Watch Oscar and Lucinda For Free

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

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

It's the 19th century New South Wales, Australia. Oscar Hopkins rebels against his strict father as a child and runs away to Anglican priest Hugh Stratton (Tom Wilkinson). He studies to be a priest in England. He (Ralph Fiennes) is always an outsider to his classmates. He doesn't fit and is addicted to gambling. Lucinda Leplastrier (Cate Blanchett) receives a large inheritance which she uses to buy a glass factory in Sydney. They both find themselves as outsiders in society. They are both avid gamblers and transport a glass church to Revered Dennis Hasset (Ciarán Hinds) in a remote settlement.These are two stellar performances of oddball characters. The flow of the story does jump around a bit. The narrative is somewhat disjointed which is usually due to trying to squeeze a novel down to a movie. Once the two leads get together, it's a fascinating combination. These are also such odd unconventional characters. Oscar is a tightly wound ball of neuroses. Lucinda is much better by comparison and is really a woman looking for liberation. The differing views on gambling is weirdly compelling. The performances and the strange situations add together for a fascinating movie.

I believe this movie was quite splendid indeed.I especially enjoyed the part where Oscar said "The" It really was quite smashing.Coming from England I believe this movie was very accurate.My mates and I had a wonderful time watching this film; We believed it was "Sexcii" as the "hip" kids call it these days.Well I must be going now.Chereo! Toodaloo! Right Oh! Goodbye Chaps! Good Evening And Etc.p.s. It was exciting.p.p.s. It was also romanticp.p.p.s It also was a tab bit sadp.p.p.p.s It had a nice plot i say!

This movie was truly awful. I don't know what movie the rest of you watched. But I found the acting atrocious, the plot trite, the characters incredibly clichéd and the lack of drama depressing. This was a low budget "character-driven" flop. Since I don't want to post spoilers I can't comment on specific scenes. But...there were so, so many scenes that just didn't work. Scene after scene, piled on top of each other. One bad directoral decision after another. And the actors were not -that- bad. But they weren't -that- good either. I watched this because I was looking for something 'Victorian'. And as a historical recreation piece it wasn't bad. In every other way it was god awful. And had one of the worst endings ever put in a movie. In summary? I hated, hated, hated it. There was not a single redeeming feature. Not a single scene in the last 45 minutes had an iota of believability. It was...jarring and rushed and poorly constructed. I gave it a 1.

This is one of my favorite movies. Regular readers of my comments will wonder why I elevate it to my "must see" categoryPart of the reason I want you to see it is because of how well it pairs with Cate's masterpiece, "Heaven." Now, that film can stand on its own as a transcendent cinematic experience. It easily shifts us from a "real" world into one more magical and over the course of the experience that distance increases. It took Kieslowski's notion of cinematic distance and added the journey to that distance. It is one of the most important successful experiments in cinema and it owes much to the collaboration of Cate.That reflects on this. A smaller project. A less ambitious director, but still with an affecting emotional directness. A pre-existing story that has literary strengths that become cinematic defects. And yet there is that same collaboration with the creating of an alternative magical reality fueled by obsession.There is that same smooth slide from here to there. There is that same equating of wilderness (a Herzogian river) to the internal landscape. The same trigger of the gamble. And also, there is the remarkable glass chapel. One shot has it moving down the river, but it seems as if it is floating through the trees. You are dead if that does not stick with you for years.Alas, not much is made of a central image in the book — the tensed glass tears that explode when gently traced at their origin.The major flaw is Fiennes. Both brothers have a sort of forehead acting style which unravels much of the subtleties of Cate's acting by breathing. But she is so breathtaking an actress in both these films, even though she is only the referent in the last part of this.See the two films in one night. Any order.Ted's Evaluation -- 4 of 3: Every cineliterate person should experience this.