A budget of only 35 million and they profited only 11 million. What a shame. This movie in all honesty displayed a great plot along with some great acting by both lead actors. The female interest to me was the most important role. Firs she was beautiful!. A lot of these female love interest I hate to say it do not have any uniqueness about them. Julianne Moore can act. Period and flat out. She looks beautiful. And the part where she throws her eggs out and goes out to confront him. Perfect and priceless. That is reality.Another thing about this movie is it is reality. You don't get this whole scheme that you often see on TV that makes the female look great and the male look like, well a male from a female point of view. Kevin spacey is just so wonderful in this but that is expected.A few things about this movie I took away. 1. I just have to take away for the ending. They could have done better honestly. And I have to take away for better actors. Although 3 or 4 of the actors are good. We are judging this by a 10 scale and if you want a ten all acting has to be on the same wave length. 3rd the plot honestly lost me a few times. Took me a second to figure out what the james bond woman was doing and who she was. And i was watching the whole movie.Still 6.8 on a review is honestly bad for this movie. Should have been a solid 8. Mother and son relationship, Father and daughter relationship. Great plot without even any sex. Hell that sad love seen was all and it still was a better love interest in 99 percent of the movies I've seen. I felt love. Another important thing about this is it involved something and a culture. I'm not talking about black and white. It seemed to have an irish thing. And I'm not irish and this maybe not true. But still they made you feel like "hey I want to fish and have a boat" or hey "where is this down at, now that feels like home". And once again I'm not irish but wherever that town is, I wouldn't feel bad being the only black person in that town.At the end of the day you should have a movie that makes people feel part of your town and understand your people. I didn't feel any hate after this or simply a need to turn it off. My mom was a an editor for a magazine so I can relate to some things. But at the end of the day it had a home feeling to it that you won't see in movies today. Its 2017 and that movie was made in 2001. Its 16 years later that I first saw this movie. And I'm a huge movie buff. We should get back to acting and less about cartoons and actions figures. Sad that many people missed this movie but I know when my girlfriend is like "what movie to watch" i can put this in.

If you have time to kill and watch great actors deliver bad acting, watch it. With such names as Kevin Spacey, Julianne Moore, Judi Dench, I was expecting a great drama. Instead I waste precious time when I could have been watching reruns of 3rd Rock From the Sun and LMAO! I should sue to get this time back. And I expected much more from AP. The dialogue from Moore, Dench and others at times was impossible to discern what was being said. Maybe I should watch it again with the closed-captioning turned on. I'm just so disappointed in KS from his past performances in 'American Beauty', '21', 'Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil', 'K-Pax'.

The novel "The Shipping News" caused quite a splash when it was published. I never read it. I remember hearing about a movie being made from the book, and then not hearing much more about it. Now I know why. The film is a queasy concoction of human depravity, despair, beautiful scenery, colorful stereotypical characters, and clairvoyance. Kevin Spacey and Julianne Moore, two of my favorite actors, perform as if they are on Thorazine, and Judy Dench hams it up shamelessly (to her credit, she deepens up a bit towards the end.) I began to feel displaced, as if I wound up in a cold climate when I expected to be in Macondo. Magical Realism very far afield. I suffered through the entire movie out of laziness and masochism, hoping that at least one of the characters would be put out of their misery at its end.

"The Shipping News" is a fairly good movie which starts out strongly, but about halfway through edges into TV drama territory in style. It's the sort of movie that becomes middle of the road despite good performances and here and there shows some solid photography. The problem at the core are the main characters, especially Spacey whose simpleton-type character wears pretty thin over the duration of the movie. Along with that is the run-of-mill romance with Julianne Moore's small town widow. Their development is rather unbelievable and uninteresting as well as Spacey's acting with his character's daughter at times OK, and at other times painful. The movie luckily has some fine supporting cast, particularly Rhys Ivans and the great Pete Postlethwaite as well as Judi Dench. Overall the movie isn't really a disappointment with some great seasonal appeal, but unfortunately runs long.