Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle

Jennifer Jason Leigh gives one of the worst acting perfomances in this film. She mumbles her way through two hours of pretentious dialogue. Most of her lines that she delivers are completely unintelligible. If you watch this film, you will think... Full review

I am a fan of many of the writers who flit in and out of this movie, but I confess I don't know much about their personal lives and habits (except perhaps for Benchley, and Thurber who is only barely mentioned... Full review

I enjoyed this film a lot and actually saw it twice when it came out in England. No doubt it is a minority taste, though. It was the first Jennifer Jason Leigh movie I ever saw and she (and Campbell Scott)... Full review

This movie gave a very revealing account of Dorothy Parker and her rapport with the denizens of the Algonquin Round Table. Done in flashback, this movie is easy on the psyche and filled with ascerbic darts that are bounced among the... Full review

This film represents the best of both worlds in two sets of sometimes opposing criteria. First, in terms of movies overall, I'd say this is one of my favorites technically/artistically. The sets were great, the acting was great (especially Leigh and... Full review

From what I have read of and about Dorothy Parker, she was a paradoxically sad person. A woman that seemed to long for true love but seemed to keep everyone at a safe distance. She seemed to use her cutting wit... Full review

The movie is episodic and depends too much on the viewer's having prior knowledge of the life of Dorothy Parker and her literary friends. Its saving grace is Jennifer Jason Leigh as Mrs. Parker. Her only flaw is that, in trying... Full review

Begging to differ are co-writer/director Alan Rudolph's smart but bleak treatment and Jennifer Jason Leigh's downbeat performance in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle . Rudolph tips his hand in a commentary: ''If we had shown an entire film of Dorothy Parker sitting in a room trying to write a poem, to me, that would have been valid, too. ... Full Review

The most damaging misstep occurs about halfway through, with the film's fumbling of the Parker/Benchley relationship. In Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle , we're introduced to the world of Dorothy Parker, the most famous member of the Algonquin Round Table, and one of the few whose work is still read widely today. ... Full Review

Leigh is a fine, acute actress, much given to research;....And the domestic drama is deadly, concentrating on Parker's alcoholism, affairs, bad marriages and her unrequited passion for Benchley, nicely played by Scott.....Alan Rudolph has a sneaky, clever notion in co-writing.... ... Full Review

Some people have certain problems with me, and I didn't want it (Mrs. Mrs. Parker is classic Rudolph in that it includes that inner text with the director's consistent themes of love, culture and happenstance that mark the best of his work. ... Full Review

Go ahead, beat it, show me a better performance! ... Full Review

"A bunch of loudmouths showing off" -- that's how writer Dorothy Parker once described the bumptious circle of playwrights, critics, editors, wits and nitwits who made up the famed Algonquin Round Table. ... Full Article

In this beautifully filmed period piece about the witty and caustic Jazz Age writer Dorothy Parker, director Alan Rudolph ("The Moderns," "Equinox") brings to glorious life that glittery coterie of New York writers known as the Algonquin Round Table: theater... ... Full Article

CANNES, France The table has long since been cleared for the last time, and the wits who surrounded it rest in their graves, but the idea of the Algonquin Round Table lives on. ... Full Article

Jennifer Jason Leigh offers an acclaimed performance as humorist Dorothy Parker, who together with such 1920s luminaries as Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott and George S. ... Full Article

Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live.Dorothy Parker And live she did, until her life itself became a long-running suicide note. ... Full Article