P.S. | Laura Linney, Topher Grace | Resurrection Remembrance and the Truth that Sets You Free

P.S. | Laura Linney, Topher Grace | laura linney is great!

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P.S.

	P.S. Laura Linney, Topher Grace Sony Pictures, 2005 average customer review:based on 43 reviews view larger image
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Louise is a divroced 30 something admissions officer at columbia. When a graduate school application crosses her desk she arranges to interview the young painter. When scott appears he bears an uncanny resemblence to louses high school love an artist who died in a car crash 20 years earlier. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 08/28/2007 Starring: Laura Linney Topher Grace Run time: 89 minutes Rating: R

Resurrection Remembrance and the Truth that Sets You Free

If you loved The Last Time They Met by Anita Shreve you will adore this film based on the book. Laura Linney stars as Louise Harrington, an Admissions Director for Columbia University's MFA program. Louise is a 30-something divorcee who still spends time with her ex-husband despite the fact they had no children. Louise's life is devoid of passion or more vitality until she comes across an application to the program from a young man with the same name as her long lost love - Scott Feinstadt. As a teenager Louise loved a boy of the same name who died in a car crash. Now nearly 20 years later Louise is compelled to meet his namesake who also looks like him and has his talent. Before both of them know it an affair blossoms and involves her best friend Missy (who also dated Scott in high school) and her ex-husband Peter intermixed with Louise's mother and recovering addict brother.

As the story progresses Louise has trouble discerning the old Scott and the new one. She also doesn't want to remember the real Scott in high school, the boy who dumped her for Missy, who mistreated her with his devil may care attitude, and didn't really appreciate her feelings. In fact, the original Scott was an artist who didn't really paint her portrait. It was just a canvass that some kid kicked a can on in a surreal fashion. Louise confronts the truth of her long ago love while trying to make sense of her present one. When her best friend comes to town the old rivalry emerges with Louise hearing choice words about how she refuses to let anything good happen to her.

Louise and the second Scott (who actually uses the name Fran for Francis) have a delightful affair but it isn't clear what happens after he is admitted to the MFA program. At the end it seems like Louise has burned away the fantasy of her high school flame and moved on, 20 years after the fact.The Last Time They Met

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laura linney is great!

i did,nt know who she was but i know now!shes now one of my favorites its always good to see an older woman with a younger man i dont want to give the movie away but i think ppl will enjoy it. the relationship between louise and her friend missy is crazy i cant believe how they managed to stay friends its funny!

Almost a little too smart for it's own good!

P.S. is a smart screenplay that is almost too smart for it's own good.What,superficially, is a May-December romance between a 39 year old Columbia Grad teacher (Laura Linney) and a young Columbia artist/applicant named Scott (Topher Grace), is really more about the fear of looking backward and trying to recapture the past,(Linney's Louise) and the fear and insecurity of growing up and moving forward (Grace's Scott).Each character goes through epiphanies about who they are, who they were, and who they are hoping to be.The dialogue is HEAVY-HANDED, almost too preachy and too wordy and wise for it's own good,that the characters seem as if they "get things" just a little quicker than the normal person would.I think I figured out the title "P.S"...pre Scott and post Scott.You see,Linney thinks that Scott may be her reincarnate High School sweetheart,who had the same name,who had been killed in a car accident.Obviously, she has never gotten over him and ended up in a broken marriage with Gabriel Byrne, who has a whole ball of problems of his own that we discover.The sound advice in the film,comes from Sammy,(Paul Rudd) who is Linney's "in recovery" drug addict brother. He advises her to "find the pattern" and that will be the success to her getting on in life.Again, even Rudd's character is just a little too wise beyond years for this film.Even actress Lois Smith, as Sammy and Louise's mother, is full of "sagacity" that just seems a little too pat.
All in all, the performances are excellent and Marcia Gay Harden as Linney's best friend ,Missy, is superb; but with all of the actors,I did not find that there was any new revelation about any of their talents.They were good as they usually are, in a film that tries to be just a little too smart for it's own good.

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One of the best of 2004. It sparkles and beams.

by dane youssef

"P.S." is one of those rare movies that tells a story which feels too good to be true--the kind that's escapist-fantasy and only seems to happen in movies and in our most desperate dreams.

But then again, sometimes we see and here that it does happen in real life. Once in a blue moon. It's every great success story. Like movie-star Lana Turner getting discovered when working in a pharmacy or Muhammad Ali's almost inhumanly-impossible success with his career in the ring, who talked like a professional wrestler.

