I learned alot about Earhart. Her relationships from Gore Vidal to Eleanor Roosevelt and women flyers of the day. And since I have a long denied fascination with flying (I took flying lessons in the ’70s) I was completely seduced by Amelia’s love affair with taking to the air. But the movie passed the real test for me as it was coming to the conclusion. We all knew what was going to happened. The film did such a great job of slowing sucking me into her life and passions that when the last flight was depicted I was getting pretty darn emotional. This rarely happens to me at the cinema. [ RT ]

Heidi and me talk about Amelia shortly after leaving the Meridian 16, downtown Seattle.

The critics have mixed opinions of Hilary Swank’s new movie. I will be seeing it this weekend and expect a big old fashion sweeping epic with no deep of examination of Amelia Earhart’s life or motivations. Hey, it’s not documentary!  These days most critics (most of them are under 40 years of age) want to see explosions, thrilling chase scenes and raunchy blue humor.  Then there are those (I am not naming names) who have to trash any movie about a strong woman.  My complete coverage is here.

Big-screen ‘Amelia’ isn’t as compelling as the real Earhart

There’s a tiny moment in Mira Nair’s “Amelia” that has the unfortunate effect of making everything else in the movie seem overblown and sentimental: It’s a brief, undated film clip of the real Amelia Earhart, jumping out of a cockpit (really, she’s practically springing) and beaming with unselfconscious joy. Something about the looseness of her movements and the simple happiness on her face makes the moment both irresistible and poignant; she would, before too long, vanish forever. ● More from: Seattle Times Newspaper

Review: ‘Amelia’

The aviatrix loses her personality in this superficial film.

History can weigh heavily on a filmmaker, and that is what happens with “Amelia,” a disappointing rendering of the remarkable life of Amelia Earhart. The pioneering aviatrix lost in flight is a figure so iconic, and director Mira Nair so tentative with her legend, that all the reverence and tiptoeing around grounds a film that should have soared. ● More from: Review: ‘Amelia’ — latimes.com

An Adventurer Takes Flight, Blinding Smile and All

Amelia Earhart, the American aviator who disappeared somewhere over the Pacific in 1937 while trying to become the first woman to fly around the globe, didn’t wear bodices, as far as I can tell from the new biographical movie starring Hilary Swank. If Earhart had, it’s a good bet that Richard Gere, who plays her sensitive, supportive, quietly suffering husband, George Palmer Putnam (G. P.), would have ripped or, rather, politely removed an unmentionable or two amid the civilized yearning and the surging, swelling music. ● More from: Movie Review – Amelia – NYTimes.com

The Hollywood Reporter’s review of Amelia is more postive than Variety’s saying the “top-flight portrayal of the aviator by Hilary Swank is an instant bio classic.”

Amelia — Film Review

Freckle-faced, prairie-voiced and fiercely independent, Hilary Swank’s depiction of aviator Amelia Earhart in Mira Nair’s biographical film “Amelia” is of a high order. It ranks with recent real-life portrayals of Ray Charles by Jamie Foxx and Truman Capote by Philip Seymour Hoffman and could be similarly awards-bound. ● More from: hollywoodreporter.com

The first major review of Amelia, starring Hilary Swank, which opens next Friday.

Read Variety’s Analysis Of The Movie Amelia

To say that “Amelia” never gets off the ground would be an understatement; it barely makes it out of the hangar. Handsomely mounted yet dismayingly superficial, Mira Nair’s film offers snazzy aerial photography and inspirational platitudes in lieu of insight into Amelia Earhart’s storied life and high-flying career. Prestigious packaging, led by Hilary Swank’s gussied-up performance as the iconic aviatrix, portends friendly commercial skies for the Fox Searchlight release, at least initially. But critical disdain is unlikely to be countered by much audience enthusiasm, even among admirers of this kind of old-fashioned, star-powered bio-mush. ● More from: variety.com

As Pete Hammond writes below “. . . here has been almost as much mystery surrounding the movie Amelia as there was about the circumstances surrounding the death of the legendary pilot herself.” His report indicates the Hilary Swank film, which arrives October 23rd, could be one of the films of the year.

The truth about ‘Amelia’

The fact is “Amelia” is a beautifully crafted and very traditional epic drama that’s aimed at an older, more discerning audience. That’s the kind of crowd that’s slow to show up at the multiplex, but if they do, they will be treated to the kind of fine adult biographical story movie studios generally just don’t seem to be making anymore. ● More from: Notes on a Season | Los Angeles Times