An overloaded script by Heidi Thomas defeats a fine cast that includes Bill Nighy...

| Jul 2, 2022

This is a solid adaptation of the book, but a great 1930s-set period drama in its own right.

| Aug 6, 2021

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 6, 2005

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 6, 2005

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 16, 2005

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 26, 2004

...mines the rich veins of both Austen and Fitzgerald. But Fywell lets his focus wander. By the end Castle seems to come apart stone by stone.

| Feb 9, 2004

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 19, 2003

The fancy-pants accents and period costuming make one feel intellectually smug, as if the afternoon had been spent watching a Merchant-Ivory film - only without the tedium of actually sitting through a Merchant-Ivory film.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 20, 2003

Romala Garai is utterly convincing as the smart, wistful girl with the notebook.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 14, 2003

A quirky and handsome family drama that nicely captures the pangs and pleasures of adolescence.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 9, 2003

The film is a charmer. It's romantic, funny and satisfying.

| Oct 3, 2003

Better on set-up than follow-through.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 12, 2003

It has just enough charm to be watchable.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 12, 2003

A quirky story about young love in the 1930s and all of its intense aches and longings.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 6, 2003

It didn't excite me or hold my interest, though everything about it was modestly successful.

| Original Score: C+ | Sep 6, 2003

... boasts a number of essential, if slightly twisted, fairy-tale elements that give the movie an engaging, slightly otherworldly air -- one that occasionally clashes with, but more often enhances, the all-too-human foibles at its heart.

| Original Score: B | Sep 5, 2003

Castle (captures) a coming-of-age story and the changing romantic and economic relationships between family, friends, and paramours. It's a diamond in the rough.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 30, 2003

For those of you, men or women, who love, have loved, or will love-this film will have something to say to you.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 27, 2003

The filmmakers can't seem to unearth the novel's inherent lightheartedness and instead treat too many events with earnest seriousness, trampling the original story's lively spirit in heavy-handed drama.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 22, 2003