Padre Padrone Movie Review
Padre Padrone is a very hard film that makes no compromises with its bleak story, which is based on the true experiences of Gavino Ledda, who wrote the book that inspired Paulo and Vittorio Taviani's screenplay.
Independent Film Guide - P
Palookaville Movie Review
What do you call three characters who watch Armored Car Robbery (Richard Fleischer's 1950 film noir classic starring William Talman, Douglas Fowley, and Gene Evans) on television and use it as a blueprint for their own heist in 1995? How about unemployed losers? Sid, Russ, and Jerry (William Forsythe, Vincent Gallo, and Adam Trese) are certainly underqualified fo…
Pandora's Box Movie Review
Pandora's Box stars the late great Louise Brooks as Lulu and Francis Lederer (still alive well into his 90s, nearly 70 years after he co-starred opposite Brooks) as Alva Schon. In 1925's Joyless Street, G.W. Pabst revealed a Germany of harsh extremes: decadent jazz clubs near food lines where people wait hours at a time for a piece of butcher's meat. Innocent Lul…
Paper Mask Movie Review
Matthew Harris (Paul McGann) is chafing at the bit. He's a hospital orderly with an unexciting future until Dr. Simon Hennessy is killed in a car crash and Matthew, with the help of the doctor's papers, decides to take over his identity. He gets a job meant for Hennessy and winds up in the emergency room of another hospital during a medical crisis. Even though he'…
Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills Movie Review
Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills is a deeply sobering film experience. Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky (Brother's Keeper) had astonishing access to the Arkansas case, from the discovery of the children's bodies to client-lawyer discussions, from the tearful anguish of the victim's families to chilling rationalizations by the convicted killers…
Paradise Place Movie Review
Paradise Place sounds like it ought to be better than it is. After all, Ingmar Bergman produced it and Gunnel Lindblom, a leading actress in many of his movies, directed it. It features fine performances by Birgitta Valberg and Sif Ruud as a pair of old friends, and by Agneta Ekmanner, an exceptionally pretty child who plays Valberg's granddaughter. And the Swedish countryside couldn'…
Pariah Movie Review
Pariah was far and way the most disturbing entry at San Francisco's Indie Fest in January, 1999. It is a difficult film to watch, but an extremely rewarding one. It begins with a date between Steve (Damon Jones), who is white, and Sam (Elexa Williams), who is black. They are pounced upon by a gang of neo-Nazi skinheads who subject Sam to gang rape and force Steve…
France Paris Movie Review
I wonder whether Paris, France would seem better if I'd seen it as a silent movie. As it was, I kept wondering how in the world its small cast was able to talk so much during their complicated physical routines without hyperventilating or passing out or something. It's a long movie, too, 111 minutes worth of blathering and gymnastics, during which the characters rant and rave about J…
Paris Is Burning Movie Review
Why is a documentary about vogueing at New York drag balls called Paris Is Burning? Heck if I know, but Jennie Livingston's documentary is a valuable record of its era, filmed at the Paris Ballroom in the Bronx between 1985–89.
Parting Glances Movie Review
Within four years of the release of this intensely sad film, writer/director Bill Sherwood was dead, leaving behind Parting Glances as his sole cinematic legacy to the world. It's about how two gay men react to the positive diagnosis, subsequent illness, and then-inevitable death of their friend, wonderfully played by Steve Buscemi. The versatile Buscemi (who looked a bit like…
Party Girl Movie Review
The onscreen presence of Parker Posey is among the bright spots of moviegoing in the 1990s. Posey poured gallons of energy into many indie flicks of the decade; Party Girl was her chance to break out of background roles into genuine leading status. The success of the Party Girl movie led to a very short-lived television series starring Christine ("Marcia") Taylor of The Brady Bunch f…
Pas Tres Catholique Movie Review
Tonie Marshall's Pas Tres Catholique is an intriguing study of a private detective, thoughtfully played by Anemone.
Pass the Ammo Movie Review
Pass the Ammo, another recent effort by David Beaird, is a televangelism spoof starring Tim Curry and Annie Potts as a pair of preachers who are kidnapped on camera by a gang that includes Linda Kozlowski, a disgruntled victim of their media pitching.
