WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

DipitySkillful an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Brenda The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

jzappa Most general accounts of Francis Ford Coppola's work have identified recurrent familial themes, while visually he has come to be understood as something of a guru of the extravagant. However, neither of these positions is entirely sustainable across an oeuvre that on closer inspection discloses considerable formal and thematic scope. If Coppola had by the close of the 1970s figured, understandably enough, that his career was blessed, this, his next venture, would bring about a very hasty and categorical fall from grace. Initially conceived as a modest antidote to the excesses of Apocalypse Now, the project ballooned into an experiment of gargantuan, tragic proportions that subsequently marked an immediate shift in his career to more modest productions.This Oscar-nominated Vegas-set semi-musical, which led to Coppola's bankruptcy, is an intriguing production but not a good film. From Coppola, the inspired mastermind of The Conversation, Apocalypse Now and the Godfather films, it's a foremost letdown. A movie's innovative technical process is indeterminate. Movies make or break as per the substance of their material. The most miserable thing about this lavish exercise in style is that it has none. It's a tango of elegant and byzantine camera movements filling wonderful sets, and the characters get completely misplaced in the thick. There's never a second in this film when I'm concerned about what's happening to the people in it, and but one moment, a cameo by Allen Goorwitz as a furious coffee shop owner, when I feel that an actor's artlessness successfully slips past Coppola's suffocating panache and into the audience.The raconteur of The Godfather turns into a pure technician here. There are unsettling congruences between Coppola's fanatical command of this film and the character of Harry Caul, the wiretapper in Coppola's The Conversation, who cared solely about technical outcomes and declined to let himself consider human ones. Movies are innumerable different things, but most of the best ones are about and for people, and this unmistakably hallucinatory and dreamlike piece of filmmaking takes little notice of the difficulties of the human spirit. Certainly, it appears virtually on the lookout against the actors who inhabit its painstakingly designed scenes. They're scarcely ever permitted to lead. They're figures in a larger blueprint, one that ebbs them, that views them as part of the furnishings. They aren't offered many close-ups. They're frequently suffused in loud red glimmering or overpowering blues and greens. They're positioned before off-puttingly glitzy sets or adrift shoddily stage-managed hordes. And occasionally they're interrupted at the heart of a sentiment because the uncompromisingly planned camera has affairs elsewhere.I've forgotten, indeed, to mention the players, or who they play. That's not so much of an omission talking about a film like this. The two leads, the sexier-than-ever Teri Garr and the forgettable-as-ever Frederic Forrest occupy a Las Vegas of regret, languor, and glitzy lights. For a short time, they spring from their monotonous lives and meet new lovers, Raul Julia and Natassja Kinski, who string them along with flights of the imagination. In effect, Coppola's telling the simple story of a break-up but with the hyper-romantic lusciousness of the emotions we feel in those times, which is cool, until it becomes an unmotivated, auto-pilot story upstaged by its own, well, stages.There are trivial amusements in this movie. One is Harry Dean Stanton's phone-in as a sleazy junkyard owner, while Coppola defies showing us Stanton's most valuable instrument, his telling eyes. Kinski, as a circus tightrope walker, has a pretty decent blip on the radar when she explains "to make a circus girl disappear, all you have to do is blink." Garr is endearing, but her role makes her unrewardingly submissive, and Forrest is more or less transparent here, playing such a nonentity. Ho hum.

