first film. Having read other critics I must say that it was a pleasure having the time to appreciate the effort put into every single detail, decoration, costume, actor (Colin Firth does the job amazingly) and photography. In one sentence, details are exquisitely taken care off. My only downpoint is Julian Moore, her british accent wasnt good enough and it really damages the scenes she´s in. A pleasure to watch and a pleasure to feel deep and emotionally the story told. I would very much like to see it again.

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3 out of 3 people found the following review helpful:

A Single Gay Man

SWFC from , 19th February, 2010

....to give its correct title and thus alert millions of happily hetrosexual men to the squirming, stultifying effects of Colin 'one trick pony' Firth's latest homage to the self obsessed upper middle classes and their unremarkable love lives. Yes this is a film of mauldin extremity, but even extreme maudlin can be made engaging in the right hands. Firth set for Oscar nod? Yeah, and I'm headlining Glastonbury.

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A Silent Man

forgetit from , 7th March, 2010

A fine art film - beautifully filmed, edited and acted. The best thing that Colin Firth has made. The music supports the film very well - all around, quite wonderful.

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*** May contain spoilers ***

A Single Man

Nootlin from , 3rd March, 2010

This is a really good film. I mean solid. Great sets, great cinematography, sparse but crisp dialogue. But it wouldn't be half the film it is without a fantastic Colin Firth, portraying a man who has nothing more to lose, and seemingly so much more to give. It's a movie about loss, and questions how it's possible for a heart to go on beating having lost it's soulmate. The fact that George is gay is almost not important, at least it wasn't to me. This isn't a 'gay' movie as other reviewers would have it. The film is slow, but only in trying to describe how George must plod and smile his way through his intended last day. Because he can no longer endure the loss of his life partner, and wishes for nothing more than to end his own suffering. His mental pain is palpable, and so he has settled on a way out (coupled with a darkly comic sequence of how he intends to end it all by causing the least work and worry for as many people as possible.) My one big spoiler regards what I feel lets the movie down, and that's the ending. After George has an encounter with a student, after he realises that there are still moments of pure joy to be had in the world, he puts away his gun. But the very moment he decides that life is worth living, he has a heart attack. The spiritual amongst you might think that George will now be at peace, and hopefully joined with his one true love in some kind of afterlife. I thought that he had finally found peace in THIS life, and that a perfect ending would be the first morning in six months that he would wake up not feeling like sh!t. Instead, he dies of a heart attack. What's the point in this ending? If the screenplay is based on a book, and in the book George dies of a heart attack, then my argument is that not all movie adaptations need to follow the letter of the written word. Have the guts to write your own ending, because for me this spoiled the ending of a near-perfect film. Life is hard, and then pile on top of that the message that, yep, life's a bitch? 3 stars for a really good film, but an extra star to Colin Firth alone. Unlikely to win the Oscar (I belive they've already etched Jeff Bridges name on that baby) but fully deserved the Bafta - arguably the bigger award of the two anyway!

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Style over substance

grantf from , 25th February, 2010

Despite excellent performances from Firth and Moore, stunning cinematography and OCD levels of attention to detail I was fairly bored throughout this film. The use of the same composer together with the 1960s period details made me wish I was watching the vastly superior 'In The Mood For Love' instead.

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Good, but too "beautiful".

4Tell from , 22nd February, 2010

I really liked this film but left feeling that it was the performances of Julianne Moore and Colin Firth which I loved most, with other aspects not quite reaching those same high standards. The story is a decent one. Some of the scenes are absolutely beautifully shot. I even liked the use of extreme colour to reflect the lead's enhanced perception of things on what he has decided will be his last day of life. However, the pace struck me as very uneven at times, with certain shots/scenes seemingly dragged out just so that we could appreciate the beauty of them. At the end I was saddened but had no tears in my eyes and I feel that such was the perfection of Colin Firth's performance that I really should have been blubbing away - for the lack of waterworks I have to blame the director.

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