Jimmy_the_Gent4 A bio-pic about Valerie Solanas, a disturbed writer who shot and wounded artist Andy Warhol.This is one of the best films of the 1990s, showing a different side to the often romanticized era of the 1960s. This is not the peace, love and flowers of the hippie years, this shows the underground of low life New York, in it's seedy hotels, dirty diners among drugs and sex trade. Solanas is brilliantly played by Lili Taylor, an underrated actress who deserves a better career. Jared Harris makes a believable Warhol, showing him as the shy, awkward artist who finds danger from his naivete about this sick woman he befriends. There is a great scene of a party in the Factory, it looks very authentic. Warhol's circle of friends are not portrayed as just eccentric artists, they are humanized with all the flaws of any else. They are capable of cruelty, cattiness and prejudice like anybody else. The director Mary Harron does an excellent job with the story using flashbacks and black and white sequences where Solanas spouts her crazed rantings. There are some interesting music of the era used here, such as Walk On By by Dionne Warwick, Grazing In The Grass by Hugh Masekela, Do You Believe In Magic by Lovin Spoonful and Summertime Blues by Blue Cheer.This is highly recommended to anyone interested in true crime stories, pop art and seeing the tough brutal side of the decade.

Anthony Iessi Valerie Solanas, feminist hero? or total maniac? Considering she tried to assassinate Andy Warhol, you tell me. Meet one of the angriest feminists in American history, in all of her glory, in a beautifully done film by American Psycho director Marry Harron. It's a journey of rejection, loathing, and pain. Lilli Taylor is great, and so is the rest of the cast. The script is top notch, and the editing is fabulous, and surprisingly exuberant. Biopics shine when they are brought to the screen with more panache than.. lets say an A&E documentary.

vmbicu The movie without doubt was great, but why do they call Andy Warhol a genius, did he invent something or discover something outstanding? I ask this because in our society or the Art world, someone will take simple dog feces from the street, freshly 'produced' and create a design on canvas with it and this person will be labeled for life, a genius! This kind of thing makes me wonder, for I can see people use regular paint that is used on canvas paintings and paint their faces and body with it. How many will also take freshly produced dog feces and paint their faces and body with it?!As for the movie, I only have one question, how is it that this girl walks over to Andy Warhol, fires one shot misses or just wounds Andy, and the other two that were there just do nothing! I mean this is a girl they know, petite and according to the movie, she just stood rigid with the gun pointed to Andy. Then when she fires a shot closer to Andy and he falls, she slowly walks to him, points the gun to his chest and shoots. You think there was no time for two guys to rush her and pin her petite body down and wrestle the gun away? After all, Andy was revered as a genius? What other opinions are there on this? Or did the director of the movie take some liberties to show the frame of her mind when she shot Andy Warhol?

Rathko An independent gem of a movie that proves once again that give a good actor some well-written dialogue and the support to take a few risks and you can make gold. Lili Taylor, working under the careful stewardship of Mary Hanlon, works hard to give a pitch perfect performance as the brilliant and deeply troubled Solanas. Her intelligence and humor and always evident, but for all her strutting arrogance, she conveys an uncertainty and vulnerability that foreshadows what is ultimately a painful and tragic descent into violence and paranoia.The evocation of the late 60's New York underground, and Warhol's Factory in particular, is brilliant, even more so when you consider the low budget and that Andy Warhol's Estate refused to allow any of the artists work to actually be duplicated for the movie. The pill-popping, light-show gazing, pretentiousness, promiscuity and vacuousness of the scene have not been this well portrayed since Midnight Cowboy.The supporting cast, without exception, are brilliant, inhabiting their characters completely with just a few lines, and the soundtrack perfectly sets the tone and period. While the narrative lags in spots and could have benefited with a little tightening in the editing room, I Shot Andy Warhol is still a wonderful testament to the ambitious possibilities of low-budget, independent film-making.