Palmetto | The Panic Room | The Parent Trap | The Passion of the Christ | Patch Adams | The Patriot | Paulie | Pay It Forward | Payback | The Peacemaker | Pecker | Perfect Assassins | A Perfect Murder | The Perfect Storm | Phantoms | Pi | Pitch Black | Planet of the Apes | The Player | Pleasantville | The Pledge | Primal Fear | Primary Colors | The Prince of Egypt | The Princess Bride | The Producers | Proof of Life | Psycho

Palmetto (1998)
(R)
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A noir-ish look into the life of a man who just got out of prison. He gets involved in a fake plot to kidnap a rich man's daughter in which he'll get 10% of the ransom for helping out. The acting is good, and the film has some great twists, but is full of cliches.

Links:
Official Studio Site (Castle Rock)
Official Studio Site (Sony)

The Panic Room (2002)
(R)
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After a divorce, Jodie Foster buys a house for herself and her daughter with a strange "panic room," which closes itself off from the rest of the house and is completely protected from people outside the room. After some robbers enter the house in the middle of the night, Foster and her daughter hide in the room, only to discover that the robbers want something in with them. The rest of the movie is a game of minds where the robbers try to get in while the mother tries to protect her daughter. Although the film is fairly contrived, the director keeps the characters and story interesting enough that it held my interest. Overall, not classic, but not a waste of time.

Links:
Official Studio Site

The Parent Trap (1998)
(PG)
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A very well made remake, this movie is about two twins who don't know they're twins who meet at summer camp. They form a plan to trade places so they can each meet the parent that the other has lived with all their life, and then try to get them to fall back in love. The movie actually keeps up a good pace, not becoming too mushy or too slap-stick at any one spot, and this keeps it interesting, even to the parents in the audience. Made for kids, but adults won't regret having come along.

Links:
Official Studio Site
Background info on The Parent Trap

The Passion of the Christ (2004)
(R)
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The story of Jesus Christ's last twelve hours, from his praying after the last supper to his death. The film was an interesting interpretation of the bible, presenting a believable take on the events. It also has some interesting visual imagery it adds to the story. However, it doesn't really add much else, besides gallons and gallons of blood. Director Mel Gibson seemed to want to make us feel Jesus' pain by bombarding us with as much blood as possible, making it almost feel like an overproduced slasher flick. I liked the scenes with interaction between the characters, but the film should have used these, not the blood, for it's primary emotional impact.

Links:
Official Studio Site
San Francisco Chronicle's Review
Chicago Tribune's Review
Roger Ebert's Review
Patch Adams (1998)
(PG-13)
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A medical student in the 70's tries to buck the system and get the doctors and staff of his school to realize that just because something works, that doesn't me we should stop trying to make it better. The film is very heartwarming, and gives us a good idea about how we can help change other peoples lives for the better.Overall, a very enjoyable, bittersweet film.

Links:
Official Studio Site
Website of the real Patch Adams

The Patriot (2000)
(R)
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Set in 1776, Mel Gibson plays a man scared of the thought of starting a revolutionary war against England. The war starts without him, however, and when one of his sons is killed by British troops, he joins another son who is already involved in the war. A melodramatic war movie trying to show the importance of family, it manages to make the dramatics work well while making the war look realistic, at least as close as movies will come. It also allows you to decide who is really doing the right thing while the movie progresses, while presenting both the good and bad sides of war. Overall, well made and entertaining.

Links:
Official Studio Site
Roger Ebert's Review

Paulie (1998)
(PG)
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A movie told from the point of view of a parrot. Paulie the parrot describes his life to a man who discovers the parrot can talk. The movie starts slow, but over time picks up speed. The adventures the parrot has with the people who find out he can talk are fun to watch and usually fairly funny. This movie is geared toward a family audience, and although it has the feel of an adult movie, kids who can follow the story might also enjoy the movie. The characters are good, and the script was surprisingly funny for this style of movie. Once the story got moving, I really enjoyed it.

Links:
Official Studio Site


Pay It Forward (2000)
(PG-13)
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Haley Joel Osment, the kid form The Sixth Sense, tries to change the world in order to make life better for himself, his mother (Helen Hunt), and his teacher (Kevin Spacey). The movie is basically a soap opera, but is acted and directed very well. It is also very creative in it's approach to the subject of injecting hope and kindness into people's lives. The movie deals mostly with the psychology of the characters, and although the characters are fairly stereotyped the actors make them more interesting than in most movies. The movie uses a school assignment as an excuse to create hope in their lives and bring them together, much the same way Field of Dreams uses baseball.

Links:
Official Studio Site
Rotten Tomatoes' Page

Payback (1999)
(R)
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Mel Gibson plays a bad guy left for dead who somehow survives getting shot twice in the back. He then tries to get back the 70 grand that he was shot over. The movie is a fun shoot-em-up, where every character is a bad guy, so they're all allowed to be a little crazy. Over all, great for just sitting back and watching people pull out guns and blow things up.