Passion Fish Movie Review
Passion Fish is an example of what John Sayles can do without a net, the net being all the stuff people think they want to see in a movie. It's like falling in love with someone who isn't your type. If you care about someone, what the heck does your so-called type matter? May-Alice used to be a soap opera star on television, but while on the way to a leg waxing in Manhattan, she was …
Passionate Thief Movie Review
It is New Year's Eve in Rome and the 52-year-old movie extra played by Anna Magnani is filled with hope for the night. She longs for romance, adventure, and excitement and finds all three, though not in the way she had anticipated. She runs into a drunk middle-aged American businessman played by Fred Clark. She keeps running into another Cinecitta bit actor portrayed by Toto, then 62. And f…
Pastime Movie Review
A bittersweet baseball elegy set in the minor leagues in 1957.
Pecker Movie Review
Pecker. It's not what you think. Edward Furlong's character is called Pecker because he pecked at his food as a little boy. Pecker is nutty about photography. He takes pictures of anyone and everyone in his much-loved Baltimore, Maryland, neighborhood. Pecker's grandmother is Memama (Jean Schertler), who believes that her Virgin Mary statue can really talk …
Peeping Tom Movie Review
Peeping Tom was made in 1960, the same year as Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, but Powell's film was much kinkier and demanded far more from its audiences than the wildly successful Psycho did. It is not hard to sympathize with the shy, softspoken innkeeper played by Anthony Perkins and to wonder if maybe he and Janet Leigh will have a romance, but you want to warn innocent Anna Massey to…
Perfect Friday Movie Review
This escapist caper yarn stars Stanley Baker as Bank Deputy Under Manager K.G. Graham, who decides to break out of his dull life by robbing the National Metropolitan Bank Ltd. of 300,000 pounds. His comrades-in-crime are David Warner as the impoverished Lord Nicholas Dorset and Ursula Andress as his wife, Lady Britt. Baker's sensuous, intelligent brown eyes tend to subvert the unexciting pe…
Performance Movie Review
Mick Jagger tried to launch a movie career in a big way in 1970. In May, he played the title role in Ned Kelly under the direction of Tony Richardson (a stretch) and in October, he starred as rich rock star Turner in Nicolas Roeg's Performance (not a stretch). James Fox, on the other hand, had had it with a screen career that began in 1950 on MGM's The Min…
Permanent Midnight Movie Review
I may have missed three masterpieces of the small screen, but I've never seen ALF or thirtysomething and the only episode of Moonlighting I managed to catch was the black-and-white film noir tribute featuring an appearance by Orson Welles shortly before his death in 1985. Therefore, the name of television writer Jerry Stahl means nothing to me. His autobiography, Permanent Midnight, might a…
Permanent Record Movie Review
In Permanent Record, Marisa Silver's excellent film on teen suicide, Alan Boyce is so appealing as a troubled young composer that his death is genuinely horrifying; we never stop thinking about him or missing him for the rest of the movie. His best friend is wonderfully played by Keanu Reeves, so good in 1987's River's Edge. The well-written script neither glamorizes suicide n…
Persuasion Movie Review
Admirers of Jane Austen won't want to miss Persuasion, starring Amanda Root as a selfless Austen heroine swayed from the course of true love by family considerations.
Phantom of Liberty Movie Review
Even at 74, Luis Buñuel (1900–83) could still romp with his audiences with an appreciation of playfulness at its deepest and purest levels, jesting here, poking there. The Phantom of Liberty is a delicious film: warm, humorous, and delightful. Stories of pornography, violence, death, Catholicism, and convention all wind into each other, and each and every subject is rib…
Phobia Movie Review
Phobia, John Dingwall's riveting movie from Australia, is a good bet for inclusion in a list of the 10 best first films ever made. The film stars Polish actress Gosia Dobrowolska as Renate Simmons, whose naked face reveals her progressive recognition of the depth of her agoraphobia. This paralyzing fear of open spaces thwarts her efforts to heal herself at every turn. Renate's husban…
Photographing Fairies Movie Review
FairyTale: A True Story is for kids. Photographing Fairies isn't. Until a miscast Ben Kingsley as Reverend Templeton turns up, it's an intriguing story about photographer Charles Castle (Toby Stephens, then 28), who gets married in Switzerland in 1912 and then takes a honeymoon hike with his lovely bride Anne-Marie (Rachel Shelley). She is swallowed alive …
Pi Movie Review
Pi is a first film and Darren Aronofsky worked hard on it and even received a Best Director award at 1998's Sundance Film Festival. But if you've ever gone out with a genius with a touching belief in the infallibility of mathematics and science, you may have the less-than-touching belief that, when it comes to listening to him discuss the objects of his compulsive obsessions, a littl…
The Piano Movie Review
