Film
What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases
Bookmark this pageLove Liza (2002)
Director: Todd Louiso
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Wilson's wife Liza has killed herself. As for Wilson, he's hardly all there himself. If he's not weirding out friends and colleagues with his out-of-whack manner, he's sniffing around petrol pumps and the back end of cars (Liza, it seems, gassed herself in their garage). He's carrying his wife's unopened suicide letter, when he hits the road after his boss propositions him, cruising the Deep South with a remote-controlled model aeroplane for a companion. Philip Seymour Hoffman is tailor-cast as this grievous deadweight, but the film (written by his brother Gordy) coasts on his grizzled charisma. The early snapshot scenes set the stage enticingly, and there's a likeable streak of absurdism throughout, but a feyness and a touch of showboating emerge as it rambles on. It doesn't help that Wilson's highway jaunt detaches the movie for too long from the one character who does threaten to get a handle on him - his solicitous mother-in-law, circumspectly played by Kathy Bates - nor that the reticence about Liza herself seems, if not coy, then a distraction as much as an expression of his state of mind.Author: NB
Cast & crew
Director: Todd Louiso
Producer: Chris Hanley, Fernando Sulichin, Ruth Charny, Jeff Roda
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jack Kehler, Stephen Tobolowsky, Erika Alexander, Kathy Bates, JD Walsh, Jimmy Raskin, Sarah Koskoff full cast
Duration: 90 mins
Most popular on this site
Top Stories
Has David Cronenberg turned tame?
Has director David Cronenberg veered too far from his radical and bloody roots with new film 'A Dangerous Method'?
The 10 worst date movies
Just in time for Valentine's Day, we present ten of the least romantic films ever made
Where to watch this year's Oscar-nominated films
Find out where to watch 2012's Oscar-nominated films in London cinemas
10 unlikely badboy biopics
Featuring Phil Collins, Jeremy Clarkson, Nick Clegg, David Starkey and a host of other unlikely subjects
Interview: Sean Durkin on 'Martha Marcy May Marlene'
The first-time director of the brilliant new thriller discusses religious cults and robot boxing
Pop-up cinema for Valentine's Day
Side-step romantic clichés with some alternative Valentine’s viewing
What do you think?
Post your review now