|
The Door in the Floor | 
 enlarge | Director: Tod Williams
Actors: Jeff Bridges, Kim Basinger, Jon Foster, Elle Fanning, Larry Pine
Studio: Universal Studios
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.98
Buy Used: $1.48
You Save: $18.50 (93%)
New (58) Used (74) from $1.48
Rating:  84 reviews
Sales Rank: 27249
Format: Ac-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), French (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 111 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: D25000D
ISBN: 141700357X
UPC: 025192500022
EAN: 9781417003570
ASIN: B00005JMU1
Theatrical Release Date: 2004
Release Date: December 14, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Jeff Bridges demonstrates once again that he is one of the finest actors in film. Ted Cole (Bridges, Seabiscuit, The Big Lebowski), a successful writer/illustrator of children's books, invites a young student named Eddie (Jon Foster) to be his assistant for a summer. Eddie doesn't realize he's being drawn into the middle of a dissolving marriage until Ted's wife Marion (Kim Basinger, L. A. Confidential) invites him into an affair--which Ted both condones and resents. Slowly, Eddie comes to understand the secrets that are tearing the marriage apart. Bridges never shows off; everything he does seems simple, natural, almost unavoidable, but it's also utterly watchable. Whether you like the movie will depend on whether you like John Irving (The Door in the Floor is based on part of his novel A Widow for One Year), but Bridges's performance is undeniable. Also featuring Mimi Rogers (The Rapture). --Bret Fetzer
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 79 more reviews...
 With every door closed another is opened... August 13, 2008
Andrew Ellington (Mulholland Drive)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
There are many films about loss released today; films that test the audiences ability to forgive and accept, to condone and condemn. `The Door in the Floor' is one of those films; a film that never allows room for an easy answer because the questions it asks are as complicated a question as one can find. While I have never read John Irving's novel `A Window for One Year', of which this film is adapted, I don't feel that the reading of that said novel is necessary to the connection one feels to the film. I've read that this film is only based on one third of the novel and so one must keep in mind that this story is not over yet (and hopefully it will encourage movie goers to research the novel, as I am in the process of doing myself).
`The Door in the Floor' tells the story of Ted and Marion Cole. Their marriage is rocky at best; slowly deteriorating before their eyes since the death of their two teenage sons crushed their existence. Since the loss of their sons they have moved and started a new life with their young daughter Ruth (who was not born until after Timothy and Thomas had died). That life is not one of joy and passion though. Ted has buried himself in affair after affair if not to shelter himself from the draining depression of his with Marion who doesn't quite seem to function as a person since the death of her boys. She has drifted away from her former self and has become unable to connect with her husband or even her only daughter. When Ted decides to hire a young aspiring author to be his helper for the summer he opens the floodgates of his marriage and ultimately his life.
Eddie O'Hare is young and naïve and reminds both Ted and Marion of the sons they lost. Marion sees in Eddie a way to connect with her sons once more, by seducing and ultimately sleeping with him. In this perverse act she has found a sense of solace, allowing herself to physically transcend the boundaries of death and be with her children once more. Author John Irving said that Marion's curiosity of whether or not her sons died a virgin played heavy in her decision to give herself to Eddie, and in that context one is able to sympathize with this grieving mother even if her heinous crime erodes those sympathies.
In the meantime Ted is finding that his life has become railroaded. His initial reasoning's for hiring Eddie are never made ultimately clear, but it would not be too far fetched to conclude that he knew in a way that the affair was inevitable. He most likely hoped for it, but as we watch the film we see his fears for what the affair would lead to creep over him. As the film trickles to its conclusion the audience is given the opportunity to break with these characters, feeling their pain firsthand and ultimately understanding their actions.
`The Door in the Floor' would not work if the acting was not above and beyond flawless. The four main actors all give this film the honesty it needs in order to root itself in our heart. Young Elle Fanning is, like her sister, born to be a movie star. Unlike her sister I was able to see a little girl in Ruth as apposed to a little woman. Their was a hint or glimmer of maturity in her eyes, but that maturity never outweighed the fact that she was only four. Jon Foster (brother to Ben) delivers a great performance, truly finding the balance between innocent observer and unwilling participant.
The real stars here though, are Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger. Basinger is not one of my favorite actresses, not by a long shot, but her delivery here is outstanding. Her character is mentioned throughout the film as `turning to stone' and the dead stare in her eyes emotes that feeling to perfection. She finds a way of making the hollowness glow with life, for we can read her depression and understand her deterioration. As good as Kim is though, Jeff Bridges is better. As Ted, Bridges has the difficult job of making his character understandable, and he does that masterfully. Ted is charming and likable yet he is repressed in areas that one may not fully grasp. On the outset it looks as if he has overcome the difficulties of losing a child while his wife has never recovered, but when one studies Ted's actions and, more importantly, Bridges performance one can see the layers of pain that litter his every move. He wants to be whole again, but Ted not only lost his sons, he lost his wife, and until he gains some of that back he will never be complete. Ted thrusts himself into his daughter's life (walking up and down the halls telling her stories that are locked away behind glass) creating a way for him to hold onto something, but his grip is waning and Eddie may be the only answer to his growing problem.
