Doubt (DVD)

Film Only ~~~~~~ The year is 1964. Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep) is the headmistress of a Catholic school situated in the Bronx. Dark and sinister, she hovers like a bird of prey swooping in as an eagle of evangelism to administer disciplinary action to troublesome students with an opportunistic slap to the back of the head. With her beady, bird like eyes she also watches over the other nuns including the sweet and innocent Sister James (Amy Adams) who teaches the eighth grade. We are not sure whether her care is borne out of love or religious fervour. In contrast, Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who is a priest of the St. Nicholas ...  Read the complete review

Whatever one may have reason to doubt by the close of John Patrick Stanley's cinematic adaptation of his own (highly-regarded) stage play, what remains utterly beyond question is the following: rarely can an author or dramatist be trusted with the task of translating his or her own material to the screen. Folks tend to get anxious, over-protective. Oh but that line means a lot to me, oh but the essence of the whole THING is there, in that, in those half-dozen lines of superfluous repetitive blather you're asking me to prune, or to excise or, dear God, to rewrite. The fact is, adaptation is a complex procedure. Pointing a camera at a play does not ...  Read the complete review

This week I finally got to watch "Doubt" which I'd managed to miss in cinema. The three leads were nominated for awards at both the Oscars and BAFTAs but missed out in what proved to be a very strong season. While my husband (whose opinion is often mentioned in my reviews) loves Amy Adams he decided watching her in a nun's habit wasn't going to be his thing and gave me permission to watch it without him as, with his busy schedule, I'd have had to wait a week a and half to get to it! THE PREMISE "Doubt" was originally written as a stage play in 2004 entitled Doubt: A Parable written by John Patrick Shanley. The film stays very ...  Read the complete review

Doubt is the Oscar nominated film adaptation of the John Patrick Shanley stage play Doubt: A Parable, and stands as one of the few films that is written and directed by the same person who wrote and directed the play. The film is also further distinguished as being one of the few films in history to recieve nominations for all four of its lead cast members, with Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis all recieving nods for their performance (although none were victorious), and Shanley's script was also nominated. Set in 1964 at a Catholic church in the Bronx, New York, the film revolves around Father Flynn (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), a ...  Read the complete review

Staring possibly the most famous actress that walks the planet at the moment, I pretty much knew that anything starring Meryl Streep, and something that gave her another Oscar nomination under her belt was going to be good. I had brought my usual 4 from blockbusters over the weekend, and I have to say with the previous three, I was very disappointed, so I wasn't expecting much from this film. ======= The Plot ======= Based in the 1960's, the film follows the life of a Catholic school and the suspicion that one nun has about the Priest and the child he has taken under his belt. Sister Aloysius is a hard nosed nun who only cares for people ...  Read the complete review