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One Hour Photo (Full Screen Edition)

One Hour Photo (Full Screen Edition)

List Price: $14.98
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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The defining work of Williams career.
Review: This is one disturbing film. From the sterile "Sav-Mart" environment, to the stale off duty life Sy Parrish leads, we , the viewers are left with a generally unsettling feeling. The viewer sees exactly what tips Sy over the edge. It is the obnoxious, and cheating husband, but Sy decides to take matters into his own hands, as he leaves the edge of sanity. Absolutley terrifying and disturbing, as Sy is all too real, and may be the guy you take your photos to in your hometown. Best film of the year.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Robin Williams Versatility?
Review: Williams is one of those actors that seems to be able to play any part in any movie - comedy, drama, you name it. I wonder sometimes why he says yes to some movie roles, as it does not seem to matter.

I did not know what to expect from One Hour Photo, it continued to remind me of "Falling Down" with Michael Douglas. A down and out lonely man searching for some meaning in life through other peoples pain and loneliness. Without giving away the best parts of the movie, I thought the second half was much better than the first as it always seemed to start then stop in terms of a fever pitch. Finally once Williams is ousted as the photo guy at the local savmart does the movie really begin to pick up steam. A twist here, a turn there, and undoubtedly Williams plays the part to its fullest.

Its a see, not a must see, and will probably do well in rental more so than in theaters. Another Robin Williams movie that is so-so, not phenominal, but in the absence of a better movie to see, it beats watching a bad football game on TV.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good Movie
Review: I thought this was a very good movie. If you are in the mood for a ride through the mind of an outcast from the creepy to the sad, buckle your seat belt. Robin Williams does a wonderful job crafting a charater you want to like despite his creepy behavior. It will make you think about living in a time where so many people have access to our private lives.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: No Quite Average
Review: Robin Williams saves this movie. Without his great character acting this would have been dull. It does make you think about the people developing your pictures and what they are doing with them. Williams plays Sy the photo guy at the local SaveMart. Sy is a bit unusual but you never realize how dangerous, even as the movie progresses. Sy is one third harmless, one third stalker, and one third physco. The movie starts out average and escalates a bit slow but it does move along. But it never seems to peak, it just kind of levels off. And that is unfortunate. There were many avenues that this movie could have walked down but it never did,l it stayed on the main road of an average movie. And I personally was not very fond of the ending but that is an individual choice.

If you are a fan of Robin Williams you will probably enjoy this movie a lot. If you are viewing just to enjoy a good movie I feel you will be let down. Better to wait for the video and not feel cheated.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: 4 and One Half Stars? You've got to be kidding.
Review: Robin Williams did a superb job with a slow,boring plot.Fifteen minutes into the movie we were ready to take a nap. This movie wasn't a thriller nor a murder mystery. We're not sure what it was and wished we hadn't spent $$$ nor wasted our evening.
I read the book, which was great, but the screenwriter must have read something else or got his scripts mixed up.
Don't waste YOUR time or money.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: PATHETIQUE
Review: In all honesty, I'm at something of a loss as to the response this movie seems to elicit in the average viewer --specifically, all the allusions to Hitchcock/_Psycho_. To blithely characterize the movie as "creepy" or Sy Parrish as "psychopathic" seems wholly inaccurate, if not superficial.

Sy isn't twisted or horrific (like, say, Hannibal Lechter of _Silence of the Lambs_). To me, at any rate, Sy is an intensely pathetic figure--not in the current sense of "wretched," but in the original sense of "evoking pathos" (as in Tchaikovsky's _Pathetique_ Sympthony, the Sixth).

Sy is an individual whose soul has been ravaged--and as a child, no less, and in one of the most monstrous ways imaginable. Miraculously, he hasn't become a soulless, apathetic figure, one who has lost the ability to give love or to be in need of it. Nor has he become a monster himself, falling into the same perversions as his parent(s). His methodologies are the problem, not his motives; he acts out of what seems to be a genuine love for his "adopted" family, the Yorkins. His loneliness and pain have driven him to the point of obsession--and therein lies his tragic flaw. But is it only his flaw, or is it also a reflection on American culture in some sense?

For those willing to reflect a bit more deeply, Sy's story is as much an indictment of American materialism and its unthinking, image-obsessed culture. How many lonely, hurting souls are there who hunger for real love and fellowship, for genuine "I-Thou" relations, only to find themselves scorned and marginalized by a culture that prefers to function on the superficial and/or self-serving level of the "I-It" relation? How many people lead lives that could be characterized by the ancient Hebraic proverb, "A satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb, but to a starving soul any bitter thing is sweet"--?