Links:
Official Studio Site
Dark Horizons's Payback Page
Film Ink's Page


The Peacemaker (1997)
(R)
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A generic action movie that wants to imitate Bond but doesn't offer anything new or fun. The plot has been seen before, the action was generic, and the actors were chosen for name value, not necessarily for talent. This movie is just plain forgettable.

Links:
Radio Free's Review

Pecker (1998)
(R)
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This is a great movie to see with a crowd at the theatre: the jokes, most included for their shock value, are actually pretty good, but you might not catch all the jokes until you hear someone else in the theatre laughing. The acting is good, and the director keeps the movie moving along and the jokes coming. Over all, good fun.

Links:
Official Studio Site

Perfect Assassins (1998)
(Not Rated)
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A FBI agent tries to figure out who the only surviving assassin is after a well organized mass killing by a seemingly professional group. He identifies the killer as a person reported missing as a kid, and tracks down the killer's sister, who hasn't seen him since he was three. The killer escapes, and the agent, the sister, and the agent's friend try to catch him. The story is mostly a psychological drama/adventure and has been done before, but the film was acted and directed well enough to keep it interesting and gives Robert Patrick (The T-1000 in Terminator 2) a chance to steal the show, which he does almost too well. Overall, generic but fairly intriguing.

A Perfect Murder (1998)
(R)
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A man pays his wife's secret lover to kill her, and he reluctantly agrees. The killing goes wrong, and is followed by several twists as the husband tries to cover up the evidence and the wife tries to figure out what happened. The movie is intriguing and managed to keep me in a mild amount of suspense, but is a little far fetched. I had to try very hard sometimes to sustain my disbelief of what was happening.The acting was very good, though, and having actors I could belive helped the movie a lot. Over all, a bit hard to chew, but still fairly good.

Links:
Official Studio Site
USA Today's Review

The Perfect Storm (2000)
(PG-13)
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After spending a great deal of time at a bar getting to know a group of fishermen and then watching them go out on their fishing boat, the action really starts when they try to fight their way home through a terrible storm. The movie is fairly predictable if you've seen this type of film before, but is very well made and believable, allowing it to become one of the best of this style of film. The only thing that hindered the movie for me is that they claim it to be based on a true story, even though they can't verify exactly what happened to the real ship after it left port. The movie itself, however, is good, if a bit harrowing.

Links:
Official Studio Site
Film.com's Review
Roger Ebert's Review

Phantoms (1998)
(R)
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Two women come to a town in the middle of nowhere to find all the townspeople dead and that something is preventing their car from starting again. Trapped, they manage to radio in a group of four police officers. The rest of the movie is about the people trying to find a way of stopping a monster that seems impossible to destroy. The acting was very good, and the monster was presented in a very spooky way. The one thing I didn't like about this movie was that you never get told much of the characters' past, and I never really cared about them. But the rest of the movie was very good.

Links:
Cinema 1's Phantoms Page
DP's film photo and fact page

Pi (1998)
(R)
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A well made movie from the view of a mathematician who suffers from seizers who is trying to solve his theory that the stock market is based on simple mathematic equations and predictable. He discovers part of a number that several people want to figure out, and tries to carry on with his life while being chased by the organizations trying to get the number from him. Better than it sounds, this movie was well acted and directed. The only problem I found with it is that it is that the photography gets annoying every so often. Filmed in black and white, the film has too many scenes that were too bright or too dark. Other than that, very well done.

Links:
Official Studio Site
Roger Ebert's Reiew
Film.com's Review

Pitch Black (2000)
(R)
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A group of people traveling through space crash on a planet with continual sunlight from three suns. They find out that underground caves on the planet house bat-like animals that eat people but can't survive in light. They also discover that the planet is about to have an eclipse, with another huge planet blocking off the light from the suns and allowing the creatures to fly around the planet looking for victims. This movie is very generic but fairly amusing, if you can get past the plot holes that seem mandatory for this type of movie - even though they know the eclipse is coming, they don't try to get to the spacecraft they find until they're already in the eclipse, for example. The characters are a little interesting and acted convincingly enough, although they're fairly generic. Overall, mildly amusing, in a b-movie sort of way.

Links:
Official Studio Site
Film.com's review

Planet of the Apes (1968)
(G)
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A group of astronauts sent into space with come out of hibernation to land on a planet, although they're not sure what planet it is. One is taken prisoner by a group of Apes, who believe that humans are smelly, barbaric animals with little brain capacity. He then must prove the theory wrong before they kill him for destroying all they believe in. This film is a good way to see how humans act from a different perspective, by allowing some other life to take our place and act as we do. The film moves slow at many points, but is very creative and gives viewers a lot to think about.

