Anthony Minghella Anthony Minghella Anthony Minghella, (6 January 195418 March 2008) was a British film director, playwright and screenwriter. He was chairman of the board of Governors at the British Film Institute between 2003 and 2007. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for "The English Patient" (1996). In addition, he received three more Academy Award nominations; he was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for both "The English Patient" (1996) and "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (1999), and was posthumously nominated for Best Picture for "The Reader" (2008), as a co-producer. Minghella was born in Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, an
The Talented Mr. Ripley (film) Ripley" begins as an ingenious exposition of the great truth about charming people having something to hide: namely, their utter reliance on others. It ends up as a dismayingly unthrilling thriller and bafflingly unconvincing character study". In her review for the "Village Voice", Amy Taubin criticized Minghella as a "would-be art film director who never takes his eye off the box office, doesn't allow himself to become embroiled in such complexity. He turns "The Talented Mr. Ripley" into a splashy tourist trap of a movie. The effect is rather like reading "The National Enquirer" in a café overlooking the Adriatic".