Comments on: At The Top, Looking Down: Lee Marvin in 1972

By: Phil

Phil — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 06:24:31 +0000

Yep, Pocket Money “doesn’t click” and it’s “all style, no movie” and just about everything else bad said about it, but it’s also great. It IS about two nobodies who go nowhere and do nothing, so what did people excepct? Well, they DID do “something,” but it didn’t amount to much. The Jarmusch/Coen comparisons are valid, I have been making them for many years. What do people WANT from movies, anyway? Ever think that it’s your EXPECTATIONS that are the problem? Most films, even the good ones, just disappear in the memory. Question: what won Best Picture five years ago? Ten years ago? Only an obsessive movie nerd could answer that and most can’t. Time makes things like an “exciting plot” irrelevant for most movies and what was thrilling yesterday is usually less-so as time goes on. What if Pocket Money had an exciting plot? Would it be just as exciting today? Would that have changed anybody’s mind about it? Probably not, and it would be just as forgotten today. I can squeeze more useful lines and memorable scenes out of Pocket Money than I can many a supposedly “great” film. That’s enough. The only “bad” thing I could say about Pocket Money is that it’s a bit of an “acquired taste” but somehow that doesn’t seem like such a bad thing. Millions thought and continue to think that Forest Gump was utterly fantastic, but I thought it was crap. Some people’s dismissal of Pocket Money has no greater weight than my dismissal of Gump. Case closed.

By: Jimmy

Jimmy — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 16:25:39 +0000

I don’t understand the hate that gets tossed at “Pocket Money” – the movie is wonderfully quirky and full of low-key humor (see, for example, Marvin’s split-second, hung-over freakout over a pidgeon sitting on the piece of soap he grabs in the opening few minutes; it is absolutely terrific). Marvin’s insane, lovable loser proves once again that “bad guys” playing against type make for great comedy.

By: Mark U.

Mark U. — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 23:55:18 +0000

I watched POCKET MONEY recently and it still doesn't quite click. It must have been a complete enigma at the time. Your reference to Jim Jarmusch's films is completely appropriate but this one still falls flat. Maybe in another 20 years it will seem like a post-post-modern masterpiece. PRIME CUT, however, is a major guilty pleasure. Not a date movie. The scene with the drugged underage cuties in a bullpen waiting to be selected by gangster thugs would turn any woman into a raving feminist. Angel Tompkins, on the other hand, is one tough cookie and a fantasy sexpot to rival the great Claudia Jennings.