Movie Reviews
Titles starting with P
Prozac Nation
I haven’t read the memoir by Elizabeth Wurtzel that is the basis for this movie. From the book reviews I looked at, they seem to have eliminated a lot of the story. She was addicted to Ritalin, and almost everything else you can ingest. Christina Ricci does a good job with the material she is given; unfortunately, that’s just alternating between being an incredible bitch and crying and ... Read more »
Psych-Out
I had completely forgotten that this was directed by my old friend, Richard Rush, who began his career with cult movies like Hell’s Angels on Wheels and this one, then made the superb The Stunt Man … and seems to have spent the rest of his life lecturing on college campuses after showings of his motorsickle film. Ah, those ... Read more »
Psycho
Every once in a while a movie comes along that changes everything. It may be a new technology, or an expansion or new use of an old one. (These don’t even have to be good, they just have to be new.) It can be a way of handling a story that is new. It can be a societal breakthrough, in dealing with sex or violence or racial issues. Everybody will have their own list, but mine includes Read more »
Psycho
Possibly the stupidest idea ever to disgrace the American cinema until Adam Sandler came along and re-made Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Gus van Sant re-made Hitchcock’s masterpiece shot for shot, almost. In COLOR. Fucking stupid.
Public Enemies
A few weeks ago it was Jesse James, tonight it’s John Dillinger. Pick your scumbag. I know that movies creating semi-heroic myths about people who were, in reality, worthless, murdering pieces of shit can yield fantastic results, as in Bonnie and Clyde. But they are a hard sell to me. It helps if I don’t know too much about the criminal’s actual crimes; I knew ... Read more »
The Public Eye
Arthur Fellig was probably the best news photographer who ever worked. He was known as “Weegee,” after the Ouija board, because of us uncanny ability to be where the sensational news was happening, sometimes even before the police got there. He had a complete photo lab in the trunk of his car, so he could be selling printed pictures while his competitors were still heading to their ... Read more »
Pulgasari
One of the weirdest movies ever made, and not just because it is terminally awful. The story behind it is almost unbelievable. You find yourself thinking, “Who could make up shit like this?” Well, how about the human carcinoma, little fat-faced Kim Jong-un? You think The Interview was the first time North Korea got into the movie business? Think again. He is just ... Read more »
Pulp Fiction
One of those films that changes the way we look at motion pictures. We were so pissed off when that pleasant little potboiler, Forrest Gump, won best picture.
Pulp Fiction
What can you say about this movie twenty years later that hasn’t already been said a thousand times before? It was totally ground-breaking, we had never seen anything remotely like it. Several stories twined together, each one of them original and totally off-the-wall. The amazing visual sense. The perfect use of music, one of the things Tarantino would become famous for. Another was his ... Read more »
Purple Noon
During the last few years I read all five of Patricia Highsmith’s books about Tom Ripley, known collectively as the Ripliad. They are a delight, if you don’t mind amoral mass murders as protagonists. (I don’t mind.) Over the years several of the books have been made into movies, some of them twice. We had seen two of them, and decided to fill in the blanks, starting with this one, the ... Read more »