| Paisan (Paisà) [DVD] |
The film begins in Sicily and moves steadily northward with each succeeding story, thus reflecting the actual path of the Allied liberation of Italy starting in 1943. Each of the film’s ...
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| Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno) |
Pan’s Labyrinth, which del Toro both wrote and directed, takes place in Spain in 1944, just after a bloody civil war that resulted in the fascist dictator General Franco ruling the country. ...
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| Pandora's Box (Die Büchse der Pandora) [DVD] |
Pabst was already a legendary director in Germany, where he had been central to the evolving nature of German expressionist cinema. Along with F.W Murnau and Fritz Lang, he was considered one of the ...
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| Pandorum |
The story begins with a pair of men waking from deep hypersleep with no memory of what their mission was, how far their ship gone, or even where they are (not to mention what happened to the ...
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| Panic Room |
David Fincher's Panic Room is a first-rate nail biter, a taut, claustrophobic thriller that is part modern Hitchcock and part Peckinpah with a gender twist. Although little more than a slick ...
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| Paper Moon [DVD] |
Tatum O’Neal was nine years old and had never acted in her life when she played one of the lead roles in Peter Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon opposite her father, then superstar Ryan O’Neal, ...
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| Paranormal Activity |
Shot over a week for $11,000 by first-time feature writer/director Oren Peli, Paranormal Activity was originally purchased by Paramount in 2007 with the idea that they would remake it as a ...
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| Paris, Texas [DVD] |
The man’s name is Travis (Harry Dean Stanton), and we soon learn that he has a brother named Walt (Dean Stockwell) who lives in Los Angeles with his wife Anne (Aurore Clément) and Walt’s ...
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| Patch Adams |
That "Patch Adams" is based on a true story is impossible to miss. It's plastered on all the movie posters, and the first thing we see in the movie is a disclaimer informing us of its basis in fact. ...
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| Pathfinder |
The story in Pathfinder concerns the mythical conflict between Native Americans and invading Viking hoards. The former are depicted as peaceful, spiritual people at one with their ...
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| Paul Blart: Mall Cop |
Unfortunately, the movie itself, which was cowritten by James and King of Queens writer and sometimes actor Nick Bakay, is a good-natured, but awkward and often unfunny comedy that bounces ...
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| Pay It Forward |
It's hard to know exactly what to think about a film like Pay It Forward. It isblatantly obvious how the filmmakers want you to feel and thus respond:by weeping in both ...
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| Payback |
But, that's just the beginning. By the time the movie is over, he will have beaten up a wormy drug dealer by ripping out his nose ring, cold-bloodedly executed one man in the head and another in the ...
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| Paycheck |
After watching Paycheck, one might be tempted to think that the title refers to director John Woo’s primary reason for making the movie. ...
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| Pépé le Moko [DVD] |
Pépé le Moko is the film that made consummate French actor Jean Gabin a star. It was hardly his first role—he had already played in a dozen movies since 1930, and he would eventually star ...
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| Pearl Harbor |
Before going into the theater to see Pearl Harbor, I promised myself that I wouldnot base the review around the obvious comparison to James Cameron's Titanic(1997). Yet, as I walked out ...
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| Pecker |
Waters' output has slowed considerably in the last 20 years, and many of his recent films have been tamer, PG-rated fare. However, his latest film, "Pecker," is a move back in the direction of the ...
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| Persepolis [Blu-Ray] |
The story begins in Iran in the late 1970s when Marjane (Gabrielle Lopes) is a precocious child who dreams of being a prophet for God. She lives with her parents (Catherine Deneuve and Simon ...
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| Persona |
All of this at first seems to be a series of pointless images splashed for purely aesthetic effect. However, as I see it, what Bergman accomplishes is twofold. First, he makes the point that this is ...
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| Phantasm [DVD] |
Coscarelli was in his early 20s when he wrote, edited, photographed, and directed Phantasm, although he already had two features under his belt: Jim the World’s Greatest (1976) and ...
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| Phantom of the Paradise [DVD] |
Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise is a true cinematic one of a kind, a gaudy, silly, but undeniably innovative merging of Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera and the Faust ...
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| Phenomena [DVD] |
We are then introduced to Jennifer, who is the 13-year-old daughter of a famous movie actor who is conveniently shooting a movie in Thailand and is completely unavailable. While sleepwalking one ...
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| Phone Booth |
What surprises most about Phone Booth is not that director Joel Schumacher manages to keep us interested and engrossed in a story that takes place entirely inside a glass phone booth on a New ...
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| Pickpocket [DVD] |
Yet, the fact that Bresson’s films tend to be intimate character studies of isolated human beings struggling with the world around them suggests that he is aiming primarily at the viewer’s ...
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| Pickup on South Street [DVD] |
Samuel Fuller, a former New York crime reporter, novelist, and Word War II veteran, had been writing Hollywood screenplays to pay the bills since the mid-1930s, but when he made Pickup on South ...
