One Hour Photo (Widescreen Edition)
by Mark Romanek
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DVD details
Actor: Connie Nielsen, Dylan Smith, Erin Daniels, Michael Vartan, Robin WilliamsDirector: Mark Romanek
Brand: WILLIAMS,ROBIN
Writer: Mark Romanek
Producer: Christine Vachon
Producer: Jeremy W. Barber
Producer: John Wells
Producer: Pamela Koffler
Producer: Robert B. Sturm
Producer: Robert Katz
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 96 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-02-18
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
DVD Reviews of One Hour Photo (Widescreen Edition)
DVD Review: excellent
Summary: 4 Stars
Violent crime got so out of control from the 1970s into the mid 1990s, people did not care "why" anymore. All that attempted understanding and "rehibilitation" went out the window.
When you deal with a Manson or a Bin Ladin or just your garden veriaty sexual perditor, there is a lot of merit in this. These people are evil. You can't teach them empathy.
But Sy is not evil. He is just a sad, isolated man, one of those marginalized people who are so at a loss as to how to act, no one talks, or more importantly, listens to them. It is scary how many people there are like Sy, and how callously we dismiss them. What if someone had taken the time to be really nice to this guy?
Sy has had really awful things happen to him. He idealizes a family who's photos he develops, and wants to be part of this family. He is not even crazy, just very disturbed. He is like a child, and he sees this family as his embracing fantasy--fills in the blanks with his own yearnings. He does not want to harm, steal, violate or kill. His problem is he is completely incapable of conceiving of other people as intigrated and complex, becuase he is not.
Sy may not be a bad man, but does a very bad thing. He finds out the father in the family is having an affair, and terrorizes the couple.\
It is a good thing that Sy is caught: he is now off the street, where he can't escelate and really harm another.
One Hour Photo is unique among films of our era in that it makes you feel geniune pity for the perportrator. The movie does not excuse what he did, and again, we want guys like Sy in a place seperate from the rest of us--he did the crime and needs to deal with the consequences.
But Sy is also a product of consequences. No one talked to this man, threw him a rope, saw that he was going deep under and tried to do something. Had someone put an arm around him, took him for a coffee, would he have listened? I don't know, One Hour Photo shows how some people, left alone, can go from being strange to very, very sick--because no one payed attention when there was still time.
That is the real creepiness of One Hour Photo.
DVD Review: A Comedian Who Can Be Effectively Serious
Summary: 5 Stars
Robin Williams once again proves how good comedians can be at serious drama roles. Williams is especially adept at playing creepy characters, as he has done several times in the last 15 years.
Here, he plays "Sy, the photo guy," a lonely employee in the photo department of a suburban Target/Walt-Mart/K-Mart-whatever who lives vicariously through a nice family. Thepictures he has developed and printed for years makes him feel part of the family unit. So, when Sy discovers the husband of that family is cheating, he takes it personally....and gets involved.
This was a fascinating portrait of a deranged man and a wonderfully photographed movie. The colors in here are astounding at times and the camera-work innovative with some neat angles. The suspense of the story builds and builds one gets that old film-noir feeling of impending doom.
This has a different ending, though, than most old film noirs, not exactly what the viewer might think will happen.
This is a film that, as far I know, never got much publicity, but it's a gem. Williams is outstanding in his role and the hour-and-a-half you invest in this movie flies by. I'd love to see it on a sharp Blu-Ray transfer.
DVD Review: tight thriller
Summary: 4 Stars
This is an unusual thriller about an unusual character. robin williams plays the lonely photo developer at a wal mart type store. he ends up becoming a stalker of a family, but one that you can relate to. the filmakers somehow find a way to put everyone in the same boat of surburbian desolation. this movie does a spendid job of painting a modern kind of wasteland, dominated by materialism, consumerism and strip malls. photography serves as a kind of witness to the decay of modern living.
this movie moves to a slow boiling point, but the tension is palpable and gripping.
DVD Review: 3 stars out of 4
Summary: 4 Stars
The Bottom Line:
Though the advent of digital photography may render the theme somewhat obsolete, this well-directed and acted horror film acts on the audience's fears convincingly for a majority of the film until the not-entirely successful ending.
DVD Review: Next time you call me out here, that thing better be belching fire
Summary: 3 Stars
One Hour Photo is a movie where Robin Williams goes from being a funny guy in his other movies to being a creep. He plays a very lonely guy, and you would almost feel sorry for him--if he weren't so unhinged and potentially dangerous. The robot in 'Lost in Space' is waving his robot arms and screaming "Danger, Will Robinson."
Let's take a brief retrospective of Robin's career:
He is a stand up comedian in San Francisco, and in 1977 that leads to a couple of spots on "The Richard Pryor Show," an appearance on "Laugh-In," and "Eight is Enough." Next year he gets on "America-2-Night" and then a couple of episodes of "Happy Days" as Mork, a character that is so popular that it spins off into "Mork and Mindy" and a star is born. "Mork and Mindy" runs for 94 episodes. By 1980 he plays Popeye in 'Popeye' for Robert Altman, with Shelly Duvall as Olive Oyl (brilliant casting, by the way). "Mork" continues until 1982.
It seems that Mr. Williams was very successful playing either likable, funny or funny AND likeable characters, but at some point, he wanted to explore his dark side. Thus we have 'One Hour Photo.' Also, 'Death to Smoochy,' 'License to Wed' and an episode of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" where he plays an enigmatic criminal named Merritt Rook.
