Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Evening

Top positive review

Positive reviews›

KirbyMay

Definitely a film to watch if you love tragic love stories!

Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2024

I love movies like this bc they seem more real then sappy love stories that end in happily ever after.

Top critical review

Critical reviews›

Butterflymom54

A sad choppy mess

Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2019

I have seen this movie twice now and I still do not get it. It had some great Actors and Actresses and I enjoyed seeing them perform. The movie is about an elderly dying woman upstairs with her two daughters downstairs mostly feuding. The story has far too may flashbacks and part of the story is missing. The movie is far too choppy for me to really enjoy. The story is sad as two people who were in love were torn apart by tragedy when it did not have to be that way. The high society wedding was a yawn. Not much meant anything here. One character comes in to see the older women who used to be her best friend. However she leaves quickly and one wonders "why bother"? All in all I am just not sure what the plot is or what one should take away. The characters all seem to be miserable and afraid to be themselves. They portray people going through the motions and empty and shallow. Sorry! :(

5 people found this helpful

Filtered by

2 starClear filter

36 total ratings, 24 with reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

From the United States

Book Lover

Two Steps Forward....Too Many Steps Back

Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2019

Verified Purchase

Given the A+ talent, the scripts is pretty low rent in a high rent setting. You root for none of the characters here. What story there is, gets squashed by a lack of thesis and underdeveloped plot. Tired trope: Really, really rich girl in the 1950's marries boy her parents approve yet she's in love with another. And the guy she's in love with has all the charisma of a wet towel. Claire Danes plays the younger Vanessa Redgrave character yet the two actors were not at all parallel, a real negative when the film constantly flip-flopped between past and present. Buddy's character would've been more sympathetic had there been one or two more sober moments where we could get a feel for the real him. But the guy was a pathetic drunk train wreck and I lost interest after the first quarter of the film.

7 people found this helpful

Helpful

Michael Brindley

Lost dreams, thwarted hopes

Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2009

Verified Purchase

The DVD box proclaims 'From the Author of The Hours' (Michael Cunningham) and so comparison is inevitable. Like The Hours, Evening deals in lost dreams and thwarted hopes, unfulfilled loves and a kind of resigned endurance. You can see what drew novelist Cunningham to this as his first screenplay, an adaptation of Susan Minot's novel, co-written with Ms. Minot. A superb cast, however (including Meryl Streep for three or four scenes) can't make Evening as coherent and affecting as The Hours, Cunningham's novel adapted by David Hare. Despite its rambling length - with much emotional repetition - the plot has major holes and fails to convince us that these people are any more than their own worst enemies. As often happens when past and present are intercut, the past is lively and engaging, the present, which is mostly reflection on what went wrong, becomes rather tedious. Precisely why heroine Anna and true love Harris miss each other is never quite clear. What might have been a five hanky story ends up flat.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Mary

Depressing

Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2021

Verified Purchase

Someone tell me (rhetorical question) how this movie got so many stars. It is thoroughly depressing. Here is the whole movie in two sentences. A dying old lady thinks back on a man everyone had a crush on but he didn’t love them in return . They felt discontent and ripped off in life because of it. That’s it. Save two hours.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Elizabeth Mott

convoluted and pretentious

Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2014

Verified Purchase

I did not like how slow this movie was. I also didn't like how much the protagonist longed for a lost love affair her entire life. The protagonist's character was too self-absorbed to be likable. I also didn't like the message of: at the end of your life, none of it matters anyway. Is that supposed to be comforting?

The cast was why I watched this film. Of course, Meryl Streep and her daughter, who both have roles in the film, were superb.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Tere Nolin

What a waste!

Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2013

Verified Purchase

I kept watching this movie, thinking it had to be good with so much acting talent. But neither the actors nor the photography could overcome the flawed, gutless script. This film succeeded only in disproving it's premise: There are no mistakes in life. Focus and smart editing might have helped. Beyond disappointing me, this film annoyed me for wasting my time and a lot of money and talent.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

PENNLU

Disappointed Ending

Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2013

Verified Purchase

I enjoyed it right up until the end. The end was so blunt and disappointing I don't recommend this as it is too long a movie to have an ending like it did.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Susan Berry

on the look out for more from Claire Danes

Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2018

Verified Purchase

on the look out for more from Claire Danes

Helpful

Nancy D

Two Stars

Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2014

Verified Purchase

Not as good as I thought the trailer presented;( love Claire Danes still!

