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American Psycho

American Psycho

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Slice and Dice for the Would-Be Art-House set
Review: In this mildly amusing satirical thriller based on the novel by Brett Easton Ellis, Christian Bale plays Patrick Bateman, a go-go yuppie serial killer living in the equally go-go yuppie 1980s. Director Mary Harron avoids most of the explicit gore present in Ellis' novel, but she doesn't escape the novel's much larger problem: redundancy.

At first visually adroit, and occasionally chilling, the film all but runs out of gas half-way through: the satire of 1980s greed becomes repetitive and one-note; the thrills lose their shock-value; while Christian Bale, an otherwise fine young performer, starts to rely on mannered tics and poses. This is yet another movie in which a director conjures up a "conceptual approach," a "distinctive look," and then seemingly leaves it at that.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: HMMM....
Review: I liked the guy personally.....he seems easy to get along with really. I guess. Well, this movie was a great one, but I'd categorize it under Dark Comedy myself. Sure the guy's killing people, but he prophesizes about the best Genesis album of all time before the murders! C'mon....how is that not funny? Really, ignore the nonsense about it's nonsense and watch it...if you figure it out it kinda makes you go "Maybe I shouldn't be a businessperson afterall." Recognition is the whole idea.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: I actually paid to watch this?
Review: Here is the plot in a nutshell: Bateman kills a lot of people. The End (Really).

Maybe I just don't get it, but I TRULY thought this movie was bad. No, not just bad.....appallingly dreadful really. It's supposed to be a satire, but I just can't see the humor in watching a naked man chase a prostitute with a chainsaw. The scenes of gratuitous sex and violence are kind of extreme, and the message is trite: Bateman lives a life of material excess and thus is numb to ordinary pleasures, forcing him to find his only source of fulfillment in murder. You watch the film, hoping, praying even that there is actually a point here, but sadly, the ending just leaves you even more confused. I feel like such an idiot for watching this movie; I want my money back.......

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Better than the Book!
Review: This is of the rare cases where the movie is better than the book. Actually, the movie is pretty much a literal interpretation of the book (lines and all) sans the over-the-top violence (which wouldn't have made it past the censors anyway). Thanks to a magnificent performance by Christian Bale, the movie actually improves on the dark humor in the book (a parody of the 80s) by making Bateman a parody of a serial killer. Having said this, the book definitely helps one better understand some of the more obscure aspects of the movie (like the interchangability of all the 'vice presidents' working for Pierce & Pierce). The most perfect '80s moment' of the movie was Bateman's confrontation with the real estate agent selling Paul Allen's condo. She must have known he was connected to the bodies found in the condo, but chose to ask him to leave instead of exposing him (as the latter course would ruin the resale value of the property). Makes you wonder which of those two had the stronger killer instinct.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Bale's Psycho An American Classic
Review: American Psycho is more than the best serial killer in recent memory (oops, did I forget Silence of the Lambs? No!), it's also a savagely funny satire on consumer culture and the general gluttony that is our country. Christian Bale gives a knockout, powerhouse, I only wish there were enough glowing agitives to describe, performance as Patick Bateman, a yuppie VP whose 'nightly bloodlust starts to slip into his days.' That's not to say it's a particularly deep or profound performance, in fact it's that lack of depth that makes him such a marvel to watch. You see Bateman's both an everyman and a nobody - a nameless, faceless drone steering his way through an ocean of disinterest. Probably the most frightening aspect is the fact that he fits in so well. The reason being that nobody really listens to what one another has to say, they're all just waiting for their turn to talk. Fans of the novel, and I must confess I am one, in seek of graphic violence might want to look elsewhere becuase it's not the bloodshed that makes this movie so good. It's the way it holds a mirror to us and forces some self-examination - something alot of us are very resistant to. In the end it's a totally refreshing expierence, a movie that's actually not afraid to be original. And it's nice to see, especially given the poor Seven-ripoffs we've seen over the past five years. Fans of the film should check out the director's cut DVD which offers a minute or so of additional footage, the best of which comes during that infamously hysterical three-way.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An Almost Perfect Film
Review: This film has everything. Some action, some comedy, great acting, and it was also terrifying. Terrifying for the simple fact that it could happen. This was the first film that I have seen with Christian Bale, and he is an excellent actor. The only reason for the absence of the fifth star, is because of the ending. From the the intelligence of the film, I thought we would get an intelligent ending, but, oh well. Just rent this movie now and make up your own mind.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It's even better in your own home
Review: I saw American Psycho at the movies but nothing captures the spirit of the film as watching it at home on your DVD player. I can't believe that the one scene they deleted to get a R vs. NR-17 rating was considered that graphic. Nevertheless, if you liked the movie, you'll love the DVD home version.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: This movie is horrible
Review: American Phsyco was totally horrible. A bunch of people tell me that it is just great, so I go and rent it and bore my self to death for two hours. The plot is okay, but the movie just goes nowhere and gets very boring. I would not reccomend this movie to anyone.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A semi-successful translation
Review: I'll start off by saying that this was a film that no-one should have even attempted. Having said that, I'll salute Mary Harron for taking on the most impossible print-to-big screen translation in movie history...and for the most part, she got it right. But here, we never really are absorbed into the character of Patrick Bateman and his cold, empty, sociopathology as we were in the diary-like novel. This is no fault of Christian Bale, who plays the Wall Street raider by day, bloodlusting serial killer by night to the OTT hilt (the idea of Leonardo DiCaprio filling this role makes me cringe). But whether you want to accept it or not, the graphic (and admittedly often misogynistic) violence of the novel was an important part of painting the picture of Bateman's loathsome and empty soul. This necessary element was for the most part omitted here (out of fear on the part of the scriptwriters, I suspect) and as a result, the film provokes far less gut-reaction. Harron should have pulled out the stops, stuck closer to the detail of the novel (if you felt the tediousness and repetition of Bateman's atrocities as the chapters faded one into another, well, think about that for a moment...), and let the NC-17 rating fall where it may; it wouldn't have discouraged this film's target audience.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: As good of an interpretation as one could possibly expect.
Review: A simply outstanding film, but by far, a much better read. One thing that I would certainly like to get across to people out there who are under the impression that AMERICAN PSYCHO is just a movie about a nutjob: that is totally false and has nothing to truly do with the central plot of the movie or book. This is a story not about a serial killer but about the materialistic and selfish eighties. It is about how nobody really cared about each other, they just cared about money and impressing others and having the best things in life. Once again, a truly outstanding film. I have to say that in a way I am sort of glad that they didn't do EVERYTHING that the book did as far as the killings go. While the film may seem incredibly disturbing to you when you first see it, I assure you that you would experience that feeling tenfold upon reading the novel. For all of those AMERRICAN PSYCHO fans out there who have read the book: Would anybody like some brie? ;-)


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