Cebalord Very best movie i ever watch

Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

Kirandeep Yoder The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

dogwater-1 See if only for the plumbing and the music. I can't think of anything more ghastly than spending time at an English spa treating digestive disorders. This is exactly what I would imagine it would be like. On a remote, rainy and rocky little spit of crab dung sits the Hotel Splendide run by the by the Blanche family who seem to have come there at some better time, maybe before ferry service was cut to once a month. There isn't a plot exactly: its more of a scripted hysteria. Very fine cast with Daniel Craig, Toni Collette, and particularly the late Katrin Cartlidge as a character who has wandered in from Black Narcissus. There is also an unusual performance by Stephen Tompkinson that'a unlike anything you are likely to see anywhere else. The cinematography also owes something to Jack Cardiff and the heyday of the Archers and their use of color. Toby Jones and Peter Vaughan round out, with young Hugh O'Connor, an excellent group of lost bowel obsessives existing mostly on various eel dishes. Try it.

wallismcclain Having seen this film several years ago, I am now somewhat hazy on the details. However, it left an indelible impression and I really want to see it again. The friend with whom I watched it hated it, but I was more positive, being a big fan of Toni Colette and Daniel Craig. The creaky old hotel was perfectly and appropriately disgusting, and cast expertly limned the miserable staff with gusto. The somewhat grotesque scenes in the bowels of the hotel (sorry!) were, as some reviewers have noted, not altogether pleasant, with the hotel's sewage bubbling through ancient pipes, but they were hysterically funny. And as a part of a satire of various misguided schemes to advance loony notions of healthful lifestyles, it works quite well. As Kath, Toni Colette brings a spark of sanity to the hotel and its downtrodden employees, and her attempts to introduce edible food lead to predictable conflicts. This is a role Ms. Colette took on only about six years after her career-making turn as Muriel in "Muriel's Wedding." It marks an interesting phase and perhaps a transitional moment in what is a brilliant career. However, it appears that the film is available on DVD only in a non-U.S. format. Does anyone know why? Are there other options?

tamsincoors I'd never even heard of this movie. A friend of mine got the DVD in Australia - though the film is definitely Brit. Story is about this hotel on an island somewhere. Not sure if it actually exists or not. Has this totally Gothic weird feel, and it looks real - not like digital effects.It's about a kind of war between two cooks who end up falling in love with each other, but also about this bunch of incredibly (psychologically)damaged people who have all come here to get better and are really getting worse and worse. It feels like a real place but also completely other worldly. I watched it twice and can't stop thinking about it. The best part of this movie isn't so much what happens - though I really liked the story - it's the feeling it gives you. It just isn't like anything else I've ever seen. Closest movie that it reminds me of is Harold and Maude - though this is a lot more extreme. I think the main character is the new James Bond!

urenxa-1 Just watched the film and certainly haven't seen anything like it in a long time. Sort of a weird cross between an Ealing comedy and a Gothic horror. Loved the texture and atmosphere but didn't get that engaged with the story, which is is at times comic and at other moments disturbing or just plain strange, though the characters are beautifully drawn and very memorable, especially Stanley, the neurotic virgin, and the sister, Cora.People seem to either love or hate this one - maybe because it's so different from the run of the mill Brit film. It seems to draw on an earlier period in cinema for its style and references, which I thought was refreshing. At the end I had the feeling that it might have begun as an even darker and stranger story that has had some element or other removed, maybe to make it more accessible. It does have some really haunting images and a great sound effects track. Definitely worth watching, for its atmosphere alone.