Stars: Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, Marcia Gay Harden, Jennifer Connelly, Jeffrey Tambor, Val Kilmer, Tom Bower, Bud Cort, John Heard, Norbert Weisser, Sada Thompson, Robert Knott, Matthew Sussman

Director: Ed Harris

Summary: A drama based on the true life story of artist Jackson Pollock who revolutionised art in America.

Ed Harris's POLLOCK is a moving portrait of artist Jackson Pollock, a leader of abstract expressionist painting whose work had major influence on the modern art movement. A serious alcoholic who was married to Lee Krasner, another prominent painter, the film illustrates Pollock's rise to art world fame in the last 15 years of his life, and his subsequent surrender to the bottle which brought his death in 1956. In its best moments, POLLOCK shows Krasner (a strong, dynamic, and fascinating Marcia Gay Harden) and Pollock (a stern Harris) conversing about the progression of the modern movement while criticizing each other's work from their adjoining studios in a tiny apartment in Manhattan's East Village. Other highlights of the film include a handful of high energy painting sequences that demonstrate Pollock's technique--the fluid straight-from-tube strokes of his earlier work and the more radical throwing, drizzling, and splattering of paint from the brush to the canvas in his later works; along with amusing depictions of the New York and Long Island art worlds with Peggy Guggenheim (Amy Madigan), Clement Greenberg (Jeffrey Tambor), Willem de Kooning (Val Kilmer), and Howard Putzel (Bud Cort) in the major roles. Based on the biography JACKSON POLLOCK: AN AMERICAN SAGA by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, the film has an uplifting musical score and a soundtrack that includes some of Pollock's favorite jazz-blues tunes, both of which are welcome counterpoints to the movie's darker moments.

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Filmed in the widescreen splendour of "Panavision Super 70" and blessed with the finest production values that Hollywood clout can buy, this tale of spunky Irish immigrants forgot one crucial ingredient: a decent screenplay. The film is entertaining enough, and director Ron Howard brings his technical proficiency to the simple plot, culminating in a dynamic, breathtaking depiction of the Oklahoma land rush of 1893. But the movie is really just a vacuous vehicle for married stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as (respectively) the poor tenant farmer and rich landlord's daughter who flee Ireland to be American pioneers. The scenery and the stars are never less than stunning, but Howard falls short of the mark in his attempt to match the epic sweep of films by David Lean. On the other hand, this movie is certainly never boring even if it rarely makes sense, and Lean's own Irish epic, Ryan's Daughter, is a snoozer by comparison. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

Aspect Ratio:	1.85 Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Audio Commentary - 1. Ed Harris - Director, Star, Trailer, Featurette, Deleted Scenes, Interview - 1. Ed Harris - Director, Filmographies
Subtitles:	Czech, Dutch, English, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish
Year:	2000
Release Date:	February 24, 2003
Runtime:	118 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	C D R 32705
Keywords:	General, Wide, Screen, Drama, Pollock
Genre:	Drama