"The Seagull" looks terrible!

Oh god is this a film version of the Chekhov play? Most boring thing I ever saw in my life! So fucking pretentious and dullllllllll

looks exactly like those little tasteful literary adaptations set in Europe Weinstein used to produce in the early 90s.

Lmao!!!! It’s like a SNL parody. Even the font is cheap.

My first reaction was 'why is Annette Bening even considered a good actress ??" ( excuse me I saw american beauty) and my second, upon seeing saroise ronan : WHAT A FUG

It reminds me of those Merchant Ivory film productions from the 80s, like "Maurice" and "A Room with A View."

I would definitely see it.

It appears as if the film was filmed in 2015—but is only now getting a release. Not a great sign.

I guess they are hoping to ride the "Lady Bird" hype.

Exactly, it looks like a parody of merchant Ivory. Except thriftier. Ronan looks like half-aborted. Is she ' special needs '?

If there are no Oscar winners in the cast, why would they even bother putting "Oscar nominated" in front of Annette's name? It just serves to remind us that she has never won.

The film is obviously so bad they try to gloss it up a bit.

They made a biopic about Barbara Hershey?

It’s clearly been heavily rewritten to modernize the dialogue somewhat but keep Chekhov’s plot, a tactic that rarely works. I can easily imagine Bening as Arkdina and Ronan as Nina, but this looks dubious. Also, the director Michael Mayer made a dull mess of Uncle Vanya onstage some years back.

Chekhov plays were meant to work like dramedy. Pretty much like woody allen's work. They are supposed to be funny. But Tragic But funny. Nobody gets that except nikita mikhalkov. See his masterpiece 'an unfinished piece for mechanical piano'

Hopefully, now Jon Tenney can pay his alimony and help Teri Hatcher get out of that trailer.

The last Seagull revival with Kristin Scott Thomas and Carey Mulligan was frickin’ brilliant. A thrilling night at the theater.

Ronan is beautiful, so fuck all of you saying she’s ugly, and girl can act. She’s a major star on the rise.

All that said, this looks pretty bad. Chekhov just plays better on the stage than on film.

Agree with R14 about that revival, except for Peter Saarsgard as Trigorin. Wasn’t crazy about Zoe Kazan either but she bothered me much less (Masha is a tough part to pull off).

Anyone here seen the clunky 1968 Sidney Lumet film of the play. Doesn’t work at all.

R12, I’ve seen Unfinished Piece..., which is adapted from Platonov. It’s definitely one of the very few films from Chekhov that works. The few other Russian films of his plays I’ve seen (Seagull, Vanya) were humdrum.

Elisabeth Moss seems to get it. If even one of them finally get it, that would be so much more than we usually get with modern productions of Chekhov. I would give this film a chance just for that.

Isn't the Louis Malle/Andre Gregory/Wallace Shawn film "Vanya on 42nd Street" well-regarded? I've never seen it.

Vanya on 42nd Street is very good. Features DL Fave Julianne Moore.

It looks tremendous!

My attorneys will be in touch.

I predict the film will make $11,000 on the opening weekend.

[quote] Vanya on 42nd Street is very good. Features DL Fave Julianne Moore.

It does, but the best performance belongs to Brooke Smith.

Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles.

I cannot believe after seeing the new 'gatsby' trailer, that miss Mulligan would be good in anything. the trailer being all I could stomach. Daisy Buchanan was not a potatoe faced plain Jane with a cheap bleach who had been sent abroad to be raised as a scully maid in an english farm. Whoever cast her in that part is either mentally challenged or has a personal grievance against miss Mulligan. Still it would be her responsability to turn down the part, as beyond her capacities, or the live up to it's expectations. Whatever is to be said about miss Farrow 's performance in the disaster 70's flick, her voice was full of money, and she conveyed privilege, madness, and manipulation. But then again, hollywood decided that miss ( can't even remember her name-what a goose!) and miss ( same, she was one the poor man's julia roberts in the 90's, you know ? Not Bullock) would be good choices to personifie Marilyn Monroe and Vivien Leigh... Anyway, vanya 42's st was very interesting, but it was mixing fictional rehearsals and actual scenes, so it is not strictly a 'chekhov' film.

Saw it tonight and enjoyed it a lot. Bening is wonderful, she and Elisabeth Moss have some hilarious comic moments. Corey Stoll is sexy as hell. Billy Howle, who plays the son is beautiful looking, sort of a hunky Ben Whishaw. Ronan pushes too hard through most of it but her final scene with Howle is extremely effective. Tenney is very handsome. It’s worth seeing.

I thought Brian Dennehy was dead.

It’s not great, and this is probably the weakest Saoirse Ronan performance I’ve seen (I usually adore her, even in the DL-reviled “Lady Bird” and the universally-reviled “The Lovely Bones,” but she didn’t surprise me like she usually does). But Bening excels at playing overbearing mothers and difficult actresses, and here she gets to do both, while Corey Stoll has his best part since “Midnight in Paris.”

I usually dislike Elisabeth Moss, but the movie used her complete lack of charisma well. She was surprisingly funny.

Mare Winningham is very good in this, too.

This was filmed, like, five years ago, right?

No, it was filmed in the summer of 2016.

So, in Trump years, it's been like eight.