84 Charing Cross Road

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DVD details

Actor: Anne Bancroft, Anthony Hopkins, Judi Dench
Brand: Sony
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Original Language); Chinese (Subtitled); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Korean (Subtitled); Portuguese (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 100 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-05-21
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Sony Pictures

DVD Reviews of 84 Charing Cross Road

DVD Review: 84charingcrossroad
Summary: 4 Stars

Enjoyed the dvd,I am a fan of Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins,would watch just about anything in which they appeared. I will at some time purchase The Pumpkin Eater,a film from VERY long ago that impressed me then and I would like to view again. Hopefully the cost will come down a bit??JUdi Dench is another favorite of mine and is in so many things over the years,I watch the BBC shows on TV which she appears. I think I must go to London at some point,my Fathers birth place,maybe that is why I lean to the Brits.

DVD Review: A wonderful film.
Summary: 5 Stars

84 Charing Cross Road is a beautiful film. A little art house but very satisfying . It tells the story of two people who fall in love over books buy never meet. The late Ann Bancroft is a delight and Anthony Hopkins is one of England's finest actors. My wife saw it on pay TV and raved about it so I had to get a copy from Amazon. We both treasure it.

DVD Review: warm, thoughtful and lovely
Summary: 4 Stars

It took me fifteen or twenty minutes to get settled into this movie. It slowly drew me in; it kept tugging me along. With each letter written and savored I came to care more and more about the two main characters, and I wanted to know what would happen to them across the arc of their lives.

The film chronicles the correspondence between Helen Hanff (Anne Bancroft), a New York writer, and Frank Doel (Anthony Hopkins), an employee in a lovely, musty old bookshop in London. Helene is an outspoken, outgoing and spirited woman - quite a contrast to Frank, whom we first see as well-mannered, polite and impersonal - "at your service, madam" and so forth - the consummate Englishman with an Englishman's reserve. They don't change radically over the next twenty years, but I felt I was continually getting to know them and the shape of their lives better; this holds true particularly for Frank, once glimpses are shown of his family life, his moments of humor with his daughters, his quiet communion at the hospital bed of a dying friend and colleague. The movie drew me into the atmosphere and character of Frank and Helen's lives - sun on the old New York brownstones, the smell of books in that old shop. On both sides of the Atlantic, the post-war world changes, and yet one constant in these characters' lives is their letters. And the books, of course.

The movie made me thirsty for books, especially old books. Helen's enthusiasm and passion for them is infectious, and it's a rare movie that can convey a character's love of books without having the character come across as pretentious or pedantic. I enjoyed the gradual change in Helen and Frank's relationship, the way their friendship deepens. The movie dares to rely on simply that - words and friendship. There is no grand drama, no whirlwind romance; Frank is married and committed to his family, while Helen is busy with her writing and books. I could sense that they're kindred spirits, and under other circumstances might have fallen in romantic love and married, but whether that would ever have happened remains unknown. It's not even worth much speculation. What they share in this movie is so lovely that I came to enjoy it just as it was.

DVD Review: From My world I send these thoughts...
Summary: 5 Stars

Movies like this are so remarkable.

For one thing they aren't violent, there isn't danger, things don't blow up, you aren't chased, no ones getting murdered. I really myself won't go to that again in this life. Sorry. Over it... They might not even be beautiful physically to watch in the unfolding of the story line, another wonderful feature, altho here they are. It's a deceptively real kind of story that feels like a life you might want to look into, vicariously try.

Perhaps a relating that wraps you in the love these two shared through a lifetime of letters wouldn't appeal to everyone, but watching two physically attractive, vapid stars careen around in current love stories with houses and background settings costing several million if "in" the real world seems too vacuous for a love setting to me. It doesn't appeal to much of anything in me. This really isn't the Enquirer come to life with a script.

Three of the most important relationships in my life evolved through writing. The most important one was written there. Not to be self involved, so the tenderness of this bookshop owner in England and the writer in New York, their writing and their unfolding what surely is a love, surely of a kind, that resonated. As did the times of their lives, seasons. Heck I loved the apartment and the bookshop ( loved that as much as any of it ) never failing to be thrilled by how the settings figured in the movie. It was such an intimate reality almost a play. Almost.

I will admit that I've watched this quite a few times over the years and after once or twice cannot go all the way (to the end), it's beautiful and I'm like that. It's poignant, I'm aware to speak to it is a spoiler though quite oddly the etiquettes here seem to deny and demand analysis. But of that ending how interesting that the characters were written in such a way that neither in the length of their relating ever hurt the other, they valued one another so highly. How rare and to be treasured is that kind of knowing.

Letter writing has been replaced by the e world. Faster, glibber, more corrective, snappier, more unkind, disposable relations, meeting a need, finding faults, weighing another, it can feel frenzied, characterized by telling another how you either have to go or cannot continue to actually put effort into some thoughts to share over how you are pulled there from the difficulties of life to share, it isn't what relating in letters once was....no...many won't supply the correct name or an address to get a letter or card because while writing and sharing is ok, I suppose the idea is they can't "risk" that with "you", a strangeness not of this movie. No. This was more of what price we've paid, the loss of truly getting to know another over knowing your own snapping judgment.

Anyway a simple story of two friends that shared a love of books, one ordering, one selling, suggesting tto one another works that were delightful to observe for a book lover, a continent away enduring the changes through time building over many years such strong mutual understandings and respect for each other that their roles in each others life became inconceivably gift like.
A very lovely piece to watch.

DVD Review: 84 Charing Cross Road
Summary: 5 Stars

This was one of my favorite films. It was very nostalgic for booklovers and fans of Anthony Hopkins. He won't disappoint you.

Description of 84 Charing Cross Road

A letter to a london bookstore in search of rare english classics for a new york writer begins a relationship that spans two decades and two continents. Although their personalities and cultures are miles apart their friendship blossoms into a deeper affection. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 05/13/2008 Starring: Judi Dench Anthony Hopkins Run time: 99 minutes Rating: Pg

Helene Hanff (Anne Bancroft) and Frank Doel (Anthony Hopkins) are lifelong friends who never meet in this unique comedy-drama based on a true story. Hanff and Doel are separated by 3,000 miles of ocean and joined by a passion for old books. Their relationship begins when New Yorker Hanff orders a copy ("unabridged, please!") of Pepys's diary. Doel, as polite and soft-spoken as Hanff is loud and overbearing, fields the request from his book shop in London. For the next two decades they correspond without ever actually sitting down for tea and crumpets. Brit director David Jones (Betrayal) does a reasonably good job of goosing a movie about something as uncinematic as letter writing, and the stars have fun chewing scenery on both sides of the Atlantic. The model for this kind of bittersweet relationship is David Lean's Brief Encounter, which, not coincidentally, is glimpsed here when Hanff steps out for a rainy-day matinee. --Glenn Lovell

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