His character: Seymour 'Sy' Parrish, though is probably his bleakest. There are few laughs (at least intentional ones) in 'One Hour Photo.' Robin Williams, who spews words in his stand up act, and in such tour de forces of improvisational 'genius' as the Genie in 'Aladdin,' is very subdued and understated in 'One Hour Photo.'
Just a few observations, mostly about the look of One Hour Photo, the art direction, symbols, metaphors, and so forth: Everything is bland in shopping mall land. Beige, beige, beige, as far as the eye can see. Also Seymour's apartment has a bland and antiseptic quality. Seymour is a good name for a stalker and voyeur, because he always wants to "see more." The shortened form of his moniker, "Sy," is even better, because it brings to mind the Cyclops: One Giant Eye looking right at you, like the lens of a camera. There are a lot of visual metaphors for pictures and photography. Sometimes windows and the framing of shots all conspire to bring to mind cameras and photography. The names of the characters are often names of famous photographers, an inside joke (just as one example, his associate is named Araki just like a famous Japanese photographer).
'One Hour Photo' is a very interesting film for its design ideas and its comments on loneliness and alienation in the modern world (or at least as modern as 2002) but it has a few holes in the plot and other flaws that prevent it from being more than an exercise to impress film school professors. For instance, would a couple who have just been humiliated and threatened with a knife just remain in stunned silence once their assailant had left them? Wouldn't they be on the phone in the blink of an eye, calling 911 about the maniac?
If you can suspend disbelief just a little bit, you might enjoy this film for its clever design, thrills and suspense, and a performance from Robin Williams that is very different from anything he's done up to this point.
"Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" .... Merritt Rook (1 episode, 2008)
- Authority (2008) TV episode .... Merritt Rook
August Rush (2007) .... Maxwell 'Wizard' Wallace
License to Wed (2007) .... Reverend Frank
RV (2006) .... Bob Munro
Insomnia (2002/I) .... Walter Finch
Death to Smoochy (Widescreen Edition) (2002) .... Rainbow Randolph
... aka T?tet Smoochy (Germany)
One Hour Photo (2002) .... Seymour Parrish
Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001) (voice) .... Dr. Know
Patch Adams (1998) .... Hunter 'Patch' Adams
What Dreams May Come (1998) .... Chris Nielsen
Deconstructing Harry (1997) .... Mel/Harry's Character
To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar (1995) (uncredited) .... John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt
Nine Months (1995) .... Dr. Kosevich
Mrs. Doubtfire (Behind-the-Seams Edition) (1993) .... Daniel Hillard / Mrs. Euphegenia Doubtfire
Being Human (1993) .... Hector
Toys (1992) .... Leslie Zevo
Aladdin (Disney Special Platinum Edition) (1992) (voice) .... Genie
Hook (1991) .... Peter Banning
The Fisher King (1991) .... Parry
Shakes the Clown (1991) (as Marty Fromage) .... Mime Class Instructor
Dead Again (1991) .... Doctor Cozy Carlisle
Awakenings (1990) .... Dr. Malcolm Sayer
Cadillac Man (1990) .... Joey O'Brien
Dead Poets Society (1989) .... John Keating
Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) .... Adrian Cronauer
Jonathan Winters: On the Ledge (1987) (TV) .... Various Characters
Seize the Day (1986) .... Tommy Wilhelm
Club Paradise (1986) .... Jack Moniker
The Best of Times (1986) .... Jack Dundee
"Pryor's Place" .... Gabby (1 episode, 1984)
Moscow on the Hudson (1984) .... Vladimir Ivanoff
The World According to Garp (1982) .... Garp
"Mork & Mindy" .... Mork (94 episodes, 1978-1982)
"The Billy Crystal Comedy Hour" (1 episode, 1982)
Popeye (1980) .... Popeye
Andy Kaufman Plays Carnegie Hall (1980) (V) (uncredited) .... Andy's Grandmother
"Happy Days" .... Mork (2 episodes, 1978-1979)
++++++++++++++++++++++
Larry - Repairman: Next time you call me out here, that thing better be belching fire.
===========================
Description of One Hour Photo (Widescreen Edition)
Robin Williams delivers his "finest hour" (USA Today) in "one of the eeriest, most absorbing, effective thrillers in years" (NBC-TV). Sy "the photo guy" Parrish (Williams) has lovingly, painstakingly developed photographs for the Yorkin family since their son was a baby. But as Yorkins' lives become fuller, Sy's only seems lonelier, until he eventually convinces himself he's part of their family. When "Uncle Sy's" picture-perfect fantasy collides with an ugly dose of reality, what happens next "has the spine-tingling elements of the best psychological crime thrillers!" (The New York Observer)One Hour Photo may be more civilized than Taxi Driver, but it's just as effectively creepy. Like Martin Scorsese's classic, this riveting character study is so compassionately detailed that we sympathize with poor Sy Parrish (Robin Williams) even as he grows increasingly unhinged. Sy is a meticulously dedicated one-hour-photo technician, but the pictures he processes--particularly those belonging to the successful, seemingly happy family of Nina and Will Yorkin (Connie Nielsen, Michael Vartan)--turn into the unhealthiest kind of obsession. The Yorkins' snapshots portray a joyful life that the lonely and traumatized Sy could never hope to achieve, and he sinks deeper and deeper into the solace they bring... until evidence of infidelity turns him into a seething crucible of righteous indignation. Propelled by Williams's flawless escape from the feel-good schmaltz of earlier roles, One Hour Photo is a simmering tour de force, tempered by writer-director Mark Romanek for maximum psychological impact. --Jeff Shannon
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