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A Thousand Acres |  | Director: Jocelyn Moorhouse
Actors: Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Lange, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jason Robards, Colin Firth
Studio: Walt Disney Video
List Price: $14.99
Buy Used: $3.98
as of 3/14/2010 08:53 CDT details
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New (26) from $6.00
Rating:  31 reviews
Sales Rank: 26903
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 105 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: DISD14252D
ISBN: 1558908331
UPC: 717951000330
EAN: 9781558908338
ASIN: 1558908331
Theatrical Release Date: September 19, 1997
Release Date: April 22, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Award-winning actresses jessica lange and michell pfeiffer star in this powerful story of family betrayal and revenge. When s father larry cook gives the thriving farm to his daughters the seemingly generous gift reveals long-guarded secrets rivalries and hidden desires shattering the family forever. Studio: Buena Vista Home Video Release Date: 09/03/2002 Starring: Michelle Pfeiffer Jason Robards Run time: 105 minutes Rating: R Director: Jocelyn Moorehead
Amazon.com
Jessica Lange and Michelle Pfeiffer are quietly dazzling in this underrated adaptation of Jane Smiley's best-selling modern version of King Lear. The two play sisters of a stubborn, alcoholic Iowa farmer (Jason Robards), who decides to leave his fertile farm to them and their youngest sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh). It is a decision that rends the family, setting siblings against one another and forcing long-held secrets out of their guilty closets. The family dynamics become ever more destructive, and the refuge of sanity the two older sisters have created may be their only salvation. It's a tragedy not quite on a Shakespearean scale, but anyone who appreciates the difficulties of a dysfunctional family will relate to the heartbreak--and the promise of redemption. Pfeiffer especially is breathtaking as the good housewife Rose, whose rage at her father and her husband is never far from her placid surface. --Anne Hurley
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 31
 Awesome Lange/Pfeiffer drama! July 18, 2009
R. Pepper (Los Angeles)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I was born and raised in Illinois and was a teenager when this film came out. I remember reading in the news about them filming near my town in Rochelle, Illinois. I also worked with a lady who had an extra role in this. You will see her in the bakery behind the counter when Jessica Lange and Jennifer Jason Leigh walk in and purchase something. Of course I remember her telling me that it wasn't her voice you hear speak back it was done as a voiceover. She also told me all the extras had to sign agreements that they would not approach or try and talk to Jessica Lange or Michelle Pfeiffer on set. I just recently watched this again as an adult and love it. Everything about it is wonderful, and I can't think of any reason to give it less than 5 stars. The cast is excellent and the story is gripping and intriguing. You will easily be drawn into this powerful drama with superb performances just as it says on the DVD cover. If you like this genre of film and appreciate some of the best actors in their field, you will not be disappointed. This is as good as it gets.
Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Lange, Jason Robards - need I say more? March 12, 2009
Kevin Hunter (Los Angeles, CA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This film was beautifully shot with an incredible score running through the backdrop. The acting between Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Lange and Jason Robards was furiously fantastic. Why they weren't acknowledged for their performances in this is a travesty. This is a very heavy film, and you have to be in the right frame of mind to take it in as it's wracked with resentment, anger, and shocking moments. The only criticisms I'd have about this film would be it feels as if it jumped to fast from one scene to the next seemingly to propel the story quickly to the finish line, and also unfortunate that Jennifer Jason Leigh seemed to be barely non-existent in the film, almost as if the Director and the Editor decided it best to throw the majority of her scenes on the cutting room floor in order to keep the film on a time limit. Otherwise a classic piece showcasing some fine acting that draws you into it's family of horrors. The extra final star on this review is because of the brilliant work by the cast in a story that works in a book, but difficult to squeeze on film.
1000 ACRES: KING LEAR in Iowa or a family betrayed November 17, 2007
KerrLines (Baltimore,MD)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Once again, I have found it wise to revisit certain films to see if I have changed towards the picture.Well,I saw A THOUSAND ACRES in 1998 in the theatre and left feeling ehh...dry,not impressed.Now,nearly ten years later,I was riveted to the screen for the story and the outstanding performances.Why the change? I now have experienced a lot that happened in this film and only time has revealed to me that what happened in this film happened in my life.
Harold Cook (a surly Jason Robards) is the richest and most powerful man with his 1000 acres that has been in his family for three generations.He has been widowed and his three daughters have been there for him,tending to his needs and putting up with his drunkenness,abuse and control.He decides to will the 1000 acres to the three daughters and two of their spouses,setting up a corporation.Jessica Lange and Michelle Pfeiffer are the two eldest daughters married,and Jennifer Jason-Leigh, the youngest,a lawyer,is not certain that she wants to do this deal.When she expresses doubt,her father cuts her from the deal and decides to divide the farm in half.This sets up a division in the family, and as Cook starts to lose his mind, the girls start remembering long suppressed memories that start to leak out.Daddy sexually abused them and this is the whole crux of this very tense and sad story of family secrets.Lange and Pfeiffer are so equally compelling in their roles as the two eldest sisters.Pfeiffer is the driving force in blowing up the whole charade.Lange, the ever dutiful daughter is the one who has to come to the realization that her father was a monster and embrace the anger and betrayal.Leigh, the youngest daughter sides with the mentally decaying father,not having either experienced the abuse or simply not remembering, and the family is destroyed permanently.The revelations of the characters and the great performances of Lange and Pfeiffer show what magnificent actresses they are.
