Is Anybody There?

Solid Blu, great performance
Probably one of the lowest activity films this year on Blu that ended up looking this pristine. Michael Caine's performance was outstanding from beginning to end, but unfortunately he is not in every scene.

The story follows a young boy as he deals with his life of living at a retirement home in the 1980s UK (that his parents manage for income). I had to have subtitles on as the accents and slang were unintelligible throughout. Caine plays a retired magician and self appointed resident to this home who inevitably befriends this young loner. Over the course of the film these two unlikely characters impart upon each other their little nuances and knowledge of life. Extremely slow moving at times and unlikely in others, what makes this movie tangible is the believability of Caine's borderline senility meets second chance in a dead end home role.

The Blu clarity is outstanding. I even paused it in the most of unlikely places and the line definition was ideal for the...

Incredible film and a must see
I highly recommend this film, beautifully acted by Michael Caine! I think it is one of his best roles ever, bringing honesty and a real sense of what aging means and how people get old and cope, and how regrets become a part of the emotional landscape of people as they do so. I am glad I now have a copy of this film to wathc and share with others as I get tolder. it gives a sense of being understood to whoever wathces it and it also serves as fine story for people of all ages, too!

A charming little film about life and death. And badgers.
Is Anybody There? is one of those films that shows that it's truly better to have a small budget with a good story and people who know their craft than to have a big budget with a mediocre story and people who don't. It's a charming little film that didn't make a big splash at the box office but is now being discovered on DVD by word of mouth.

The film is set in what was once generally referred to as an "old folks home" in rural Britain in the 1980's. The center of the story is a ten-year-old boy named Edward who lives there because his Mum (Anne-Marie Duff) and Dad (David Morrisey) run the place, with the help of a hired-girl named Tanya (Linzey Cocker). It's a marginal existence and the strains on the family are readily visible. Mum is harried and exhausted from carryig the lion's share of the load of running the place and looking after the home's various elderly residents, each with their various quirks, problems and eccentricities. Dad, barely half-hearted when it...

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