Prick Up Your Ears | | Cast : | Gary Oldman, Alfred Molina, Vanessa Redgrave | | Director : | Stephen Frears | | Studio : | MGM/UA Video | | Format : | Color, Widescreen | | Released Date : | May 08, 1987 | | DVD Released Date : | June 15, 2004 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | June 28, 2005 | | Summary | A great biographical representation. | Content
 | Joe Orton was the, "bit of rough", Leicester lad who became the voice of edgy, sexual charged playwriting in the 60's, exactly the kind of representaions peole were seeking at the time.
The film depicts his life and rise to fame beautifully, exploring his sexually charged adoloscence,his early admission to RADA, his emerging and confident sexuality and meeting with Halliwell, throught to his final success and the destruction of his realtionship with Halliwell which led to their deaths; Halliwell battered Joe to death with a hammer before overdosing himself on a barbiturate cocktail (bizarrely Halliwell died first). The casting is perfect and the lead actors are immensley evocative and emotive. There is a delicious cameo by Julie Walters as Orton's Mum, too afraid to answer the door to a theatre offical seeking Joe because she has left her teeth upstairs. Frances Barber is excellent and loyal as Joe's Sister, Vanessa Redgrave is slightly cold and bitchy as his agent, particularly with women. An excellent depiction of Joe's high octane, interesting and sadly short life, I was only sorry that the "Morrocan Holiday" scene did not feature a representaion of the comic actor Kenneth Williams(of "Carry On" fame), a dear freind of Joe's who often holidayed with Joe and Halliwell. Not an easy film but a very good and beautifully depicted one.
Fnas of Joe may wish to know that Leicester City Council have now marked the council house he grew up in with a blue plaque, it is situated off Saffron Lane, an estate of houses bulit in the 1930's. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 27, 2005 | | Summary | Neglected classic | Content
| This is one of the best film biographies of all time. Gary Oldman (fresh from his triumph in "Sid & Nancy") and Alfred Molina (the greatest actor of his generation - look at this film along with "Frida" and "Enchanted April" and ask yourself if you don't agree) play the in-your-face gay writers Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell. This film, based on the biography by John Lahr, tells their whole sorted story - how they met, became lovers, lived together, went to goal (apart from one another), and, finally, grew estranged as Orton found fame as playwright and Halliwell slipped into mental illness. The two leads should have received Oscar nominations for their work here (indeed this film, the director, Vanessa Redgrave and the screenplay should all have been nominated). Director Stephen Frears hasn't spared his audience any of the graphic details. Orton was a sexual compulsive who liked to pick up strangers in public lavatories and bus stations. The camera never flinches. It all here - even the gruesome way their story ends. Fascinating meterial. Don't miss this one. My one complaint about the DVD - no extras - nothing from the director, no documentary footage of Orton or any of his television appearances. I recommend Lahr's book, as well as Orton's plays and those wonderful "Orton Diaries." |
| Rating | | | Date | January 10, 2005 | | Summary | The movie that made me a Molina fan | Content
| And it was this picture that made me a fan of his. Ostensibly a biopic of the late Joe Orton (a British playwright of some note in the Britain of the middle Sixties), the movie is really a study of a relationship. Frears, director of the classic "Dangerous Liasions", brings the same focus to the relationship between the lovers and how the emotional tragedy of an impending break up leads to the ultimate act of despair.
Molina plays Orton's lover who eventually murders him when he realizes Orton's about to move on without him to fame and fortune. So Molina's character bashes Orton's head in with a "blunt object."
It's an intense study a gay relationship; surprisingly frank even for the late Eighties when just having two gay guys in bed together created a firestorm of controversy on the show "Thirtysomething". As Vanessa Redgrave's character put it, "[Molina's character] was the first wife." And he couldn't take it. So as we see all to frequently, he killed his lover and then committed suicide with qualudes.
Molina's edgy intensity and the honesty about gayness in the days in Britain when it was still felonious make for a gem of a movie.
It also shows Oldman's huge talent--too often wasted on brain- -dead actioners like "Air Force One." Still, I suppose one has to make cash for the studios to get to do what one really wants.
Molina's gravitas, and this was my first taste of it, helped to give Spiderman 2 a weight it wouldn't have had and it gives this movie a dignity and pathos that saves it from becoming a mess lurid sensationalism. |
| Rating | | | Date | December 31, 2004 | | Summary | All The Right Ingredients, But ... | Content
| This is one of those unusual films that, despite excellent acting, interesting themes and a good script (here, one by Alan Bennett), seems to add up to less than the sum of its parts. Gary Oldman, perfectly cast as the ill-fated playwright Joe Orton, captures precisely the spirit of what Orton and his work seem to have been about--macabre playfulness, unflappable hedonism, and an acute sense of life's absurdity. Alfred Molina also delivers as Kenneth Halliwell, Orton's frustrated lover and literary mentor. Vanessa Redgrave is delightful as Orton's potty-mouthed agent, one among the many courageous roles that epitomize this remarkable actress's career.
Alan Bennett is, however, a verbal writer, which makes it crucial that we be allowed to hear his text. Unfortunately, sound is an area in which this film (and many other British films of its period) fail to excel. Visually, the film should have been good; the sets (especially Orton and Halliwell's claustrophobic one-room apartment) are a perfect fit with the story. But the lighting is a little too understated, a little too monotonously dim. The resultant mood is less like film noir than seasonal affective disorder, and instead of being drawn into the action and atmosphere, you want to go to sleep.
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| Rating | | | Date | December 12, 2004 | | Summary | The Joe Ortan story sort of... | Content
| I liked this film for the scenes involving their defacing of library books (new covers inside flap synopsis)and the librarian playing Sherlock Holmes, to catch them. this is a really funny part of the movie. This film also features men having fornicating with other men and how to do this; So if you believe men should only fornicate with women or just their wives steer clear of this one.
I watched this one as an in site to an artist and didn't know what to expect. Also the great actor Wallace Shawn plays a writer. |
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