gregory-joulin --- Spoilers ---I bought the DVD of this film 4$ on the web and boy, what a disappointment even for such a bargain... It's long, it's boring, it's too colorful and bright, it lacks rhythm and emotions, and to top it all, it doesn't even have this strange dark glow that gives some movies an intact power 30 years after their release ("Blade Runner" for example), a glow that could be a definition of what viewers call "cult status". It's been completely forgotten.The making-of on the second DVD is more interesting than the motion picture itself, and it explains a lot about this big fiasco.Back in 1982, Francis Ford Coppola was one of the jewels shining on the crown of the New Hollywood era, along with Spielberg, Lucas, De Palma and so, thinking it was maybe the dawn of something big. It was not, and the sun was about to go down on him.By something big, I think he wanted to build, inside Zooetrope Studios, a safe haven for filmmakers, far away from major studios and tycoon producers who were then rushing from professional domains like banking, industry, big corporations, anything but movie making, to make big Hollywood dollars.A touching moment from the documentary shows accomplished directors like Steven Spielberg, Jean-Luc Godard and others, partying and having cocktails among fans and Coppola's family members... Another one shows an aerial view of the studios alleys, named "Frederico Fellini street" or "Nino Rota street". Yeah, the dream had almost come true, as for those amazed kids allowed to visit the stages for an afternoon.But Coppola is definitely a man of movies, an "artist" - I mean a man of arts, who lives by Art, certainly not a business man. Looking at his distraught face when he announces to the press that his N-th investor just backed out his financial support, which meant for him the need to contract even more debts to finish "One from the heart" is kinda sad because it's the face of a dream wrecked on the shores of reality.To live thru this even more intensely, he'll have built more and more stages, more and more cranes, he'll have hired more and more extras, dancers, to create his "Citizen Kane", his Xanadu, his Disneyland, a runaway straight forward, without any decent script, a cast incompatible with a love story (average Frederic Forrest and unattractive Teri Garr), a gifted composer (Tom Waits) who doesn't even seem to understand the purpose of the whole project.The critics will be a blood bath, the audience won't follow, the movie will bomb. Not even a compensation : Francis Ford Coppola's ideas will be stolen for more than a decade to be recycled in 99% of the MTV music videos...It was in 1982 and Gondry, Burton, etc... had yet to catch on. Coppola started his purgatory journey, selling Zooetrope back lot, falling down from acclaimed "Apocalypse Now" director and independent studio owner to contract director, shooting impersonal movies for others, while Star Wars 7 or Indy 2 were making billions.Life is hard with poets.

jpileggi-1 It is American myth that "Apocalypse Now" drove Francis Coppola to the brink of insanity (see "Hearts of Darkness") and he has never been the same. One From the Heart was made following his Boy Gang trilogy, which has also confused many as to "why?" the creator of the Godfather saga would go so far afield.Creative masters simply are different. Sometimes their egos and force of will create incredible works of art which also manage to achieve commercial success and mass appeal. Often times their works succeed as art, but fail at the box office.One From the Heart is homage to the lavish musicals of the 30's, and an expression of Coppola's love of Theater. The sets and effects are beautiful on a large screen. The craft and technical skill is apparent in each shot and throughout the film. Terri Garr and Frederic Forrest are the "everyman" antithesis of Astaire and Rogers. The mix of simplicity and grandeur is not for everyone.I loved the movie. I also understand why most do not. Viewers go to a lavish musical to escape and be entertained. Coppola wants one to view the movie and appreciate his vision and his life, and perhaps experience some of his romantic notions of times gone by. Most people do not want to spend money and opportunity for such notions.

Rufus-T The art work is amazingly dazzling. I would watch the movie again just for the art alone. Much credit should be given to those who are involved in the art direction and the setting. Another bright side of the movie is the exotic appearance of the talented Nastassja Kinski. Her role was brief, much too brief. She light up the screen in those brief appearance. The scene of her dancing on the cocktail glass like a ballerina is worth a sight. She even give a nice small singing rendition, kinds of a reincarnation of Leslie Caron in her prime. Finally, the two male supporting roles of Raul Julia and Harry Dean Stanton were quite lively.Despite the incredible art work, the enchanting performance by Nastassja Kinski, and the worthy male supporting role performances, this is really not a good movie. With all due respect, Coppola did not have his touch in his directing job to make the story interesting. Although this is a musical, since the leading actor of Frederic Forrest and Teri Garr can't sing, most of the songs were background singing by Tom Waite and Crystal Gayle. The singing and the music were nice music, but at times distracting to the movie. The casting for the leads of Frederic Forrest and Teri Garr were really nothing to be brag about. The two supporting roles of Raul Julia and Nastasja Kinski would have made the better leads.