A disturbing movie, yes; profoundly so. But not for the reasons generally given. The true horror is only portrayed indirectly: The tragedy of a soul reduced to the status of an "It," first as a child, then as an adult.

An excellent movie, intensely thought provoking and poignant; highly recommended.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Fabulous Film
Review: This film is so fantastic. As others have said before me, don't go to the movie thinking it is a scary stalker movie--it isn't. It's a character study, and though unsettling at times, not scary. (The movie will be slow moving only for those who have no interest in anything but action and sensation.) Robin Williams does just a brilliant, brilliant job of investing this character with sympathy and pathos even as we see his fragile psyche start to fall apart. You see yourself in him, and care about him--which of us hasn't developed a crush on some person we can't have, or become hooked on the lives of the characters in a book or TV show? What Sy has done in his sad life is not so very different.
The gentle, surprising ending is perfect, and will make for quite a bit of discussion if you see the film with friends. Give yourself some food for thought and go see it. Like the rest of us here, you'll be saying that Robin Williams should get an Oscar.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Chilling Portrait of Insanity Ruined by Lack of Authenticity
Review: "One Hour Photo" is Robin Williams' second (actually first, in the order they were filmed) foray into playing the mentally-disturbed bad guy. Earlier, he was a writer-turned-killer in "Insomnia," and now he's Sy Parrish, or Sy the Photo Guy, a seemingly innocuous photolab worker at the local Save-Mart (or some such...knockoff). For the last thirteen years, he has developed pictures for people in the neighborhood, which means he has access to the private lives of these people, at least insofar as their lives are reflected in the pictures they take.

Sy has "adopted" the Yorkin family, a nuclear household that seems to have everything. As Sy points out, "everyone smiles in their pictures, because they are moments you want to remember." So, of course, Sy's view of the Yorkins is highly distorted: he never sees them fight, or spank their kid, or whatever goes on behind the closed doors in suburbia. But Sy does discover something inadvertently by developing another customer's picture: Mr. Yorkin is having an affair with a woman from his office. His vision of the prefect family ruined, Sy embarks on a mission to "punish" Yorkin for doing this to his wife and son.

What Sy does not know, but the audience does, is that Mrs. Yorkin is also having an affair, so it makes his "Taxi Driver"-like psychotic binge a little less noble, because it shows the hypocrisy of people who only see part of the "picture." (Picture, get it?) What "One Hour Photo" has going for it is that its portrait of a very disturbed individual is very well done and complete: Sy's slide into insanity is wholly believable and fascinating to watch, but sickening, like a car wreck in front of your house. Williams pulls this off with finesse, proving he's more than Mrs. Doubtfire in the acting department. Not once is the audience subjected to a cutesy voice or manic mood swing. Williams' descent is both steady and inevitable, and doesn't need to rely on such devices to be effective.

Where "One Hour Photo" fails is in its portrayal of suburban America and the reasons for Sy's initial instability. The Save-Mart is a sterile, white-and-gray environment that looks more like a hospital than a store. As another reviewer pointed out, anyone who has been in a Wal-Mart knows it is a veritable rainbow of color, trying to get consumers to buy, buy, buy. Sy's house, and the Yorkin house, are equally sterile, and even the little boy's messy room looks like a setup. For a movie that preaches not to examine things through a single lens, it fails in this endeavor itself, never rising above an insipid and tired view of suburbia (yeah, suburban life is hollow and hypocritical, WE GET IT ALREADY) and becoming so self-conscious that it is obvious the audience is seeing through a camera lens into a created environment. Also, Sy's admission at the very end seems like it was tacked on to "explain" his behavior, and it robs Robin Williams of the dignity he had in creating a part where such an explanation was not necessary. It would be like Jack Torrence at the end of The Shining saying, "but my father was an alcoholic who beat me!" Yuck.

On the whole, "One Hour Photo" is worth its 90-minute running time, but for a movie with such potential, it's a shame it could not realize more of it.

Final Grade: C

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An interesting movie, showing a different side of Williams.
Review: Robin Williams is a great actor, but it's not often you see him doing something other than comedy.

Williams plays Sy Parrish, the local photo lab guy. To his customers he's happy and jovial, but underneath he is serious need of help.

The movie takes you through Sy's mental unraveling and is good pyschological thriller.

The ending was a bit strange, and made you sit back and wonder what all happened.

But overall it was an enjoyable movie.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Kodak Moment!
Review: Almost picture perfect Robin Williams in his best performace yet in this psychological thriller about a man who works at a photo place. Since Sy is alone in the world,he develops an obsession with this family,they have had Sy develop there pictures for years, who seem to be happy normal people. But when Sy gets too close with the family he soon relizes that they are not what they seemed...


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