A Thousand Acres Movie
Storyline
TAGLINES
Best friends. Bitter rivals. Sisters.
A THOUSAND ACRES is a drama about an American family who meets with tragedy on their land. It is the story of a father, his daughters, and their husbands, and their passion to subdue the history of their land and its stories.
| Jessica Lange | Ginny Cook Smith |
| Michelle Pfeiffer | Rose Cook Lewis |
| Jennifer Jason Leigh | Caroline Cook |
| Jason Robards | Larry Cook |
| Colin Firth | Jess Clark |
| Keith Carradine | Ty Smith |
| Kevin Anderson | Peter Lewis |
| Pat Hingle | Harold Clark |
| John Carroll Lynch | Ken LaSalle |
| Anne Pitoniak | Mary Livingstone |
| Vyto Ruginis | Charles Carter |
| Michelle Williams | Pammy |
| Elisabeth Moss | Linda |
| Ray Toler | Marv Carson |
| Kenneth Tigar | Doctor |
| Jocelyn Moorhouse |
5.80 out of 10 (1556 votes)
Visitor Reviews
Great cast, bad movie!
posted on 08 Jun 2009As someone who grew up in Iowa, I find it almost sad that this movie is passed off as a slice of rural life. The story is a solid one, but never takes off throughout the movie. The director should have done so much more with these magnificent actors. If you're looking for a quality DVD experience, look elsewhere. This was an early release DVD with only the trailer available for extras and the Dolby Digital 5.1 is only nice during one scene.
Great performances, great film
posted on 31 Mar 2009I was very moved by the gentle power of this movie and by the mood it created. I think it should have gotten a great deal more credit than it did. I agree that Michelle Pfeiffer should have been nominated, but I think all the performances were outstanding, and that Michelle Pfeiffer and Jessica Lange portrayed the deep affinity and conflicts of sisters with great emotional depth and sensitivity. Although I didn't read the book, I found the modern concept of King Lear very cool. I certainly will never look at the play quite the same way again!
One for the actors.
posted on 22 Jul 2008A Jane Smiley novel, loosely based on Shakespeare's KING LEAR about the Cook family and its dark secrets. Director Moorhouse seems tamed in her approach, allowing the characters to step forward and take a bow. And how could you go wrong with the talents of Pfeiffer, Lange, Leigh, Firth, Carradine and Robards?
Feminist Tripe
posted on 12 Mar 2008**** Possible Spoiler **** If you were making a serious movie involving a powerful, but aging father with three apparently ungrateful daughters, featuring actors of the highest caliber, with great cinematography and a beautiful Midwestern setting, now where would you go with it? Why, you'd fashion a modern tragedy after "King Lear" of course.That's what I was expecting. That certainly wasn't what I got. What I got was 105 minutes of feminist tripe--one long harangue about man's inhumanity to woman. Why, there wasn't a decent male in the entire story.You see early on where this film might be headed, but you can't believe anyone would waste all these fine actors and craftsmen on that trite scenario--you just want them to get on with the King Lear theme. But it never happens; and there's the real tragedy if you ask me.Aside from the panorama of glorious rural heartland, about the only thing worth watching in this film was that wonderful chameleon, British actor Colin Firth, practicing his Midwestern accent. Now there was a treat.3/10
Superb performances by the two leads
posted on 15 Aug 2007I was really looking forward for this picture since i heard that Michelle Pfeiffer and Jessica Lange would star together. But when i eventually went to see it i must say i was a bit disappointed. I don't say that the movie was bad ,but the fact that i expected much more from it , make me regard it an average movie. The direction was very poor and the editing unacceptable. The adaption seemed to lack in many ways and Jennifer Jason Leigh was unbearable. But seeing Pfeiffer ang Lange together on screen made me forget everything. These two great actresses proved for once more their talent. When you see them together on screen you forget all the disadvantages the movie has and there's nowhere else you want to be. They both deserved Oscar nominations and Lange probably the award too. Jason Robards though not as good as in some of his previous roles was great too.
