Word: prick
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This decision makes Orton the man, not Orton the event, the focus of the film. We get an idea of the outrageous sexual farce Orton concocted for the Beatles in his never-made Up Against It, but Prick Up Your Ears is far more concerned with the irreverent way Orton dealt with McCartney and Co. than with what he wanted...
...bizarre circumstances of Orton's life hardly make for an empathetic telling, but in Prick Up Your Ears, screenwriter Alan Bennett and director Stephen Frears have fashioned a compelling, naturalistic and extremely entertaining picture. What could have easily been a sexo-literary freak show instead ripples with wit and energy...
...film obliquely raises questions of art and society, but at its heart, Prick Up Your Ears is the story of two intriguing men and their problematic relations. The brilliant performances by Gary Oldman as the randy playwright and Alfred Molina as the whining Halliwell necessarily make the film, because Bennett and Frears have all but ignored the charged times in which the Orton story unfolded. Although painstaking detail masterfully recreates the setting of the story, the filmmakers have largely eschewed an attempt to depict the explosive social scene of 1960s London...
...Prick Up Your Ears is as much the story of Halliwell's failure as it is Orton's success. An older, better educated man who picks up the boisterous Orton at a class in London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he infuses the youth with his literary pretentions and dreams of being a novelist. That it is Orton who actually lives out those dreams drives Halliwell mad; Molina gives a surprisingly sympathetic rendering of the murderer, portraying Halliwell's vascillation between pride in his young charge's accomplishments and jealousy of his fame...
Though bickering has made them famous, the best-kept secret about Siskel and Ebert is that they agree much more often than they disagree. Their tastes are generally similar (two thumbs up for Prick Up Your Ears and Swimming to Cambodia; two thumbs down for Blind Date and The Secret of My Success). Both rail regularly against teen sex comedies, violent horror films and car chases. Good movies are almost always those that have "characters you can identify with...