Product Details

• Actors: Charlize Theron, Stuart Townsend, Penélope Cruz, Thomas Kretschmann, Steven Berkoff
• Directors: John Duigan
• Writers: John Duigan
• Producers: Alain Pancrazi, André Rouleau, Bertil Ohlsson, James Simpson, Jason Piette
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC
• Language: English, French, German, Spanish
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• VHS Release Date: January 25, 2005
• Run Time: 132 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0006J27WE
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #280,694 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful: A work of poetry, June 2, 2005

By 

Jacqueline Marcus (Hanalei, Kauai USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Head in the Clouds (DVD)

I've read the negative reviews on this film, which convinces me that film critics are so used to the garbage of cheap sex and violence that they can't recognize a diamond in the rust if they tried.

"Head in the Clouds" kept me there every second of the way. Maybe that's because I have the sensibilities of a poet and I'm a philosophy teacher. Maybe this film will not appeal to morons, but it will appeal to intellectuals and artists. So, yes, it's not for everyone. One has to have a degree of intelligence and the passions of a poet to see the value of this film.

As for Stuart Townsend and Charlize Theron, I thought Stuart Townsend MADE this film come to life. He was brilliant! And absolutely convincing in every single second of this film. And Theron was equally captivating.

Let's remember, folks, the critics dumped on "Doctor Zhivago". Now they look like the fools that they are -- because everyone knows it's a work of genius and a classic. Maybe "Head in the Clouds" isn't quite Zhivago, but it deserves praise and certainly does NOT deserve to be judged by swine and morons.

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Party's Over, November 25, 2005

By 

Vince Perrin "Byline" (Stockton, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Head in the Clouds (DVD)

"Head in the Clouds" is Charlize Theron's during World War II. While her male and female lovers (Stuart Townsend, Penelope Cruz) fret about fascism in Spain and the collapse of The Third Republic, Charlize lives for the pleasures she savors. As Europe is overtaken by war, Theron adapts to whatever will keep her in cafe society, which in occupied Paris means sleeping with Nazis. Her lovers decamp for Spain to fight Franco and Theron moves in with a kindly torturer. Her English lover returns as a resistance fighter and time runs out for our darling dilettante.

Period music, locations, costumes and sets are all lovingly recreated. That can't be said for the script. The actors are beautiful until they start to speak. Cruz is the only one who conveys any depth or conviction. This movie, if you can't tell by now, ends badly for everyone. Crucial information is withheld to provide a surprise ending that fails to deliver. The good intentions of "Head in the Clouds" make its failures more noticeable. You want to like this movie but its surfaces won't let you.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Three nationalities, three twists of fate!, November 8, 2005

By 

Hiram Gomez Pardo (Valencia, Venezuela) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Head in the Clouds (DVD)

Paris, the always shining beacon of the world, is the frame of this interesting and painful portrait around the lives and times of three outlaw human beings: the most liberal of all of them, the authentic center of gravity of manners, tastes and behavior: Charlize Theron plays Gilda, the irreverence made woman, who has given shelter to a nurse - Penelope Cruz - and has allowed her to go ahead with her bliss and dreams. Both of them lives the convulsed and fabulous thirties, where the Charleston and jazz sounds were emerging with particular emphasis. Her brief stage in Cambridge, allows her to meet a very special man, who eventually will become the love of her life.

This unlimited happiness will be interrupted by the war, attending the call of the conscious, curiously. She as a nurse and he, as sensible human being feel that their happy state of life is not in harmony with a bleeding world; in the neighbor country Spain: The Civil War is a very hard reality to ignore it. That fact will break this curious triangle and both of them will become protagonists of this drama.

Charlize is absolutely devastated in this sense, but this emotional crossroad, this existential dilemma will transform her, leaving behind all the selfishness and she will do her best, according her possibilities to contribute the cause against the world of shadows.

A convincing script with certain narrative pauses, but with enough rhythmic pulse to arrive to a crude but satisfactory conclusion. Charlize Theron was marvelous and credible. Her kaleidoscopic beauty allows her to combine several behaviors: as femme fatale, alluring lover and elusively enigmatic character.

Filmed with a visible inspirational European flavor, that reminded me to Claude Sautet.