Fine performances ruined by contrived subplots.
posted on 26 Jan 2007This film really angered me. How much did I hate it? Let me count the ways...a thousand ways.... Here we have an all-star cast bogged down in a sewer of melodramatic drivel that was so obviously written by a female, and one who thinks all men are nothing more than demented slime (the book won a pulitzer???). Every man depicted was an absolute loser in one way or another. The central figure is the father, who was verbally and physically abusive, even to the point of raping two of his daughters for years when they were young (although the eldest daughter has absolutely no memory of this fact--yeah, right). The eldest daughter's husband (Lange's) was so weak-willed, he closed his eyes to all the patriarch's abuses just so he could get his share of the property. Pfeiffer's husband couldn't live with the fact that she had a mastectomy, considered her to be sub-human, degrader her at every opportunity, and drank himself to oblivion (he accidentally ran his truck off a lonely gravel road while in a drunken stupor, and into the only creek within a hundred miles--give me a break!). Meanwhile, Lange soon falls in love with a real slick guy fresh out of college who comes back to Iowa to start farming, and guess what? Yeah, you guessed it. He was only out for what he could get. Surprise, surprise. But wait! There's more!! Not to be outdone, the youngest daughter takes sides (rather vehemently) with the miserable louse of a father, and against her own sisters for control of the land (she just happens to be a lawyer who thinks that her father is the best thing since sliced bread). Sorry to spill the `plot' line on this turgid piece of excrement. The sad thing about this is, most women will love it! Between 1 and 10, "A Thousand Acres" gets a 3, and only because the performances were all first-rate.
A thousand plots, none resolved
posted on 23 Jan 2007This movie has more on its plate than a sumo wrestler and the result for the viewer is indigestion. There are some good performances, but the subplots are extraneous and largely unresolved.In addition, I found all the characters unlikeable, and if you can't identify with at least one character, there isn't much to get excited about. All in all, this is a classic example of trying to do too much with too
little.
Superb Movie!
posted on 06 Dec 2006When I unsuspectedly rented A Thousand Acres, I thought I was in for an entertaining King Lear story and of course Michelle Pfeiffer was in it, so what could go wrong?Very quickly, however, I realized that this story was about A Thousand Other Things besides just Acres. I started crying and couldn't stop until long after the movie ended. Thank you Jane, Laura and Jocelyn, for bringing us such a wonderfully subtle and compassionate movie! Thank you cast, for being involved and portraying the characters with such depth and gentleness!I recognized the Angry sister; the Runaway sister and the sister in Denial. I recognized the Abusive Husband and why he was there and then the Father, oh oh the Father... all superbly played. I also recognized myself and this movie was an eye-opener, a relief, a chance to face my OWN truth and finally doing something about it. I truly hope A Thousand Acres has had the same effect on some others out there.Since I didn't understand why the cover said the film was about sisters fighting over land -they weren't fighting each other at all- I watched it a second time. Then I was able to see that if one hadn't lived a similar story, one would easily miss the overwhelming undercurrent of dread and fear and the deep bond between the sisters that runs through it all. That is exactly the reason why people in general often overlook the truth about their neighbors for instance.But yet another reason why this movie is so perfect!I don't give a rat's ass (pardon my French) about to what extend the King Lear story is followed. All I know is that I can honestly say: this movie has changed my life.Keep up the good work guys, you CAN and DO make a difference.
Competent screen adaptation of an excellent novel
posted on 12 Nov 2006I liked this movie a lot, but the feeling that I most came away with was the memory of how much I´d enjoyed the novel. The film features two of the best actresses working today--Jessica Lange, who is great here, and the divine Jennifer Jason Leigh, who does the best she can with the thinly-drawn character she is given--as well as a surprisingly excellent Michelle Pfeiffer and a steady Jason Robards. The adaptation is basically faithful to the book, at least as faithful as it can be in an hour and forty minutes. The film doesn´t really dazzle, except for certain scenes between Lange and Pfeiffer, but it does a thoroughly competent job of visualizing this wonderfully tragic story. As far as movies adapted from novels go, this was definitely among the better ones. If nothing else, it has sent me back to my bookshelves to rediscover favorite passages from Jane Smiley´s excellent novel, and back to King Lear to brush up on the minor characters in order to see just how deep the parallels go. Worth your time as a film, definitely, and hopefully enough to make you remember that reading great literature is a joy as well.
this movie was just like the book
posted on 01 Oct 2006i went to the san francisco premiere, and i had just finished the book. i have to say that this movie makes you think about your family life. i have to praise the preformances of Michelle pfeiffer and jessica lange. they were the heart of this movie. they made it worth seeing it. i liked this movie because it tugged at my heart. i liked it so much i went out and bought it. i've watched it over and over because it is a great movie!!!