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| Picture Perfect |
The one who gets manipulated here is Nick (Jay Mohr), a extremely sweet-natured guy who is happy making a living videotaping weddings and birthday parties. He gets caught up in Kate's scheme when she ...
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| Pigs and Battleships (Buta to gunkan) [DVD] |
Set in the post-war world in which Japan was still haunted by both the humiliation of defeat in World War II and the lingering presence of the American military (thanks to the controversial renewal ...
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| Pineapple Express |
Pineapple Express, which features two main characters who love weed more than anything else in life and spend the majority of the movie smoking it, tweaks the formula by embroiling its ...
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| Pink Flamingos [DVD] |
What makes the early trash cinema of John Waters so unique is the breadth of his influences and how those influences found their way into his manic, often repulsive low-budget midnight flicks. ...
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| Pinocchio [Blu-Ray] |
The rest of the film follows Pinocchio as he succumbs time and time again to the human temptations of fame, glory, and the easy way out. Childlike and literally new to the world, Pinocchio is easily ...
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| Piranha 3D |
Written by Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg (who also penned 2009’s Sorority Row), Piranha 3D takes place during Spring Break at the fictional Lake Victoria in the Arizona desert, ...
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| Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End |
Everything is bigger and louder and longer this time around, which isn't always a good thing. For one, Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), the hilariously devilish pirate fop who has been the ...
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| Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest |
Dead Man's Chest continues merrily in the same vein, and if it doesn't work quite as well as its predecessor, it is only because it feels even more overstuffed with everything, from sets to ...
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| Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl |
There is a real sense of giddy pleasure in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl that is all too often missing from big-budget Hollywood spectacles. In an era marked by ...
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| Pitch Black |
"Pitch Black" doesn't waste much time getting started. After a few brief credits and a standard establishing shot of a giant space cruiser moving slowly through the vast reaches of outer space, we ...
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| Pitfall (Otoshiana) [DVD] |
Teshigahara's directorial debut Pitfall (Otoshiana) demonstrates many of his stylistic and thematic tendencies, albeit often in nascent form (it is also marked the first of four ...
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| Planes, Trains, and Automobiles [DVD] |
John Hughes' Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is a road comedy about two men
trying desperately to get home for Thanksgiving and having every obstacle imaginable
thrown in their way. The men ...
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| Planet of the Apes (1968) [DVD] |
(Warning: As it is difficult to discuss adequately the Planet of the Apes series without giving away some important plot information and potential surprises (especially in the first film), ...
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| Planet of the Apes (2001) |
Tim Burton's "reimagining" of Planet of the Apes is not particularly good science fiction, but it is a well-crafted, atmospheric action movie that pits humans against simians in a battle for ...
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| Planet of the Vampires (Terrore nello Spazio) [DVD] |
Mario Bava, who started his career as a cinematographer in the 1940s and began directing films in the early '60s, is generally considered the grandfather of Italian horror. His gaudy, baroque ...
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| Platoon [DVD] |
Despite the omnipresence of Vietnam in the American household via television throughout
the late 1960s and early 1970s, the motion picture industry wouldn't deal directly with the
unpopular war, ...
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| Playtime [DVD] |
A decade in the making and, at the time, the most expensive film ever made in France, Playtime is indeed a cinematic masterpiece, and it indeed ruined Tati financially. He would go on to make ...
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| Pleasantville |
Knowledge is not always a pleasant thing. It is both wonderful and horrible; while opening one's eyes to all that life has to offer, the accumulation of knowledge also sheds light on the darkest ...
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| Plucking the Daisy (En effeuillant la marguerite) [DVD] |
Roger Vadim, Brigitte Bardot's husband for five years, is generally regarded as the director who brought Bardot to international prominence, especially with his breakthrough international hit ... ...
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| Point Break [DVD] |
In one way or another, cops-and-robbers movies have always been about the relationship
between the two. Even if they don't actually meet face-to-face until the last act, the cop and
the robber ...
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| Polyester [DVD] |
By the time writer/director John Waters made Desperate Living in 1977, he was already a notorious midnight-movie cult celebrity, a genuine fringe iconoclastic auteur whose ...
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| Popeye [DVD] |
In the highest echelon of glorious misfires, Robert Altman’s Popeye ranks in the top tier. A would-be blockbuster cofinanced by two major studios (Paramount and Disney), Popeye is a ...
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| Porky's II: The Next Day [DVD] |
As the title implies, the sequel starts literally the next day after the events at the end of Porky's, but in many ways, Porky's II is an entirely different movie. If Porky's ...
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| Porky's Revenge [DVD] |
Since their careers weren't going anywhere else, all the regulars returned for this final endeavor: the perpetually randy and frustrated Pee Wee Morris (Dan Monahan), the in-control schemers Tommy ...