Helpful

Diane M. Vendryes

Disappointing

Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2015

Verified Purchase

Disappointing. Great cast, but tedious, boring script. Waste of talent, waste of time.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Ed Uyeshima

A Strong Cast Set Adrift in a Quagmire of Clichés in an Overlong Then-and-Now Soaper

Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2007

In hindsight, Gyula Pados' overly stylized cinematography should have been my first clue that this oversaturated 2007 soap opera would be a movie devoid of any realistic dimension, but little did I know this was going to be such a lugubrious slog to sit through as well. This is longtime cinematographer Lajos Koltai's second film as a director and his first American production, and unfortunately here he exposes a limited ability to convey story nuances and character complexity. Moreover, novelist Michael Cunningham ( The Hours ) has yet to show a particular affinity in adapting books to the screen (David Hare wrote the screenplay to The Hours ), and even collaborating with Susan Minot, the original author of Evening , does little to bring the necessary depth of emotional resonance to her acclaimed 1999 novel. It's too bad all these factors compound each other because a stellar cast has been assembled, and except for a few key scenes, they are unfortunately presented like chess pieces on a postcard-pretty tableau.

The time-spanning story concerns free spirited Ann Grant Lord at two points in her life, as a young woman in 1954 about to be the maid of honor at her best friend Lila Wittenborn's Newport society wedding and on her deathbed 45 years later with her two grown daughters tending to her. The film goes back and forth and adds fantasy elements in the contemporary story in order to have the older Ann visualize what could have been. The primary dynamic in the earlier story is Ann's innate resistance to fitting in among the resolute blue-bloods despite her unconditional affection for Lila and her ne'er-do-well brother Buddy. The pressure for conformity is felt more strongly by Lila who is marrying a man she doesn't really love. Her passion is directed at Harris, the strapping son of the family housekeeper who has since become a doctor. Buddy has the same kind of feelings toward Harris but can only reconcile them as a drunken bon vivant. Ann is also drawn to Harris, and naturally conflict and tragedy ensue. In the later story, Ann's daughters provide a study in contrasts, and how they respond to their mother's deterioration provides the impetus for the lesser of the two storylines. All the sentimentality in both stories is telegraphed in a manner both cloying in sensibility and patronizing to its audience. The film actually begs for a more Baroque-level approach by a director like Todd Haynes, who has shown he can mimic the overheated style of Douglas Sirk with 2002's Far from Heaven .

Both Claire Danes and Vanessa Redgrave do solid work playing Ann. The problem is that they never seem credible as the same person since their physical dissimilarity is compounded by the lack of consistency in their body movements and posture. There is a marked contrast between Danes' characteristic head-shaking gawkiness and Redgrave's more regal grace (even lying in bed). Wiser casting choices prevail elsewhere with an underused Natasha Richardson, Redgrave's real-life daughter, playing the older Ann's sensible daughter Constance and with Mamie Gummer and her mother Meryl Streep as Lila then and now. Streep's work consists of a small scene late in the film, but she manages to embrace the full scope of the character's history in her bedside recollections with Ann. It's nice to see two revered titans like Streep and Redgrave together, but the momentous encounter is over much too soon. Gummer, looking very much like a more pliable version of her mother, does what she can playing the regretful bride-to-be.

With her trademark heart-on-her-sleeve dexterity, Toni Collette plays Ann's other daughter, perennially unhappy wild-child Nina, while Glenn Close is mainly on the sidelines in the minor role of Lila's highly affluent mother. Eileen Atkins is saddled with a restrictive role as the night nurse also serving as a silly plot device. The men fare less well with Hugh Dancy trying his best to bring texture to the woefully predictable character of Buddy and Patrick Wilson trying not to look embarrassed as everyone's object of desire, Harris. With Newmanesque élan, Wilson certainly looks the part, but the script shortchanges his character by making him a shallow mythic figure. The 2007 DVD offers no commentary track, but it does offer a few deleted scenes and two shorts - the standard making-of featurette, "One Weekend by the Sea: Remembering `Evening'", which features most of the creative forces, including the principal actors, speaking in glowing terms about the filmmaking experience, and "Adapting `Evening'", which focuses more specifically on Cunningham and Minot's partnership in writing the screenplay.

8 people found this helpful

Helpful

Need customer service?

‹ See all details for Evening

Evening

›

Customer reviews

Customer reviews

Evening

Top positive review

Top critical review

Filtered by

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

From the United States

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

Evening › Customer reviews

Customer reviews

Evening

Top positive review

Top critical review

Filtered by

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

From the United States

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

Evening

›

Customer reviews