CommentsXp Best movie ever!

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Kirpianuscus a film about friendship. in a special form. about books. about different manner to see the life. and about special refuges against every day pressure. it is not easy to define its source of seduction. the script, the acting, the chain of titles, the letters,her enthusiasm, his polite answers, the flavor of two different places and cultures and personalities. it is seductive, fascinating and touching. and useful for the birth of special emotions. romantic and smart and delicate and precise. best choice for admirers of a cinema of substance and redefine of life basic purpose. for the lovers of old books. and for the fans of great acting. Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins. and sure, in a small role, admirable Helen Mirren. the memory of this film remains long time. with real useful result.

GeoPierpont There were three things I deeply appreciated from this film: how one can love a book, the kindness of complete strangers, and how well the letters were crafted. I have a passion for reading and a dire need to write, hence the education I received in this film was priceless. Since I am of the mindset that very little impresses me, it was fascinating to be reminded of that great hope and excitement of entering new territory completely unawares.I understand her complaints of Chaucer and the Anglican bible translation, but found myself wanting to know how this uneducated woman had such a desire for acquiring these many treasures. That is an exceptional characteristic, NOT weird my dear....I thought of all the kind gestures I have made over the years, typically to friends, colleagues, wanting to impress, and not exactly for the noblest of reasons. How the pay it forward concept was manifest in just a few simple lives, but made such an impact on so many others.My writing skills, albeit a published technical author, is so very lacking in refinement and humorous expression. Yet another work and lessons in progress.I was extremely fond of the lead performances and the capture of just the right sights and sounds of a busy New York City apartment. Mel Brooks is the last person I would assume to produce this type of film. I thank him for taking that chance to bring it to an audience who has the patience and sentimentality to cherish every moment.

Neil Welch Just after World War II, impoverished New York writer Helene Hanff (Anne Bancroft) takes to writing to London booksellers Marks & Co at 84 Charing Cross Road in pursuit of cheap used books. Her irreverent correspondence comes as a breath of fresh air to Marks' manager Frank Doel (Anthony Hopkins), and the English end of the correspondence gradually becomes less stuffy as Helene's correspondence opens up to include all the shop's staff and their families.The book comprises the letters between Hanff, Doel, and the other people involved. The film does a pretty good job of dramatising what is essentially no more than the contents of those letters. The story is gentle and nostalgic, starting just after the war and lasting about 20 years, chronicling the growing friendship between Hanff and Doel, punctuated by her ongoing (and constantly thwarted) attempts to get to London to meet her friends.I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and it was no surprise that I enjoyed this film too.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU Anyone who knows London knows and loves Charing Cross Road that has been able to resist any kind or urban change, even recent urban renovation, since I first stepped into it in 1960. I have walked it up to Tottenham Court Station and Road and down to Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery more often than Champs Elysées in Paris or Broadway in New York. It is for me one street I love discovering every single time I am in London with all its book stores, Covent Garden on one side and Soho on the other side, Leicester square on that other side, and the National gallery at the bottom of the street not to speak of Saint Martin's in the Fields and its underground crypt where you can eat with the ghosts. Fifty years haunting that place, that road, its shops, theaters, churches and left or right hinterlands. The Strand next to it is nothing and I can live without ever setting one toe of one foot in it, but Charing Cross Road… This film is thus nostalgic about what it was, and still is, in spite of the death of two people and the closing of Marks books that I actually visited before it closed, or it might be another one, they were and are all just as beautiful and intriguing. But the film is not about nostalgia for some place you have visited and loved, not even a person you have loved and lived with in a way or another, but about a service you can only get from true secondhand bookstores because they don't sell books but they sell the books they love and cherish to people who love and cherish them just the same. These secondhand bookstores and booksellers have a charm that is not only quaint but is like an accomplice-ship in the crime of loving books, old books, beautiful books, books that have been used, visited and read by what we imagine are hundreds of people. The last book I got from England is from the University Library of Leeds, still with its barcode, its number, its Reference tag, its "not to be borrowed" tag and a book that was published in 1960, precisely, fifty years ago, a book no one can find any more except in university libraries and I have it on my desk, as if I had borrowed it and forgotten to give it back and left the country with it. That's what a second hand book is, and that's what this film is trying to make you feel by exploring the feelings of the bookseller and the customer, one in New York and the other in London, sharing (a perfect word for Charing Cross Street) the love of old books and the hunt and chase for them and the pleasure of a capture that can never be planned out and foreseen. No one can imagine what it means to hold an original edition of Walter Scott's novels and the communion with all those who have turned the fragile pages. Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins are rendering these feelings intertwined with real events from 1949 to the early 1960s, care packages and one coronation, plus plenty of New Year celebrations and Christmases, and we feel that spiritual love adventure among several grownups who will never meet and who are bringing together emotions and passions all connected to those books and the help one can bring to all the others in their hopes and sufferings. You will definitely see more of London than New York but London is the main character brought to life by two great actors and a sweet story.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID