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Up Close & Personal

Up Close & Personal

Drama · Romance · 1996

Tally Atwater has a dream: to be a prime-time network newscaster. She pursues this dream with nothing but ambition, raw talent and a homemade demo tape. Warren Justice is a brilliant, hard edged, veteran newsman. He sees Tally has talent and becomes her mentor. Tally’s career takes a meteoric rise and she and Warren fall in love. The romance that results is as intense and revealing as television news itself. Yet, each breaking story, every videotaped crisis that brings them together, also threatens to drive them apart...

Movie details

Up Close & Personal

“Passion Brought Them Together... Only Success Could Tear Them Apart!”

1996 Drama · Romance 1h 59m

Critical arithmetic

One number, for now.

TMDB

6.3 / 10

Community rating

Tally Atwater has a dream: to be a prime-time network newscaster. She pursues this dream with nothing but ambition, raw talent and a homemade demo tape. Warren Justice is a brilliant, hard edged, veteran newsman. He sees Tally has talent and becomes her mentor. Tally’s career takes a meteoric rise and she and Warren fall in love. The romance that results is as intense and revealing as television news itself. Yet, each breaking story, every videotaped crisis that brings them together, also threatens to drive them apart...

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over Up Close & Personal?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

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Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

Jon Avnet

Written by

Joan Didion · John Gregory Dunne

Robert Redford

Robert Redford

Warren Justice

Michelle Pfeiffer

Michelle Pfeiffer

Tally Atwater

Stockard Channing

Stockard Channing

Marcia McGrath

Joe Mantegna

Joe Mantegna

Bucky Terranova

Kate Nelligan

Kate Nelligan

Joanna Kennelly

Glenn Plummer

Glenn Plummer

Ned Jackson

James Rebhorn

James Rebhorn

John Merino

Court is in session

Put Up Close & Personal on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Sentimental Softie

“Sincerity is not manipulation.”

The film risks embarrassment to make emotion communal, and that openness is harder than fashionable detachment.

The prosecution The Cool Ironist

“The strings are showing.”

Every cue tells you exactly what to feel and when, leaving sentiment to do the work character should have done.