An Underrated Adaptation
posted on 01 Oct 2006When I found out that Jessica Lange, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Jason Robards were teaming for a film based on a Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, I went out and read the book immediately. "A Thousand Acres" was one of the best reading experiences of my life, and while the film couldn't capture the book in its entirety (no film could, unless it were six hours long), I really enjoyed it. Michelle Pfeiffer should have received another Oscar nomination for her fearless portrayal of Rose Cook Lewis, the character modeled after Shakespeare's evil Regan from "King Lear." While all of the performances are solid, they seem somehow timid next to Pfeiffer, who once again proves that she is most definitely not just another pretty face.
Shakespeare it isn't!
posted on 21 Jun 2006This film definitely has merit as well as an all-star cast. It may well be an updated version of King Lear, but I found the topic less than entertaining...and I was not thrilled with the ending. As for Colin Firth's performance as an American drifter... he successfully portrays a Mr. Wickham from his P&P days. He is charming, available, and easy to like ~ except he is definitely not going to be around for the duration. And what sort of cad sleeps with sisters of the same family...simultaneously?
Subtle and thoughtful drama with a powerhouse cast
posted on 22 Apr 2006I wish this hadn't bombed at the box office because this was an excellent film adaptation of one of my favorite contemporary novels by Jane Smiley. I guess the themes are a little tough--incest, madness, marital infidelity, ugly family secrets, cancer and the corrupting power of sex and money aren't exactly pick-me-ups. But the actors are superb--Jessica Lange really captures the essence of her trapped-in-girlhood character as does Michelle Pfeiffer as her feisty younger sister who masks her pain behind anger. Jennifer Jason Leigh, Keith Carradine, Jason Robards and my favorite, Colin Firth (complete with Midwestern accent--check out how he tries to say "farm" like an Iowan!) complete this stellar cast and everyone is terrific.
The story is a slightly different take on the story of King Lear, with Robards as an aging farmer who decides to leave his one-thousand acre farm to his three daughters, sparking life-changing conflict for them all. The story is quietly told, with two of the sisters finally acknowleding the abuse of their childhoods and searching for new hope as adults. Mixed into the tale is a subplot of adultery and betrayal.
I looked for this film for years after reading the book and am glad to have finally experienced it. If you like the stuff of real-life drama, this is a compelling story that will hold your attention and make you think.
This movie takes you deep into an all-too-common family tragedy.
posted on 17 Mar 2006This movie is excellent in how it portrays the reality of sexual abuse. The daughters perfectly express their conflicting emotions of affection and betrayal. The on-location scenery is absorbingly authentic, and the soundtrack is unobtrusive yet moving. This film is a graduate-level course in a reality that's too little recognized in American society. Personally, I'm freaked out by the names of the characters -- Lange's character is Ginny Cook Smith -- my name is Connie Cook Smith, and my mom is Genny Cook. The youngest daughter is Caroline Cook, which is my sister's name, and the father is Larry Cook, my cousin's name.But sex abuse was not in our immediate family.
Book doesn't deserve any credit, neither does movie.
posted on 14 Mar 2006While the book is definitely geared to the female gender with its horrible male characters and girls that I think are just as bad, the movie has just the same characters mulling through a landslide of disasters while continueing with their pityful lives. The book had no good characters and the movie which heavily depends on the characters certainly didn't change anything in this flop with two extraordinary actors wasting their talents.
Read the book instead
posted on 13 Aug 2009'A Thousand Acres' is one of the best books I've ever read and one of the worst movies I've ever seen, so obviously something was lost in the adaptation. On-set reports claimed that the director was trying to change the story radically while stars Lange and Pfeiffer attempted to keep it closer to the book. The director seems to have won out.It's really a shame, because you couldn't ask for a better cast to bring 'Acres' to life. Jason Robards is dead-on as Larry, the psychologically damaged patriarch, and Lange, Pfeiffer, and Leigh have great chemistry as the three sisters. But good actors need good lines, and the screenplay doesn't give them any. The approach taken by the writer and director toward adapting Jane Smiley's brilliant, Pulitzer-prize winning novel seems to have been to simply stick all the dramatic, important scenes together and leave out the nuances and character development that made the story so special.In fairness, 'Acres' couldn't have been easy to adapt; it has more than enough scope to make a movie trilogy or an entire series of television. Perhaps it was a mistake, then, to try to keep the beginning, middle and end essentially the same as the book. This approach shows us all the effects and none of the causes. Especially confusing is the scant 105 minute running time, which is only slightly longer than your average Adam Sandler movie. If the director and studio had been willing to make this a 3-hour film, it might have had a chance. As it stands, the movie plays like a highlight reel of the book, and that's not enough to involve the viewer emotionally.'A Thousand Acres' is a fantastic story, though the movie would try hard to convince you otherwise. Pick up the book and see for yourself.