The Piano is a long, brooding story about sexual politics circa 1850. Oscar winners Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin play Ada and Flora McGrath, who leave Scotland in order to settle in New Zealand with Ada's new husband, Stewart, whom neither of them has ever seen. After a rough voyage, they are confronted with the stark loneliness of their new home and the loss of Ada's most treasured …
Picnic at Hanging Rock Movie Review
1975's Picnic at Hanging Rock, Peter Weir's exquisitely lensed Australian film, is something of a cautionary tale about the conflict between nature and civilization. Three girls and their teacher persist in imposing themselves on a threatening landscape about which they know nothing except its age. They fail, and the one girl who does return can't remember why. Even before the…
Picture Bride Movie Review
It is 1918. Seventeen-year-old Riyo arrives in Hawaii from Yokohama. She is marrying Matsuji (Akira Takayama) and they only know each other through the exchange of photographs. When she learns that Matsuji sent her a 25-year-old picture, she feels tricked and will not let him sleep with her. She has no money to go home, but determines to do so as soon as she earns the $300 ret…
Pink String and Sealing Wax Movie Review
Googie Withers came within an eyelash of giving Britain's top female star (Margaret Lockwood, with whom she'd appeared in 1938's The Lady Vanishes) a run for her money at the boxoffice. This examination of a Victorian murderess (set in Brighton, circa 1880) is a fine vehicle for Withers, who clearly knows the secret that any great screen villain kno…
Pitfall Movie Review
Pitfall is the second of three noir films Andre de Toth directed between 1944 and 1954. Only four years after Murder My Sweet, Dick Powell isn't Philip Marlowe anymore, he's insurance agent John Forbes, Sue's (Jane Wyatt) husband and Tommy's (Jimmy Hunt) father. Forbes once nurtured an adolescent fantasy that his life would be more interestin…
Pixote Movie Review
Both 1981's Pixote by Hector Babenco and 1984's Streetwise by Martin Bell offer a harsh portrait of the lives led by street children. Both Streetwise and Pixote (a horrifying fictional saga of a 10-year-old murderer) raise disturbing questions for which neither film provides answers. Bell and Babenco attracted considerable reputations for their honesty in showing the to…
Plan from Outer Space (9 ) Movie Review
It's hard to put a WOOF! by this movie, because I enjoy it so much. I have this six-hour tape that includes the following: (1) Queen of Outer Space, (2) Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman, (3) this movie, and (4) Bait. Put this tape in the VCR at midnight and Voila! Auf Wiedershen, Insomnia! Tor Johnson couldn't do dialogue, Vampira wou…
Platoon Movie Review
I saw plenty of movies between 1978 and 1985, but never the Best Picture of the Year, by choice. As I listened to people drone on and on about their favorite sequences from these films, I really didn't think I was missing anything and still don't. My own favorites were movies I watched over and over again and still do, stuff like Dinner for Adele, Escape from Alcatraz, Somewhere in T…
The Player Movie Review
The Player did for Robert Altman's career at the age of 67 what Prizzi's Honor had done for John Huston's career seven years earlier at the age of 79—it turned him into a hot young director all over again. This savage satire of Hollywood, informed by a myriad of details that could only be assembled via thorough scrutiny over the long haul, is every bit as brilliant a de…
Point of Order Movie Review
For anyone interested in the McCarthy era, Point of Order is a must-see movie! The filmmakers had to pore over 188 hours of kinescopes in order to make their selections and still retain all the salient points of the hearings; editing down this gargantuan amount of footage to a reasonable running time must have been a formidable task indeed. Joseph McCarthy, who died of alcoholism within three year…
Poison Movie Review
A film in three segments, inspired by three Jean Genet stories: “Hero,” a comedy set in Suburbia, shows how a seven-year-old boy's Mom, teacher, and friends try to explain why he killed Dad. In “Horror,” another comedy, a mad scientist drinks this sex-drive fluid and looks and acts like a homicidal monster afterward. “Homo,” not a comedy, shows the …
Popcorn Movie Review
As horror movies go, Popcorn is about what you'd expect from a story that takes place at the fictitious Oceanview campus of the University of California but is filmed entirely on location in Jamaica. With the money the seven producers saved hiring non-union crews, they were able to cast Ray Walston in a take-a-leak-and-you'll-miss-him cameo PLUS Tony Roberts for a badly played featur…
The Postman Movie Review
The Postman wrapped on June 3, 1994. Its star, Massimo Troisi, long overdue for a heart transplant, was killed by a heart attack within 24 hours. When he died, very few American audiences knew who Troisi was, but within a year, the whole world had fallen in love with Mario, the self-effacing title character in Michael Radford's The Postman/II Postino. When exiled Chilean poet Pablo N…
Powwow Highway Movie Review
Gary Farmer is Philbert Bono, a Cheyenne Indian en route to New Mexico, who gives a ride to his activist friend Buddy Red Bow (A.
