Judi Dench and Kate Winslet ... [give] terrific performances as Murdoch's older and younger selves, albeit in severely undernourished parts.
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12/14/01
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Iris (2001)
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Reviews Counted:108
Fresh:85
Rotten:23
Average Rating:7.1/10
Consensus: A solidly constructed drama, Iris is greatly elevated by the strength of its four lead performances.
Theatrical Release:Dec 14, 2001 Limited
Box Office: $5,372,026
Synopsis: Based on the book ELEGY FOR IRIS, by John Bayley, this biopic tells the inspiring and heartbreaking story of the writer's 40-year romance with English novelist Dame Iris Murdoch. The film cuts back... [More]
Starring: Judi Dench, Jim Broadbent, Kate Winslet, Hugh Bonneville
Director: Richard Eyre
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Reviews for Iris
Top CriticRepresents everything that's stale about movie-making -- and especially movie awards -- today.
02/15/02
Iris would appeal almost exclusively to existing fans of Murdoch’s prose were it not for four truly compelling performances that meld seamlessly into one sublime whole.
02/14/02
Though Broadbent and Dench are very good ... it's Winslet and Bonneville who steal the show.
12/21/01
"Iris" is everything a movie should be - tight, spare, and compelling.
02/20/02
What should have been a stirring, deeply absorbing character study ... emerges instead as a facile, truncated work.
03/01/02
Those who have had a loved one fall prey to the mental ravages of Alzheimer's will see in Iris a depiction that is so lucid and accurate that it may be painful to observe.
02/15/02
Top CriticKate Winslet and Judi Dench give wondrously in-sync performances...an inspired, invoking and inventive biography of one of Britain's premiere 20th Century authors.
01/07/02
[The] performances, if nothing else, embody a standard of excellence that Iris Murdoch herself would surely have cheered.
02/28/02
The movie actually doesn't tell you much about Murdoch, who was a brilliant novelist, but it's an interesting study of love, semi-eccentric intellectuals and the passage of time.
02/23/02
Love endures. That’s perhaps the most important lesson to be learned in this unconventional love story.
07/05/02
A bittersweet drama of an unconventional love that lasted over 40 years due to its astonishing breadth and resiliency.
12/16/01
Remarkable in that here we have four actors playing two characters, with the older and the younger couple meshing perfectly to create two seamless performances.
03/01/02
Some films, like some people, grow more dear to one's heart with time. Iris is such a film.
07/13/02
Iris glows with rightness and convinces us we're sharing its characters' understanding that when the books and the memory go, love can remain.
02/15/02
Top CriticThe defining irony of the film is that like Dame Murdoch in the throes of her illness, Iris is lost, confused, and, perhaps most painfully, very occasionally brilliant.
02/15/02
Made by people who seem to think that tracking degenerate behavior is more important than character development
08/19/02
"Iris" is an odd title indeed for a film that barely brushes its titular subject's surface
12/17/01
What the film has to say about the devastation of this debilitating disease [Alzheimer's] is more significant than the story of Iris’s life.
02/15/02
...the results are tender, unflinching, raw and wonderful.
02/15/02
Top CriticLatest News for Iris
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