Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

BallWubba Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Danielle De Colombie Gary Oldman plays real life British 60's sensation Joe Orton, the author of "Entertaining Mr. Sloane". His performance, for me, goes at the very core of a gallery of real life characters who run the gamut from A to Z and then some. From Sid Vicious to Ludwig Van Beethoven, from Lee Harvey Oswald to Joe Orton and in 2017 Winston Churchill - not to mention fictional literary characters like Count Dracula. With Joe Orton, Gary Oldman reaches some kind of mountain top. He finds innocence in this emotional and sexual misfit and he projects Orton's genius with a profound flawed humanity. His tragic lover is played by another extraordinary actor, Alfred Molina - I've just seen him in "Feud" playing Robert Aldrich with such virtuosity that I have developed a personal relationship with Aldrich as if I knew him personally. Oldman and Molina create something we've never seen before and Stephen Frears know exactly how to capture it. As if this wasn't enough, Vanessa Redgrave play's Orton's agent. Even if you've never heard of Joe Orton, do yourself a favor, venture into this dark and human universe.

gsygsy Gary Oldman follows up his unknowable Sid Vicious in SID AND NANCY with an equally elusive Joe Orton in what is ultimately a riff on A STAR IS BORN. As Orton's star rises, that of his needier, more vulnerable lover Kenneth Halliwell, played with compassion by Alfred Molina, declines.The screenplay, by Alan Bennett, is based on critic John Lahr's biography of Orton. Bennett makes the writing of the biography part of the story, and briefly tries to parallel the relationship of Lahr and his wife Andrea (played by Wallace Shawn and Lindsay Duncan), but I'm not sure that it helps the film much. Splitting the story's focus in its early sections removes us from Orton himself. That's who we want to stay with. The only real benefit the Lahr section gives us is one wonderful scene between Ms Duncan and the great Joan Sanderson as her hyper-middle class mother, decoding shorthand sections of Orton's diary to reveal highly salacious behaviour. Ms Sanderson's deadpan performance, enthusiastically uncovering Orton's meaning while remaining steadfastly unshocked, is one of the highlights of the film for me.There are a dozen or so cameos from other wondrous actors, mostly known for their theatre work -- Margaret Tyzack, John Moffatt, Julie Legrand, Selina Cadell -- as well as substantial support from Francis Barber and Janet Dale as, respectively, Orton's warm-hearted sister and eccentric landlady.Ultimately, the film rests on the shoulders of the central trio: Orton, Halliwell and Orton's agent, the redoubtable Peggy Ramsay. She is played by Vanessa Redgrave in a glowing performance, that helps to hold the disparate parts of the film together.Molina's work I've already praised. So we're back to Gary Oldman, who is absolutely brilliant as Orton. What Oldman is able to do is to accept, rather than explain, his characters. He thinks it's OK not to make them totally knowable, and he's right.Director Stephen Frears is equally difficult to pigeon-hole. He favours realism on the one hand, but on the other he is capable of pulling off highly-charged scenes - like the orgy in a public lavatory -- which might floor less gifted artists.All in all, an entertaining and informative film, not without its flaws. In particular, its depiction of gay men's lives in the late fifties and early sixties is interestingly honest.

Dalbert Pringle Released in 1987, but set in the Swinging 60's, this bio-flick, Prick Up Your Ears (PUYE, for short), focuses in like a microscope on the high-flying lifestyle of the hugely successful, British, playwright - Joe Orton.To set things straight, right from the start, Joe Orton, was, indeed, gay. Well, he was. And this flick makes no whispered, hush-hush secret about that truth, either. In fact, as you will soon see, PUYE does a fairly thorough job of actually exploiting Joe's sexuality for its own sensationalistic benefit.At the age of 28, Orton, as a respected playwright, was already on his way up the ladder to fame and fortune. Orton's play "Loot", written in 1962, was an immediate success. "Loot" ran, to rave reviews, for a 2 year, extended engagement on the London Stage.If I am to take what is shown to me in PUYE as a pretty accurate look at Joe Orton's demeanour/lifestyle, then I, for the life of me, cannot see how he ever, ever managed to write any plays, at all. Orton spent so much time, either, falling down drunk, or cruising public washrooms for male-sex, that his play-writing abilities absolutely dumbfound me. Like - Where the hell did this gay-man find the time to write anything? I'd sure like to know.Anyways - Eventually, our washroom-sex, slime-boy, Orton meets up with a real looney-tuner named Kenneth Halliwell. Needless to say, the "relationship" that develops between these 2 incompatible gays is a mighty rough and rocky one, indeed.In 1967, at the age of 34, Joe Orton, whose career as a playwright looked mighty bright, was brutally murdered. Orton's untimely death was caused from numerous, skull-fracturing, hammer blows to the head, courtesy of that little, wacko, Kenneth Halliwell.

a_baron Joe Orton was just 34 when he was battered to death in August 1967; had he lived, he would almost certainly have become one of the greatest dramatists of his age. But Orton had a dark side, and it was this that contributed in no small measure to his untimely demise.This play begins with his murder and then fast forwards twenty years. Orton was killed by his male "lover" Kenneth Halliwell, who took his own life immediately afterwards. They may have lived together, written together, and ultimately died together, but that was as far as their similarities went, because while Halliwell was a lost soul, tortured by his homosexuality, Orton revelled in it, and in a brazen depravity which would have made him a more than suitable target for the "Operation Yewtree" witch-hunt that ensued nearly a half century after his death.Orton's diaries were published by John Lahr in 1986, and depraved they are. This TV dramatisation revolves largely around the diaries and their publication, covering Orton's early life briefly, how he met Halliwell at RADA - for which Orton had won a scholarship - their failed collaboration on literary works, and their bizarre crimes for which they were each sentenced to six months imprisonment, and which paradoxically was the making of Orton. (Neither the first nor the last time that has happened)."Prick Up Your Ears" - an obvious anagram just in case it was not obvious to you - strives for authenticity, and succeeds. Fortunately the play/film does not dwell on Orton's cottaging misadventures, though it does show him and Halliwell in Morocco doing unspeakable things with young men, at least some of whom were underage. Although the Beatles do not appear herein, we do see Brian Epstein, who while himself homosexual had nothing but contempt for Orton, and would not allow him to sully the image of his charges. Sadly, he would die a mere 18 days after Orton, in dissimilar but equally controversial circumstances."Prick Up Your Ears" is a worthy biographical document, but don't watch it unless you have a strong stomach.