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Created Apr 19, 2015 08:52PM PST • Edited Apr 19, 2015 08:52PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Perfect 5.0

   The magic of the movie theater rarely comes alive as it does in the dark with the Woman in Gold. Hollywood has mastered time travel in our lifetime but never has it culminated as it does in the end of this fine work. If you seek a moment in the movies where you seek your stream, no flood, of consciousness to travel seamlessly from then and now, then you will find no better outlet than the final moments of this movie. Years upon years of the same are almost perfectly interrupted with a movie that even without the perfect ending could have made many lists of favorites for 2015. But someone used all the tools available with perhaps the only actress who could have performed for that script to produce moments that will likely never be surpassed. Writers and directors will need to find another genre, another emotion and other settings to achieve what Curtis, Campbell and Mirren achieved.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   There are in fact other actors in this movie. But much like a repetitive pattern of rose decorated wall paper, none distinguishes themselves from the two richest in red, Reynolds and Mirren. The rose that is a rose. The Queen must be proud of Dame Mirren. While the script itself would lift this effort to remark, the final push to the top of the heap fell gratefully to the small sturdy shoulders of Helen. Set in a small California shop in the 1990’s, the viewer travels effortlessly and perfectly across the Atlantic and back, back 50 years, and through the years from of litigation as if somehow the goals of science fiction time were simply waiting on the art of drama to show it how to do it. The story is centered on the efforts of an immigrant Jewish refugee seeking to claim a magnificent art piece unjustly confiscated by the Nazis in World War II. Without the efforts of Reynolds as Randol Schoenberg and Mirren as Maria Altmann, the story is nothing more than an hour on the History Channel. But again, a diminutive Brit playing an Austrian and a tall Canuck playing an American create a work for the ages.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

   His emasculating Canadian cultural roots has been the limiting factor for the otherwise likable Reynolds who has enjoyed a Hall of Fame of Hollywood co-stars in his young career. But this role as Randol coming of age in his field of law hits Reynolds on his toes, fielding the nuances of the story as pop-ups mostly. He re-enacts the early adult parental blow-offs as if he has observed 10,000 times and his first appointment with Maria was executed in a way that left the audience with the plausible argument that he would decline the opportunity of a lifetime. Perhaps his greatest achievement in the film was his perfectly executed uncertainty of his local Austrian ally. A great unwritten moment in the modern global economy is that juxtaposition of international strangers colliding in cooperation. Reynolds used these other moments in the story to paint himself boldly in red in the otherwise gray back drop of Mirren’s shadow.

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

   Helen Mirren is the best result of the request of the feminist movement to look a woman in the eyes. Indisputably a babe for the ages, the woman is simply still excellent as an actress. Timeless this woman, but afflicted with the coincidence of Streep. None the less, she excels as the elder Maria Altmann. This time as the determined, guarded, honorable, measured, and impassioned standard bearer of her family’s memory. All that now is simply meeting expectations for an actress the caliber of Mirren. Twenty minutes into the movie you knew it was going to be much more than another recount of the atrocities of the Third Reich. The return of the art was known just like Apollo 13. The anguish of her past was going to be performed to rave reviews. But her magnificent performance allows you to feel her as her younger part promises her parents, and then her modern day self revisits the source of her commitment to them in the manner the Titanic ends. Art and the performers of art have never hired better ambassadors, save Renoir.

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

   Tatiana Maslany as the young Maria and Antje Trau as the Aunt who posed for the gold portrait contribute with the complete skill set taught to actors both with and without word.

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

   A rose is accompanied by leaves and stems. The male co-stars serve as green plush leaves to Mirren, especially Max Irons as “Fritz” Altmann, Maria’s father who could have done worse with his career if he fails to achieve another epic climax.

10. Film

    Perfect 5.0

    Another stunning achievement of the movie is to remind of the movie-goer that Vienna itself was truly a cultural center in the league with Paris prior to the great dissemination of the Nazi thieves. Moreover, most of eastern Europe is a drab unending place somehow brought to life by Simon Curtis (director) as a memorable hybrid of modern day Washington DC and Impressionist Paris. Kudos.

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

12. Play Perfect 5.0

13. Music Perfect 5.0

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Tame 1.4

    Other than the stress of Reynolds in Los Angeles traffic, there is no edge to this one, unless one is truly migrating to the precipice of fond nostalgia. Then, and only then, the movie explodes in your heart.

17. Sex Innocent 1.3

18. Violence Gentle 1.3

19. Rudeness Polite 1.5

21. Reality

    Natural 1.0

22. Circumstantial Natural 1.0

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0