Genius

Great acting. Only watched the first 10 minutes. Not my thing.

I don't know if this true story really rated a movie version. At the end I found myself wishing it had been about Perkins and Hemingway instead. At least that would have been interesting. What this movie tells us is that Thomas Wolfe was a raving genius who wrote a couple of good books and his editor was ridiculously forbearing. So what? Watching this movie feels like an unpaid job for a contract that I couldn't get out of. Having to pay money in order to nursemaid Law's admittedly well-played character for 104 minutes is too much to ask. I love an intelligent movie but not one that is annoying and exhausting.

I was surprised that Tomatoes gave this a mere 51%. I really enjoyed this movie. I learned from it, and I thought all of the actors, especially Colin Firth, were terrific. The relationship between Max Perkins and the writers he elevated to the American literary canon is worthy of watching. To the best of my knowledge, the script is pretty true to how things were.

2.5 stars. I thought the subject matter was really interesting, and could have made an excellent movie considering the talented cast. Colin Firth was incredible as he always is, but as a whole, the movie was just very thin..it introduced a few really interesting characters, and touched on many interesting elements in the lives of these characters, but at the end I felt very unsatisfied. I think the screenplay was poorly written. The writing, directing, and cinematography just weren't that great in my opinion. I wouldn't watch this movie again.

Was trying to find something my spouse would like, then I saw this. I first read Wolfe in the early 80s, while on a study abroad program. Somehow, riding trains around Europe and reading his torrent of beautiful language was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And to see this beautifully filmed movie--almost sepia toned--was a thrill. I knew about Perkins, but watching his relationship develop with the language and the man...I thought it was well done. Hard to convey the joyful drama of writing, the thrill and frustration, the labor of it all. And in an age when manuscripts were handwritten!! Highly recommend.

Of writing. (Spoilers) You get to see Thomas Wofle who is an artist but with words instead of paint. He goes into the Editor's office of Max Perkins with 5,000 written pages and is told that he has to shrink it down to a few hundred pages instead. Mr. Max Perkins in my view is like a literary writing instructor who helps the writer see things clearer for himself. Then you come to find out that he worked with other great novelists F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby) and Ernest Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea) (Side note; In the movie The Equalizer, the McCall character talks about the Hemingway novel in the diner scene in the movie to the Teri character which I thought was a nice shout out for Hemingway.) The way the movie goes into detail about how a book is written, (how a writer goes about looking for the inspirations that helps him/her to find the words to fill the blank pages before them while they tell a story that's inside of them) along with how a book gets edited, and the finding of just the right words that help to create the title for a book. This move had me enthralled from start to end and I like when movies do that.

I agree with the previous comment, this was an excellent film, well acted by a very capable and talented team, I fail to understand the very unclear evaluation presented by the somewhat erudite and not very effective Rotten Tomato crew.

My husband and I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. Fans of all four of the main actors (Colin Firth, Jude Law, Laura Linney, and Nicole Kidman), we can safely say we were impressed. Other reviews have rated this toward the lower end of the scale—which is a shame. We thought this was both witty and an interesting look into the history of America's great literary past. A fun escape.