Links:
Official Studio Site
A Fan's Page

The Player (1992)
(R)
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A dark parody of Hollywood, this movie has some good drama, tension, and laughs in it. It revolves around a movie studio executive who needs to green-light (approve to be made) another hit or risk his job going to someone else. He starts receiving threating postcards form someone, but he can't figure out who. The rest of the movie revolves around how he keeps his job while dealing with someone threating to kill him. The movie is a dark suspense style of movie, but also throws in some jokes about the way Hollywood works (two executives talking about how no one uses tracking shots any more during the long tracking shot at the beginning of the movie, ect.). The acting is very good, and the script makes it almost seem possible that this can happen. A very good movie, especially for people interested in making movies.

Links:
Washinton Post's Review

Pleasantville (1998)
(PG-13)
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An interesting look at what life would be like in a completely "safe" world with no "dangerous" negative feelings. Two kids are sucked into the world of a 50's sitcom. They then have to start dealing with the fact that they know a lot more about life than most of the characters do, and have to figure out whether letting them in on the parts of life they're missing will do more harm than good. Although a little slow at times, this is a very well thought out and enjoyable film, which will give you something to think about after you leave the theatre.

Links:
Official Site
Official Studio Site

The Pledge (2001)
(R)
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Jack Nicholson plays a retired cop who makes a pledge to catch a child killer. He then moves to where he thinks the killer lives in an attempt to find him. The movie manages to get enough momentum going to remain interesting, even though not many of the characters are really very drawn out. The ending manages to go against the typical Hollywood ending, so people who like the generic "everything gets wrapped up and everyone lives happily ever after" ending may want to avoid this film. Overall, not really much too it, but mildly enjoyable for people who like dark suspense dramas, although it primarily stresses the drama over the suspense.

Links:
Official Studio Site
Roger Ebert's Review

Primal Fear (1996)
(R)
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A good drama about an attorney who believes and tries to prove that a young man is innocent of killing a priest. The movie offers good performances all around, especially from Edward Norton, and has a great twist at the end.

Links:
Hollywood Online's Primal Fear Page

Primary Colors (1998)
(R)
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A story loosely based on the Clinton campaign, it shows a president trying to earn his party's nomination. The whole story was fairly interesting, but the characters are a little two dimensional, and only some of the actors are able to rise above it. The actors who do rise above the material make it a good movie, but the story is almost too bland for it's own good.

Links:
Official Studio Site
Dark Horizions's Primary Colors Page
Radio Free's Review
Mr. Showbiz's Review
Roger Ebert's Review

The Prince of Egypt (1998)
(PG)
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The story of the life of Moses up to and including his struggles to free the Hebrews in Egypt. The movie will probably play best to adults, but theres nothing that most kids can't handle in it. The animation for the film is the phenomenal, and though I thought some of the music was fairly forgettable, most of the songs were also really good. Also, the voice cast is full of famous people, including Val Kilmer, Ralph Fiennes, Steve Martin, and Patrick Stewart. A little over done and tedious at parts, but the animation and songs made it an enjoyable movie.

Links:
Official Studio Site

The Princess Bride (1987)
(PG)
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A man goes to great lengths to save the woman he loves from being forced to marry a man she doesn't love. A silly parody of adventure movies, this film manages to be surprisingly entertaining. The performances are goofy, the script is corny, and it pulls it all off with a great sense of humor. One of the better parodies out there.

Links:
Deni's Princess Bride Page
The Washington Post's Review
Roger Ebert's Review

The Producers (1968)
(PG)
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A movie by Mel Brooks with some very funny parts. Two men come up with the idea of finding a play that will flop on Broadway, getting a lot of people to invest in it, shuting the show down after one night, and running with the rest of the money. The stars, Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, manage to make the humor work, and the whole movie is very fun.

Links:
At-A-Glance Film Reviews

Proof of Life (2000)
(PG-13)
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When Meg Ryan's husband is kidnapped and held for ransom in South America, Russell Crowe is called in to help negotiate. After his company pulls him out because they don't represent the family's company anymore, he has a crisis of conscience and gets himself reinvolved. The film does have good moments, especially when dealing with how the system of kidnapping for profit works. However, these moments aren't enough to really sustain it against the rest of the story, primarily some romantic elements of the film that never really get interesting.

Links:
Official Studio Site
Roger Ebert's Review

Psycho (1998)
(R)
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A remake of the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock movie. I haven't actually seen the entire original movie, but this I hear this is almost identical shot for shot. This leads to the question "was it really worth making a whole new movie that's virtually the same as the one it's imitating?" I think it is. There are little differences throughout the movie, and this version was very good. It gives you a hint of what Hitchcock would have looked like had his films come out today, and brings one of his best and most popular movies out to a new generation sick of the black and white films they have to watch in school. The acting is great, and the movie is just as good as what I've seen of the original on TV. The people who remember when the original film came out will most likely still enjoy the old film more, but for people who enjoy seeing updated versions of good movies, this is one of the best out there.

Links:
Official Studio Site

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