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| Porky's [DVD] |
Yet, if the movie has a single theme, it is the frustration of those ardent sexual desires. Time and time again, the teen characters find themselves within moments of fulfilling their randiest ...
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| Poseidon |
One way to lessen the masochistic awfulness of the genre's basic device is to pitch the terrible circumstances just above reality. The key is to create a scenario that is believable, but just ...
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| Possession (1981) [DVD] |
Andrzej Zulawski's Possession is like Scenes From a Marriage as imagined by David Cronenberg. It is a bizarre, hysterical, yet utterly absorbing supernatural tale of a marriage in ...
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| Possession (2002) |
One could argue that there isn't enough poetry in the world anymore. In the hustle and bustle of the 21st century, the simple pleasures of written verse are becoming more and more archaic, as is the ...
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| Practical Magic |
This is essentially the message of "Practical Magic," an anemic supernatural black comedy about the Owens, an all-American family of witches living in a small Northeastern town. The two older members ...
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| Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire |
Precious takes place in Harlem in the late 1980s, a place where Reagan’s “Morning in America” never dawned. The heroine is 16-year-old Clareece “Precious” Jones (Gabourey Sidibe), ...
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| Predator [Blu-Ray] |
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Predator is perhaps the perfect 1980s movie, melding as it does the three most popular ...
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| Predator [DVD] |
>
Predator is perhaps the perfect 1980s movie, melding as it does the three most popular ...
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| Predators |
Similar to the original, the prey in Predators are human characters who, in any other movie, would be the aggressors (in fact, the movie’s title could refer to the humans as readily as the ...
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| Premonition |
Sandra Bullock puts on her dour face as Linda Hanson, a woman who would seem perfectly content on the outside--beautiful home, beautiful daughters, handsome and successful husband--but exteriors ...
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| Pretty Woman [Blu-Ray] |
Pretty Woman is often described as a romantic comedy, perhaps because director Garry Marshall was best known for comedies, but revisiting it after not having seen it for several years, I was ...
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| Pride & Prejudice |
Like most of Austen’s work, Pride and Prejudice is primarily a comedy of manners in which the characters strive for improvement, but constantly make life more difficult for themselves. ...
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| Primal Fear [Blu-Ray] |
Martin Vail (Richard Gere), a self-proclaimed “big shot” lawyer who is introduced as an unapologetic defender of organized crime bosses, rushes to take the case and defend the boy. However, Vail ...
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| Primary Colors |
I don't mind giving away the ending because I think we all knew it already. No matter how much director Mike Nichols tries to deny it, Jack Stanton is (or will be seen by the majority of the public ...
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| Prime |
The woman is Rafi Gardet (Uma Thurman), who is 37 and recently divorced from a loveless 9-year marriage. Soon thereafter, she meets and falls for David Bloomberg (Bryan Greenberg), a 23-year-old ...
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| Primer [DVD] |
There is nothing gaudy or flashy in Primer aside from its ideas and its willingness to set in motion a premise that leads the audience into increasing narrative and visual fragmentation. This ...
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| Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time |
For those (like me) who are not familiar with video game series, no knowledge is required to follow the film’s plotting, although I suspect fans of the games will get more out of it. The story ...
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| Private Parts |
As it turns out, the man himself is as much a paradox as the title of the film, which was based on his bestselling book. "Private Parts" can, of course, refer to the unmentionables of the human ...
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| Proof of Life |
In Taylor Hackford's Proof of Life, Russell Crowe gets to keep his native Australianaccent as Terry Thorne, an ex-soldier-turned-hostage-negotiator whose expertise is K&R(kidnapping and ...
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| Prophecy [DVD] |
John Frankenheimer's Prophecy is a dim-witted creature-feature that takes itself far too seriously. If it hadn't been so insistent that it's "about something," it probably could have gotten ...
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| Psycho (1998) |
Ever since word first got out that Van Sant was making this film, the primary question has been, "Why?" Why try to improve on perfection? What could he possibly do to make "Psycho" better than ...
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| Public Enemies |
The story opens with its best sequence, an improbable yet wholly convincing jailbreak in which John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), having recently completed nine years in the slammer, arrives at a ...
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| Pulp Fiction |
"Pulp Fiction" is defiant in the way it manipulates all conventional plot structures by twisting time to satisfy its own devices. The film tells a series of interlocking stories involving two hitmen, ...
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| Punch-Drunk Love |
Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love has been referred to as “the Adam Sandler movie for people who hate Adam Sandler,” and Anderson himself has described it as “an art-house Adam ...
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| Pushing Tin |
We are told near the beginning of Pushing Tin that air traffic controllers take more lives into their hands in one shift than surgeons take in their entire careers. No wonder it has the ...
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| Pygmalion [DVD] |
When George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" first premiered on the London stage in 1914, it
caused something a scandal. And why not? While not an overtly activist piece of theater,
"Pygmalion" did have a ...
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