In the end I have to say that `The Door in the Floor' moved me in ways I cannot fully explain. I felt deeply touched when the film came to a close, and the final shot of Jeff Bridges descending through that door in the floor has so much more meaning in it than almost any other shot in the film. Director Tod `Kip' Williams did a masterful job telling this story. I cannot say how faithful to the novel he was (although John Irving says he was VERY faithful) but I can say that his decision to break the novel down and focus on one section was probably for the best. This allowed us to really soak in the story and in the end invest ourselves completely into it.
Like I said on the outset; there are many films about loss; `The Door in the Floor' is one of the very best.
Love It! June 11, 2008
M. Reindl (Illinois)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is my favorite movie of all time and I do not care what anyone else says. It is great! It's very witty and entertaining, yet deep. There are little things I didn't pick up on the first time or two watching it and I have seen it TONS of times now and I love it. I'm also a fan of last scenes and I love the last scene in this one. Literally...the door in the floor. I don't get it, but I love it. Beautiful, beautiful movie!
 A poor copy, not a used original May 26, 2008
Vasii (WRB, GA)
The video came on time and undamaged. That was the only positive. This video is not a used original but a poor copy. I suppose that is the risk you take when you buy "so called used video"; some, like this one, turn out to be copies. I do not recommend buying this video from this source.
 Jeff the Empath March 4, 2008
J. Horsley (London)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Jeff Bridges finally has a good, juicy role to sink his enormous acting chops into. Jeff is a funny actor, because if he doesn't have a good part or a solid project to bring out his Herculean talents, he tends to walk through a movie and be indistinguishable from any other actor, becoming a kind of non-entity (as happened with the execrable, New Age slop K-Pax, in which Spacey did his nice guy routine again). But when Bridges gets a role to suit him, such as The Fisher King, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Fearless, American Heart, or to a lesser degree Door, he carries the movie to another plateau altogether.
I first saw Jeff in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, back in my teenage Eastwood-mania days, and I still find it interesting to watch the movie and see how much more likeable and empathic Clint's acting is here than in any of his other films from the same period. From the start, Jeff Bridges had an easy affability, a lazy, laughing spontaneity, that made him both lovable and completely believable, and it's clear in this movie that Bridges' immense appeal rubs off on Clint, and that the relationship between the two men (a young drifter and a hardened criminal who team up on a heist) was reflected by that of the two actors making the movie (Bridges was just starting out, Clint, maybe 15 years older, was by then fully established).
My personal favorite Bridges role has got to be Baker Boys, however; in fact it may be my all-time favorite performance by any actor anywhere (De Niro's Travis Bickle and Pacino's Michael Corleone would be two others). Here Jeff, as the Jazz-loving, piano-playing half of a cheesy musical lounge duo, gets to act alongside his real-life brother Beau, and there is such a natural affinity between them (even when fighting) that the movie really flies. (It was written and directed by Steve Kloves, who along with Keith Gordon may be the most underrated American filmmaker around.) When Bridges is at his best, the movie enters into magikal realms of empathy and humor that few other movies even seem aware exist. It doesn't hurt having Michelle Pfeiffer along for the ride, either. She and Bridges make probably the most convincing and achingly doomed lovers ever seen on the American screen.
Door in the Floor, directed by Tod Williams (The Adventures of Sebastian Cole) from a book by John Irving (Williams wisely only adapted the first third of the novel), is an original and entertaining work. Though perhaps in the end it is a little removed from its characters and hence slightly less than fully involving, it at least avoids the sentimental pitfalls that some of the other Irving adaptations have fallen into. Above all, it has Jeff Bridges as the eccentric, philandering painter/children's writer, Ted Cole. As Bridges plays him, Cole has hidden reservoirs of pain lurking beneath his abrasive charm. Cole has an irresitable (seeming) indifference to what people think of him, and there are few things more charming in a movie protagonist than not giving a damn about anyone. Although he has been written as something of a fraud and a jerk, Bridges gives Cole the freedom to create his own justification in our minds: he is a law (and a laughter) unto himself.
Bridges clearly revels in the task of creating Cole, and the delight he takes in fleshing out an already meaty role and making it his own fills every scene he's in to the brim. American movies rarely offer a greater high than Jeff Bridges on a roll, and Door in the Floor--though perhaps less haunting than it wants to be--offers just that, a chance to see America's finest, most empathic and most underappreciated screen actor flex his muscles.
 Mimi Rogers - Mmmmmmm December 14, 2007
Peter Bond (Greenwich, CT)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Forget the plot. Mimi Rogers, in all her "glory", appears in this film. Add to that a love tryst between a teenage boy and Kim Basinger. Worth the money.
|
|
|
Copyright 2008 DVDonsale.com | |
