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Prick Up your Ears

1987

Stephen Frears

Gary Oldman, Alfred Molina, Vanessa Redgrave, Wallace Shawn ...

6.6

1,525

Drama. Comedy This unadorned biography of playwright Joe Orton (Gary Oldman) charts his bawdy, dangerous relationships. Alfred Molina plays Orton's brutish lover, Kenneth Halliwell, a pathetic figure who becomes horrific and then tragic before the film is over. The hilarity of scenes from such Orton plays as Loot and What the Butler Saw is evenly balanced by the bleakness of the playwright's tormented (and tormenting) off-stage existence, which ended ... [+]

	Author	Review
United States	Variety Staff Variety	"The script is witty, the direction fluid, with one of the homosexual orgy scenes in a public toilet almost balletic, and the depiction of the lovers’ life in their flat suitably claustrophobic."	POS
United Kingdom	Patrick Peters Empire	"A decent snapshot of pre-Beatle Britain, this is much more a fact-based gay melodrama than a trenchant portrait of Joe Orton's life, loves and art."	NEU
United States	Desson Howe The Washington Post	"Like Casablanca, Diva, Clockwork Orange and countless other quality-cult films, Prick Up Your Ears has an indefinable idiosyncrasy that makes you want to come back for more"	POS
United States	Pauline Kael The New Yorker	"The film is honest and watchable. But, unlike Orton, it takes no real delight in misbehaving."	NEU
United States	Dave Kehr Chicago Tribune	"It's a good film, sturdily and somberly made"	POS
United States	Vincent Canby The New York Times	"The film covers the main events of the Orton life in a manner that is nothing less than distracted. One has little understanding of the fatal intensity - and need - that kept Orton and Halliwell together. Read full review	NEU

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