Director Jocelyn Moorhouse has done three other films that have greatly impressed me;PROOF (with Russel Crowe 1991 Australia),HOW TO MAKE AN AMERICAN QUILT,and MURIEL'S WEDDING (also Australia).Ths fact that Laura Jones wrote the screenplay concerned me.Having seen her other book adaptations,OSCAR AND LUCINDA,ANGELA'S ASHES,PORTRAIT OF A LADY and AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE,I was not hopeful as I had not cared for any of these adaptations,BUT,with Moorhouse directing Jones' screenplay this time, the film had a fluidity and great character development,which I had found wonting in the other films.
Inheritances,family secrets and a tyrannical parent are a bitch.I know it!If this is your story,you will readily embrace A THOUSAND ACRES and till the land.If not, you will probably bypass this film until this happens to you.The fact that Jane Smiley's novel A THOUSAND ACRES is an update of William Shakespeare's KING LEAR adds much weight as a great piece of source material that seems to be timeless. It is this particular retelling, though, that resonated in my soul.The DVD print is flawless and letterboxed widescreen with no extras.
Underrated family drama with sizzling work by Pfeiffer and Lange August 23, 2007
Dennis Littrell (SoCal)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
BEWARE SPOILERS!
One of the Message Boards threads at IMDb had two women talking about Colin Firth, how they watched the movie only because of him. Obviously these were two young women; but what struck me is how little this movie has been appreciated by audiences generally. The brilliant, and I mean brilliant, performances by Michelle Pfeiffer and Jessica Lange were hardly noticed, not only by audiences, but by the Academy and by most of the critics.
I think I know why. First, the plot--or actually just the setup--is a kind of bastardization of Shakespeare's King Lear with the dying, crazy patriarch and the three scheming daughters who will inherit. Their names even begin with the same letters, Regan, Goneril, and Cordelia--Rose, Ginny, and Caroline. And I guess "Larry" (Jason Robards) works for "Lear." The apparent idea envisioned by Jane Smiley in her Pulitzer Prize winning novel was to tell a Lear-like story from the point of view of the daughters, and to tell it in a sort of late twentieth century realistic way not considered by the Bard. The problem is, in Smiley and Moorhouse's story, the two older daughters are very human with strengths and weaknesses while the father is a most despicable character without much in the way of redeeming qualities. His only strength is his ability to make a financial success of the farm; however, we can even discount that since his father and grandfather before him built the farm and he inherited it.
The second problem--and this is one I cannot personally attest to, not having read Smiley's novel--is that the movie is only a limited and partial interpretation of that novel. Still, it is almost always the case that an excellent novel, especially a long and ambitious one with many psychological nuances, cannot be faithfully transferred to the screen. The vision and audio demands of film drown out the subtleties of a narration while the time constraints don't allow for the full development of character and motivation achieved by the novelist. Given five or six hours, perhaps Moorhouse could have made a movie more in keeping with Smiley's novel.
A third problem is one that is perhaps Moorhouse's alone. She began her directing career with the very well done Aussie film Proof (1991) starring Russell Crowe. She follow it up with How to Make an American Quilt (1995) which celebrated women, especially women of a certain age. However it was a bit heavy-handed and clearly and determinedly a chick flick. In a sense A Thousand Acres takes off from there, showing us not only the point of view of women, but does so in a way that may seem politically motivated to some. Larry Cook is clearly a bad, bad daddy. He beat his daughters and he had carnal knowledge of them. He ran the household with an iron fist. Jess (Colin Firth's character) seduces the inexperienced Ginny and breaks her heart for nothing more than a bit of fun it would appear. And then he goes to Rose, who clearly is going to be the power behind the new ownership, and hooks up with her, while incidentally inducing her husband to end his life in a drunken accident. The rest of the men are one-dimensional characters without nuance, the way they often appear in romance novels. I think most audiences were put off by the heavy-handed incest, adultery and sexual betrayal that was woven into the story.
Having said all this, I think the critics and the public are wrong. I think the direction was biased against men, but in this story it needed to be. I think Moorhouse did a fine job of making an emotional and engaging film about family dynamics that were none too pretty. And the acting by Pfeiffer and Lange was nothing short of sensational. They seemed to feed off of one another in a way that I found absolutely authentic and deeply moving. In particular Pfeiffer was riveting as she projected her bent-up anger and hatred. The way Moorhouse allowed her character to be revealed to us gradually is a tribute to her ability as a director as well as to Pfeiffer's outstanding performance. And the skill with which Moorhouse guided the change in Ginny's character as she went from a "ninny," as she called herself, to someone with self-awareness and some understandable bitterness, was also excellent. The fact that she left her husband was as much out of shame as anything else. He needed to go get her and forgive her and bring her back. And Robards in his intensity and madness was also very good.
I predict that this film, which bombed in theaters, will be better appreciated in the years to come as people see it on DVD. My question is, whatever happened to Moorhouse? Her talent is obvious, but she has yet to director her fourth feature film. When she does I hope she remembers to go with what she believes but to be fair as well. I think, actually she was fair to the two lead character in this film, but didn't pay enough attention to the others. In addition to the unnuanced father, Jennifer Jason Leigh's Caroline was unfinished, leaving us to wonder about why she did some of the things she did. And the husbands needed to be something more than mannequins. They needed to be engaged and involved.
 Very Dramatic, Great Performances, & Memorable April 15, 2007
IJustDiedAlive (Northern CA, USA)
This is one of those very dramatic dramas that seem to stay with you after you watch it. Three sisters have very conflicted feelings towards their father who is growing more and more disorientated as he ages and continues to be an alcoholic. What happened in the past to make this father resent his daughters so much and why do they feel the way they do? If you like family in distress movies then this is sure to peak your interest. Michelle Pfeiffer and Jessica Lange have a very good on screen chemistry.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 31
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