Pretty Good

Best movie ever!

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This is such a powerful piece of work. Ed Harris has clearly devoted a large section of his life to capturing Pollock's story, and his commitment I doubt could have been rivaled by anyone else. His performance is spellbinding - painful, inspired, ugly, and it's hard not to think that he must have really gone there while performing it.It is doubly impressive to wonder how he managed to also direct the film - and direct it with a strong hand and complete assurance - while going to the emotional depths that were required of his performance as Pollock.Particularly enjoyable for a Pollock fan - but enjoyable for anyone that wants to experience an honest and unflinching look into the life of a tormented genius.Highly recommend.

Ed Harris was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of Jackson Pollock. He also directed this pretty average movie. Pollock was the guy who invented the method of flicking paint on-to canvases on the floor. He also poured paint straight from the can. To-day there are art professors who reject Pollock as an artist...but if you want to buy a good Pollock to-day...you better have multi millions of dollars. Ed is O.K. as the alcoholic - manic depressive painter. However, he fails to get to grips with the psyche of the would-be genius. Perhaps the whole cast gave Pollock too much respect. The script does not feel real, and, quite frankly i did not learn much about Pollock the human being. (or Pollack the painter) A movie you see once...then forget about it.

I'm betting, reading over the other comments about this movie, that anyone will care for what I type here.This movie is boring.Perhaps there is dictum about "artists" in cinema, that "if you don't like the art, you won't like the movie about the artist." Since I just made that up, I doubt there is anything specific like that, but there ought to be, or at least some thing approximate.I don't like Jackson Pollock's art. I don't think that it is art. I think it's interesting splotches on canvass. But it doesn't mean anything to me. The colors are cool, the variations, the variegations, the structure of his paintings, are interesting. Art? No way. Not to me. I need to see an idea, and there none in Pollock's art.This is all as prelude to a thought on the movie: If such a tortured soul as Pollock came up with basically interesting splotches of paint on canvas, then it seems to be a complete waste of a tortured soul.There are long stretches in the film of Ed Harris as Pollock doing not much of anything, other stretches when he's being a drunken fool (urinating in a fireplace during a swanky dinner may be the way to establish a reputation as tortured artist, but in the end it's not exactly polite).Ed Harris is a great actor, he really is. And it seems he's quite an admirer of Pollock. But what Harris is to acting, in my take, Pollock is not the same to painting.I think people who watch this movie probably are artistry fans, which is to mean, loving art for the fact that somewhere, someone has called something "art." Even if it's abject garbage. Sometimes literally.As from the beginning, perhaps it's the person in question: I like Mozart, very much so, and so I very much liked "Amadeus." I like the Doors, very much so, and so I very much liked "The Doors." Still I dislike John Holmes, and yet I liked "Wonderland" quite a bit. Whether Porn Stars rank with artists like Mozart is questionable, though less so when compared with Pollock.Hence, perhaps this movie would be better were it about a better painter. Just throwing ink and paint and other fluids around does not a great painter make.

The elements of the biopic of the artist are well defined: the struggle with drink and/or drugs, the love of a good woman, the defining moment of inspiration, the recreation of the art itself and the succession of minor characters whose primary role seems to be to comment on the exact status of the hero's career. In this sense, Ed Harris' film 'Pollock' is quite similar to the films made about Ray Charles or Johnny Cash, differentiated primarily by the stubborn refusal of the narrative of Pollock's life to fit into a happy ending. Harris not only directs but also stars, and he gives a performance of studied intensity, forcing the audience to respect his unconventional art through the display of commitment to it manifested by the man. But the root cause of Pollock's demons remain hidden to us; and one wonders if there was perhaps, in a fragment of the man's troubled life, a better story than there is in the whole of it.