The ties that bind this drama's often-smug and off-putting characters are contrived, and the plotting rarely goes deeper than soap opera surface. And that's a shame, considering the caliber of its cast.
Comment
07/23/05
Heights (2005)
65
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:99
Fresh:64
Rotten:35
Average Rating:6.3/10
Consensus: Yet another movie about relationships in the Big Apple, Heights is never dull thanks to a competent cast.
Runtime: 1 hr 38 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: New York native Chris Terrio's debut feature film, HEIGHTS, is a whirlwind of outstanding acting, excellent locations, and a unique plot filled with twists and turns. Based on Amy Fox's play, the... [More]
Starring: Glenn Close, Elizabeth Banks, James Marsden, Jesse Bradford
Director: Chris Terrio
Reviews for Heights
The dance these filmmakers have created is the sort that makes viewing a joy.
07/22/05
Amy Fox's play, with New York clichés for characters, was never going to hit, ahem, the movie heights. But cut loose in the middle of a comic-book summer, Heights is just different enough, just adult enough, to warrant a climb and a look.
07/22/05
Feels like a stage work - a self-important and self-consciously lofty one at that - and first-time director Chris Terrio does little to make it come alive.
07/22/05
The material isn't strong enough and the first-time director isn't experienced enough to make it work.
07/21/05
The story defies the convention of its genre by actually going somewhere.
07/21/05
They work like little jigsaw puzzles, seducing us into the lives of characters via little slivers, then keeping us guessing about how they will collide and change one another.
07/21/05
[B]ottled-up angst somehow isn’t as attractive when it’s not pining away by the canals of Venice in the 19th century but rather over the... skyline of 21st-century New York...
07/20/05
Unconvincing Heights. Ensemble piece pretentious and slow-handed.
07/19/05
Terrio’s technically proficient film is mature, modern, and minus the all-important passion and risk.
07/18/05
Unlike such popular Merchant Ivory productions as 'A Room with a View,' this is contemporary to the point of cliche...
07/15/05
Jim Denault shoots New York as lovingly as Gordon Willis did in Woody Allen's Manhattan, and the rest of the movie follows in derivative, but impeccable, fashion.
07/14/05
It's the kind of sumptuous, yet modest movie that serves as a cinematic curiosity that's perhaps too overly genteel and shallow.
07/11/05
...simply cannot shake its stage origins...
07/10/05
Renowned actress Diana Lee (the frankly wondrous Glenn Close), is currently rehearsing for Macbeth (or, as she calls it, "the Scottish play").
07/09/05
None of it rings true, nor do precious affectations such as having one couple communicate with each other via walkie-talkies.
07/08/05
Terrio may use such accelerating devices as a handheld camera and split-screen editing, but his movie still feels as inert as the piano chords in Martin Erskine and Ben Butler's score.
07/08/05
No one outside of Diana appears to have much of an interior life.
07/08/05
A hopeful undertaking, but you have to get through plenty of dark stuff before that becomes obvious.
07/08/05
Sufficiently enjoyable and intelligent to erase unpleasant memories of Merchant-Ivory's last foray into Manhattan ... it lacks the energy and vibrancy of the best films to come out of the city in the past few years.
07/08/05
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