"P.S." is a movie like that. It tells a story as sweet as a fairy tale, that maybe could happen in life. Where a woman feels like when she loses someone, she loses her chance in life. But then something else comes along that is so incredible, it feels like the divine hand. Is God giving her a do-over? And not being so subtle about it?

Laura Linney continues her streak of must-see movies and Oscar-caliber performances here as Louise, a middle-aged admissions director who's been through a real losing streak throughout her life.

She's recently divorced from her husband, a compulsive sex-addict who's diddled anyone who's set toe in his class. Her best friend seduced away her boyfriend in high school and is now married in an upper-middle class suburb to a man she threatens to cheat on if he doesn't fulfill his "husbandly duties." She's living the kind of life every woman wants to in her most cynical, vengeful, self-absorbed fantasies.

Laura's getting older, life's getting harder (and it hasn't been very charmed to begin with). She begins to see all her hopes and dreams fading fast. And things get even more interesting when see has a private one-on-one interview with a potential art student.

This guy is just her type. Not only, but... he bares an uncanny resemblance to her late college boyfriend, an art major with a passion that matched hers. This guy doesn't just look--he sounds, acts, behaves and his art is even similar. Louise is in shock.

What is this? Coincidence? Incidental? Has she been working herself too hard? Stress? Reincarnation? An escapist-fantasy movie-plot? Whatever it is, Louise is rubbing here eyes while warming up to this guy. Getting to know him... finds herself feeling something.... While trying to keep her feelings at bay. She's a skeptic. She's got one heck a heck of a track record.

One of the most refreshing things about the actress Laura Linney is that she's not just another manufactured beauty from off the assembly line. She's not just another actress. She's not "one of a million." She's just so real. She's not movie-star-ish.

She doesn't wear designer clothes wherever she goes, live in a six-story mansion of Muhulland Dr, smoke cigarettes from a long black holder and have a private trophy room for all her honors. When she acts, it doesn't feel like acting. You feel you know her. She's a real person.

The same hold true for Topher Grace, which explains his success as an actor. He seems so adult, so grown-up for his age. Grace is charismatic and seems smart, his gift and his power on-screen doesn't come from a natural Brando-like acting talent, but his face, his body, his voice, his personality. Somehow, everything he says sounds like he means it. He's so square, so on-the-level. All he has to do is speak to convince you that he's legit.

As an actor, Grace has a style all his own which may or may not be intentional. He has an Anti-Brando method. He never changes his appearance or voice at all in his roles, but he has an earnest, open-faced, true-to-life and genuinely human way in every movie he so much as touches. Which explains why Hollywood keeps throwing mountains of scripts his way and why every movie he's in, he's given a nomination for something.

This is some of the best acting either Linney or Grace has ever done so far, pure and simple.

Gabriel Bryne, one of the finest actors in the world brings his trade-mark debonair and charisma in the role of Peter Harrington, Louise's ex-husband who's nasty habit primarily caused their divorce. There scenes that poke fun and make light of his "f-----g" habit are almost worth the rental price.

Which is why he takes home award after award for nearly every movie he does, because something about his whole appearance and personality makes it come across like he's just himself being himself, not an actor.

While "P.S." may just come across as a woman's picture (and it may well be), this isn't just a moody, sensitive, overly-emotional "chick-flick" to be seen on a "woman's day." This is a movie about some people who are seriously dealing with the trials of life at a turning point of age.

Paul Rudd, who been the key performance in some damn good movies, has basically just a little cameo, but as the estranged brother, he gives us further magnified scope into Louise's little life. He's a reformed junkie with a condescending, sadistic streak towards his big sis.

The movie has a deep, human, true-to-life atmosphere all throughout. There's nary a moment that is written or executed in a way that feels contrived. Nothing in "P.S." needs willing suspension of disbelief. Everything feels so beautiful and natural as the falling of the rain.

I've read an endless number of reviews for this movie which charge Dylan Kidd with making a picture less impressive than his previous effort. Ah, the sophomore jinx. I didn't see his freshman effort, "Roger Dodger," so I'm not particularly biased. And anyway, shouldn't a film be judged solely on it's own merits? Even Steven Spielberg made "Always," "Hook" and "1941."

Listen folks, seriously, so many filmmakers are accused being cursed with the dreaded "sophomore jinx" because when it comes to art, there are people who rate novelty above all else.

Movies like "Birth and "Return To Me" have tackled this subject before, but here it feels so legitimate. Like "Rocky," this one makes us believe clichés can happen... and make us care.

danessf@yahoo.com

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