Movie Reviews
Titles starting with P
Paris 36
A trifle that never quite succeeded for me. A grou p of workers try to rescue a failing theater. I have no real experience and/or taste for French vaudeville and popular music of that era. I suspect that French people will love this a great deal more than I did. I have to say that the look of the film is first-rate, though, and it was filmed entirely on a vast set outside Prague! The ... Read more »
Paris, je t’aime
A real oddity: 18 short films set in Paris. When I say short, consider that the screen running time, less credits, is about 115 minutes. That means that each of the 22 directors (several were co-directed) has about 6 minutes and 38 seconds to say his or her piece. You obviously don’t tell a complicated story in that length (though some, like the Coen Brothers, manage a funny anecdote), you ... Read more »
Paris, Texas
Harry Dean Stanton, man! I don’t think I’ve ever seen him be bad in a movie, though he’s been in some bad movies, like everybody. But this is the best I’ve ever seen him. He’s playing against type, because usually there is at least a hint of menace in his craggy face (though he played an angel in One Magic Christmas, which just goes ... Read more »
Parker
There have been several of Donald E. Westlake’s (writing as Richard Stark) books about No-first-name Parker made into movies. Always before the name has been changed. Many of them are unsatisfying. Even some of the good ones, like Point Blank in 1967, starring Lee Marvin, aren’t really all that close to the excellent books they are based on. Read more »
Parkland
Fifty years. As I write this there are only a few more days until the fiftieth anniversary of those events in Dallas, many of which played out at the Parkland hospital, where the still-breathing body of John F. Kennedy was taken. Later, Lee Harvey Oswald would die in the room next door. This movie has no real plot, since we all know exactly what happened. There is no mystery to solve, ... Read more »
Particle Fever
Back in high school, when I was learning what little I know about particle physics (most of it probably wrong now, there were illustrations of what had happened at the business end of atom smashers, as we called them then. It was a burst of lines and curves, very pretty. And the experimenters could point at a short line and say, with confidence, “There! That is the track of a mu meson! It ... Read more »
The Party
Comedy is hard. Sometimes it works, and sometimes … Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers experimented here, with a large set and no real script, just a series of gags and a lot of improvisation. It was shot sequentially, so they could play off of what had been done the previous day. And I think that may be the problem. This sort of material has been done brilliantly by the likes of Chaplin and ... Read more »
Party Monster
We waited a long time to rent this one. I have to admit that, though I try very hard to divorce the artist from his work, every once in a while I dislike someone so much that it affects me. Adam Sandler is one example, Macauley Culkin is another. I just don’t like him. He or other members of his brood used to live in the same apartment building as my agent in New York, near Lincoln Center, ... Read more »
A Passage to India
Colonialism and the clash of cultures. Dr. Aziz hangs with a lot of fellow Indians who are opposed to British rule, and he says he doesn’t like them, but in his heart he wants to be British, or at least to mingle, which simply isn’t done, old chap. Adela and her prospective mother-in-law are newly arrived on the subcontinent, and they want to see the “real” India, not the imported parcels ... Read more »
Passengers
Despite the presence of the lovely porcelain doll Anne Hathaway and the talented Patrick Wilson (who we just saw in Lakewood Terrace, and who was so brilliant opposite Ellen Page in Hard Candy), this is a dud. The direction is terrible, with long silences in most scenes. In a picture that is supposed to build suspense, this is fatal. ... Read more »