P
Scroll down for movie reviews beginning with this letter.
MPAA Rating is the rating given by the Motion Picture Association of America. Please note this is a voluntary rating, so some films (many times older films or obscure foreign films) are not rated.
G - General Audiences
PG - Parental Guidance Suggested
PG13 - Parental Guidance Suggested for those under 13 years of age
R - Restricted (those under 18 not admitted without parent or guardian)
NC-17 (X) - No one under 18 admitted.
USCCB Rating is the rating given by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Please note that some films are not rated simply because the Bishop’s Conference has not reviewed them.
A-I: General Patronage
A-II: Adults and Adolescents
A-III: Adults
L: Limited Adult Audience, problematic content
O: Morally Offensive
Fr. John’s Ratings
★★★★★ - Masterpiece. This film has to show aspects of cinematic excellence that are above and beyond the ordinary and even beyond the “excellent” classification. Because a true masterpiece can be determined only through its ability to endure through the passage of time, no film is even considered for this rating until at least ten years have passed from the date of its initial release.
★★★★ - Excellent
★★★ - Very Good
★★ - Fair
★ - Poor
Passion of Joan of Arc, The (1928) ★★★★★
Length: 82 minutes. MPAA Rating: not rated. USCCB Rating: A-11. Director: Carl Dreyer. Black and white. Silent with English subtitles. Intense depiction of the death of Joan of Arc, including visuals of her body burning at the stake. Very brief shot of a baby nursing at the breast.
Joan of Arc is brought to trial and is sentenced to death.
Mercilessly chopped up in sloppy re-edits by those who had no respect for Dreyer’s work and thought lost until a pristine (and properly edited) print was discovered in a closet in a Norwegian mental institution (yes, you read that correctly), The Passion of Joan of Arc is a stunning masterpiece with innovative camera techniques almost unknown in the silent era (including the pervasive closeups of actors who wear no makeup).
The resulting footage is a film that floats amidst all time periods – a film of one century ago that looks like it might have been filmed yesterday – a film filled with closeups of wrinkled and freckled faces that provide a timeless and visceral experience. Renée Falconetti plays Joan in what has been widely hailed as the greatest performance ever captured on film. The best version of this work is the gorgeous, properly-restored print available from the Criterion Collection. It features music from the beautiful Voices of Light, a 1980’s composition by Richard Einhorn. This man was so inspired by the film that he wrote this oratorio that plays along with the movie. The bell you hear in Einhorn’s music is an actual recording the composer made of the bell at Joan of Arc’s parish church in Doremy, France. Andrei Rublev (Number 4 on my list) has more content and Napoleon (Number 5 on my list) has more sheer spectacle, but this film, like Citizen Kane, has no missteps at all and is about as perfect as a film can get. And the performance of Renée Falconetti is unforgettable. As Roger Ebert once said, “To see Falconetti in Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc is to look into eyes that will never leave you.”
Psycho (1960) ★★★★★
Length: 109 minutes. MPAA Rating: R. USCCB Rating: A-III. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Not for young children.
This taut and sleek thriller was a departure for Hitchcock when he made it in 1960. The low budget and black-and-white cinematography along with Bernard Hermann’s strings-only score make this Hitchcock’s most seminal work – a film which, unfortunately, ushered in the era of violent and gory slasher films. The irony is that we see very little blood in this film and we never actually see Janet Leigh being stabbed in the shower – the famous montage editing makes us believe we are witnessing much more than what is actually being shown to us. The quirky, unnerving performance of Anthony Perkins carries us into the mind of a true psycho – a journey that is fascinating and disquieting. The final shot, a dramatic multiple exposure with multiple layers of meaning, is by far the most unforgettable final shot in the history of cinema.