The Last Station

Certainly not a great film and not even a particularly memorable one, but the acting is so good (Mirren, Plummer, McAvoy, Giamatti) and the plot so engaging that one can't help but be entertained. It's also a good thing that the film manages to be dramatic without going into schmaltzy territories.

Superb career crowning performances for both Helen Mirren (BA) and Christopher Plumber (BSA)--supporting??? The passionate/humorous relationship between the main characters with their engaging dialogue (uh oh, the "D" word), and the steamy, explicit one between the naive Valintin and Masha, carry the movie. Hoffman plays fast and loose with history, mostly by ignoring it or presenting Tolstoy as ambivalent to the ideas ascribed to him, and was probably much more senile than presented here.

Does Helen Mirren ever fail to make a movie memorable? Certainly not here. Recommended.

Who should have thought that a movie about Tolstoy's life would be this entertaining? Mirren deserves the Oscar-nomination but there's solid work by the whole cast, great even by McAvoy.

Light sport made of a great figure, Tolstoy in his "eccentric" later years of anti-materialism, nonresistance, celibacy, vegetarianism, or, in short, Tolstoyanism. It remains for the most part a spectacle of disinterested amusement, although something deeper develops around the deathbed. Expertly, if theatrically, acted by Plummer and Mirren, and archive footage of the real personages during the closing credits affirms the studiousness of the project.

i enjoyed it mostly because of info it gave me about the great writer.

An actors tour de force movie with very fine performances of McAvoy, Condon and Duff aside of giants Plummer and Mirren. Also a nice touch of history with cozy feelings and a bit of tears. Not a great one though.

Beautiluffy acted but the plot left something to be desired.

I'm thinking of becoming a Tolstoyan. It seems great. If you dispense with the whole celibacy thing. And the fact that you have Giamatti scheming plus Plummer and Mirren screaming at each other.

While the second half isn't nearly as enjoyable as the first, the delightful acting and is well worth it.

Mr. Hoffman does not offer the pleasures of subtlety, leaving the valiant cast working overtime to make something watchable out of the heavy-handed material. Wandering accents aside, they do some marvelous work and almost succeed. Plummer is marvelous, and Mirren comes close to making Sofya's hysterics sympathetic. No small feat--the writing is really lousy, and the direction little better.

"Drawing on Jay Parini's novel of the same name, Hoffman's film is potentially rich in dramatic situation, but it squanders these possibilities by making them dependant on the director's underimagined central quartet." - Andrew Schenker

En sevdiğim yazarın kısmi biyografik filmi olduğunu öğrendiğimde heyecanlanmıştım ama bu kadar büyük dehanın, bu kadar büyük bir hayatın ağırlığını ne senarist, ne yönetmen anlayamamış sanırım.

Plummer and Mirren find theatrical sparks; they enliven Hoffman's thesis about Tolstoy's beliefs and his contradictory, actual love life.

A beautiful, sophisticated story with a great script and fantastic performances.

slow moving but fascinating characters and great performances

72.500

Old people fight. Woohoo. Who cares?

very good movie very good story 10 out of 10 very good cast of stars

Unlike some of the other reviewers, I feel The Last Station did veer quite a bit into mawkish territory. There's a lot else to like about it though, mostly it's positive and earnest attitude toward love, romance, and life.