Just what I expected

Instant Favorite.

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The presence of Marc Blucas (known in Buffyworld as "Old Potato Nose") makes this film inferior to any Merchant/Ivory production and most of Masterpiece Theatre. Blucas is always a block of wood, and here, with his corn-fed voice and face, is severely miscast. As always, Bill Nighy is wonderful — endlessly interesting during his too-brief appearances. We believe in his dedication to his art — if he could only practice it — and in his rage at himself as failed writer, failed husband, and failed father. The young women are negligible: is the tired diary-narrative convention meant as the writer's coming-to-art? If so, she needs lessons in plot- and character-construction. Two young women, two young men: It worked for Shakespeare, but despite the presence of the eponymous castle, helps neither the screenplay nor us. Isolation and shabby gentility relieved by marriage; writer's block relieved by a silly strategy unworthy of Nighy's character and performance? I watched for Nighy (as I watch Love, Actually); he's the brooding presence throughout the film, but notwithstanding, I'd like my two hours back.

Bill Nighy should be taken to one side and quietly warned that his eccentric English bloke persona is in danger of wearing out its welcome. Henry Thomas should never have been allowed to act in another movie after "E.T."Romola Garai at 21 was more convincing as a 17 year old than any 17 year old could possibly have been.Those were my initial reactions to "I capture the castle".It would be very ordinary stuff indeed without the remarkable Miss Garai as Cassandra,middle child of an "artistic" family living in a rented tumbledown castle.Bill eccentric English bloke is the father, a "one book" writer living apparently on fresh air,two years behind with the rent and inventing all sorts of excuses for not settling down with his typewriter. Two rich young American brothers(Bugatti owners to boot) fall within their orbit and Cassandra's older sister sees them as a way out of poverty.Cassandra herself,with all the intensity of a sensitive young girl,falls in love with the one Rose seduces. Set in the less than egalitarian mid - thirties the film plays up the lifestyle Rose is determined to win for herself(and,by extension,her family)against the genteel but dirt - poor existence they presently enjoy. Tara Fitzgerald graces the film in the unappreciated stepmother role she is surely too young for. Cassandra learns some of life's more important lessons at the expense of a bruised heart,and since she is the only truly sympathetic character in the cast it's all a bit unsatisfactory,but there's no denying the film's overall charm despite the deeply uncharismatic American contingent. Miss Garai's ability to portray vulnerability,confusion and adolescent despair lifts the movie into a class above itself. I hope she doesn't become enmired in a long - running TV series that would blunt her intensity and dull her appetite at the same time as it enhanced her bank account - but that's just selfish,isn't it?

...set in the 1930s in the English countryside. The young protagonist, 17 year old Cassandra, sets down in her diary her thoughts and adventures growing up in a bohemian family living in a rented castle. Her father is a novelist who has suffered writer's block and whose declining fortunes have reduced the family to a bare pantry existence. Relief comes in the form of two American brothers who inherit the land on which the castle sits. Cassandra's slightly older sister Rose sets her sights on landing one of the brothers as a husband, and a lot of romantic complications follow. The film has many strengths, and a few weaknesses. The strengths include the beautiful photography and winsome performances by the actors who play Cassandra and other members of her family. The main weakness is some uneven pacing which makes the film stumble along in parts. However, the characters are well drawn and likable, and the film has a commonsensical ending which rings true.

Stephen is indeed a beautiful guy. The casting director did a good job to find all those people. I have not read the novel, however, i think that this movie is well done.There is one thing that I did not think that it is possible. It is when the little boy starts to talking how the young girl who is about to get married does not talk about her future husband all the time at all. And it also did make sense, why did the girl wrote him a list of things that she is getting. And what little boy knows anything about adult life.the movie is well shot, the color was right and romantic. I especially when the girl walked in the forest with Stephen, it seems to be a place that has never been touched by human steps. it might be more beautiful if it was shot during a froggy day.The ending was not too surprising. it is a little formulated, not unexpected. Love will always be the forever topic in films.