The Bookshop (2017)

One of my all time favorites.

Captivating movie !

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

This was a lovely film that was steady and heart touching. Books are my favourite and this film had many of them. Wish there were more film like this nowadays and it had the touch of manners and decorum thats often lost to time. It was refreshing.

I love books and I love Bill Nighy and Emily Mortimer and they play to their strengths in this charming period piece about vindictive English small-mindedness.However, I'm sure the book was far better than the movie - god save us, as ever, from writer/directors! - as the screenplay doesn't quite come off and some of the characters'' lines don't flow or hang together terribly well. The pace is slow but not painfully slow apart from those sections with songs which do absolutely nothing except make you wish they'd end!The period setting is wonderful but not enough to carry the movie. The inevitable ending is heavily telegraphed in the first part of the movie - c'mon Coixet! But I did love the Ray Bradbury references.I was charmed by the idea and setting but if you're not a book lover or a particular fan of the actors - really?? - you may not get much out of it.

Books, The Best Weapons in the World. And they're a weapon of mass destruction under Isabel Coixet's direction in "The Bookshop". Set in late 50's England, this is one woman's battle to open a bookshop. Emily Mortimers' Florence Green is pitted against the towns Social Matriarch, Violet Gamart, played by Oscar nominee Patricia Clarkson. The Bookshop is based on Penelope Fitzgerald's novel and narrated from her point of view as a child in this charming seaside Village. Award winning British Character actor, Bill Nighy steals every scene he's in. So many books, so little time.

Felt like a great missed opportunity ... a flavour of post-war English small-mindedness, eccentrically 'off' characters in a Suffolk coastal town conspiring against the adventurous outsider trying to run a bookshop ... yet somehow it all fell flat for me. The actors weren't quite there, strange to see the likes of Emily Mortimer and Bill Nighy struggling to make their lines work (under-rehearsed, perhaps, an unfinished script, cuts to the budget of the film ... who knows?).Viewers are quite savy these days, so you can't really paper over the cracks with nice costumes and authentic sets and settings etc. There will be some outside Britain who view the film as another quaint old period drama depicting how the country used to be, good for the American market etc. To be honest though, BBC and ITV turn out dramas like this season in seaon out, so I'm not sure what director Isabel Coixet hoped to achieve with this particular adaptation. Sorry, but script and acting needs work, no getting round it!I cried at the end of the film, when I realized one of its little 'big' ideas ... I won't spoil it for you, but for me personally that just added insult to injury!