Priest Movie Review
For reasons which escape me, the 1994 movie Priest made the hierarchy of the Catholic Church far more nervous than 1993's The Boys of St. Vincent, a superior telefeature eventually broadcast in prime time on the Arts and Entertainment network. There were NO effective role models on that disturbing study of sexual abuse and its subsequent cover-up by Catholic brothers in a Canadian orphanage…
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Movie Review
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was my favorite movie of 1969. For a kid raised on the often baffling rules of Holy Rosary Convent School in Woodland, California, Jean Brodie seemed to me to be the coolest teacher in the universe. Charismatic, idiosyncratic, fearless, and funny, Jean Brodie (Maggie Smith, then 34) was worshipped by her students, adored by her very married lover Teddy L…
Princess and the Goblin Movie Review
My niece Emma, then two years old, had severe reservations about 1994's Thumbelina, so I wasn't quite sure how she would react to The Princess and the Goblin. Who knows what will or won't frighten very small children? This time around, Emma wasn't even mildly alarmed, not by dark caverns or subterranean creatures or a ghost in the castle tower. The three-year-old boy in…
Private Hell (36) Movie Review
Private Hell 36 has one of my all-time favorite lines of dialogue, deftly delivered in a bar by Ida Lupino (who also wrote the screenplay). I won't spoil its impact by telegraphing it here, but in a few short words, it tells you everything you need to know about what sort of gal nightclub singer Lilli Marlowe is, right down to her toenails. The rest of the noir script is also …
The Private Life of Henry VIII Movie Review
International audiences (and especially Hollywood industry types) started paying attention to British films after they saw The Private Life of Henry VIII. Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester were welcomed to California with outstretched arms, and so were Binnie Barnes, Merle Oberon, and Wendy Barrie. Laughton created such an indelible impression as Henry VIII that every actor who po…
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes Movie Review
Peter O'Toole and Peter Sellers as Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson? It sounded great to director Billy Wilder in the early ‘60s, too. Unfortunately, the working relationship between the three never made it to the starting gate. Wilder apparently felt that O'Toole's demands were in the prima donna league and he made the mistake of calling Sellers an “unprofessio…
Professor Mamlock Movie Review
Professor Mamlock would be a remarkable film no matter when it was made.
The Profiteer Movie Review
For reasons that escape me, The Profiteer played just twice at the Cannes Film Festival before it was banned in Italy.
Project A: Part 2 Movie Review
Jackie Chan came to America in 1987 as the honored guest of the San Francisco International Film Festival. At that time, despite the failure of 1985's The Protector, co-starring Danny Aiello, he was eager to be as big a star in the U.S. as he was in Hong Kong. It was not until 1996's Rumble in the Bronx that he finally broke into the American consciousness with a splash, and by then …
The Prowler Movie Review
Sometimes, Van Heflin could melt into the wallpaper and sometimes he could creep up on you and demand your attention as no one else could. The overlooked Evelyn Keyes was capable of superb performances, too, and both were at their best in The Prowler, under Joseph Losey's expert direction. In her autobiography, Keyes says that then-blacklisted Dalton Trumbo had a hand in the script. Heflin …
Public Access Movie Review
Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects won two Academy Awards (Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor) in 1995. Public Access is not in the same league, but it's an interesting first effort by a filmmaker who clearly learned a great deal from the experience. Whiley Pritcher (Ron Marquette) arrives in the small town of Brewster, and launches a public access c…
Pulp Fiction Movie Review
Pulp Fiction is a dizzying ride through the violent Los Angeles that exists in the mind of its creator, Quentin Tarantino. It is a world of lethal small-time and not particularly brilliant thugs who exhaustively discuss the differences between American and French-style McDonald's as they kill time before a hit. It is a world where the time-worn cliche of Mr. Big's sexy wife being tak…
Pygmalion Movie Review
You need an iron bottom to sit through all 170 minutes of My Fair Lady, notwithstanding Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Theodore Bikel, Mona Washbourne, Jeremy Brett, Robert Coote, Gladys Cooper, Lerner and Loewe's score, Cecil Beaton's costumes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But the original Pygmalion starring Leslie Howard, Wendy Hiller, Wilfrid Lawson, and M…