LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA - killed by conventional direction

This lavish adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' classic novel is, tragically, a failure. Tragic, because it has a high quality script from Ronald Harwood; a top-class cast including Javier Bardem as Florentino and an impressive Benjamin Bratt as Urbino; and lush location work in Colombia. The production design and costumes drip with authenticity and beauty. The problem is that this movie sticks so closely to the bare bones plot of the book that it looses the magic, the whimsy, the poetry of it. In short, the movie becomes a typically plodding costume drama in which boy meets girl, love strikes, girl marries posh bloke, posh bloke dies decades later, and boy and girl finally consummate their love. Director Mike Newell lacks the daring of, say, a Julian Schnabel, and while he respects the book that isn't enough. With this film he confirms himself as a director for hire rather than an auteur, gliding between genres - (Rom-com: FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL, kids-action: HARRY POTTER...)

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA was released in 2007 and 2008 and is available on DVD.

NIGHTS IN RODANTHE - schmaltz - top quality - but schmaltz all the same

Unmitigated, manipulative schmaltz. An emotioanally repressed surgeon and a voluble divorcee fall in love on a stormy night in a ludicrously post-card perfect beach-front hotel. They are prevented from making a new and idyllic life together by a lazy plot point that seems a little sadistic and random. There's no prickly emotional drama (as in AS GOOD AS IT GETS). The emotional transformations are a little too pat. I detest this sort of melodramatic bilge, even when, as in this case, it's actually pretty well acted by Richard Gere and Diane Lane in the main roles and Scott Glen and James Franco in support. Real weepies make you cry uncontrollably because you're wrapped up in the story- rather than tugging self-consciously on your heart-strings.

NIGHTS IN RODANTHE is on release in the US, Brazil, Japan, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Iceland and the UK. It opens next weekend in Germany, Russia, Singapore and Austria. It opens on October 24th in the Philippines, Norway and Spain. It opens on November 6th in Australia; on November 13th in Egypt, the Netherlands and Portugal and on November 28th in Venezuela.