Movie reviews Archives - Scraps from the loft

THE PLUCK OF ‘BARRY LYNDON’ – Review by Jonathan Rosenbaum

admin 2018-05-09T09:35:18-07:00 May 9th, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: Barry Lyndon (1975), Film Comment, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Movie reviews, Stanley Kubrick|

So Barry Lyndon is a failure. So what? How many “successes” have you seen lately that are half as interesting or accomplished, that are worth even ten minutes of thought after leaving them? By my own rough count, a smug little piece of engineering like A Clockwork Orange was worth about five. I’m reminded of what Jonas Mekas wrote about Zazie several years ago: “The fact that the film is a failure means nothing. Didn’t God create a failure, too?”

TAXI DRIVER (1976) – Review by Charles Michener [Film Comment]

admin 2018-05-09T08:54:52-07:00 May 8th, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: Film Comment, Martin Scorsese, Movie reviews, Taxi Driver|

By far his most ambitious film to date technically and in the scope of its references, Taxi Driver shows Scorsese's urgency working at full throttle—to the film's considerable success and less considerable failure.

CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS (1989) – Review by Pauline Kael

admin 2018-04-26T13:45:08-07:00 April 26th, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Movie reviews, Pauline Kael, The New Yorker, WOODY ALLEN|

Crimes and Misdemeanors, written and directed by Woody Allen, is a sad, censuring look at the world-famous doctor and other crooks in high places who (in Allen’s view) have convinced themselves that they can do anything, because they don’t think God is watching.

NEW YORK STORIES (1989): TWO-BASE HIT – Review by Pauline Kael

admin 2018-04-25T09:03:51-07:00 April 25th, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Movie reviews, New York Stories (1989), Pauline Kael, WOODY ALLEN|

Pauline Kael reviews 'New York Stories', the 1989 anthology film consisting of three shorts with the central theme being New York City. Episodes directed by Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Woody Allen.

THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN (1988): TOO HIP BY HALF – Review by Pauline Kael

admin 2018-04-23T17:15:13-07:00 April 23rd, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: Movie reviews, Pauline Kael, Terry Gilliam, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), The New Yorker|

What saves Munchausen from mediocrity is that you sense that Gilliam is brainstorming. He goes hippety-hoppety all over the place. The picture is too dry and too busy to be considered merely mediocre. And he has his gifts. He retains an edge of Monty Python’s cranky, warped slapstick, and he has a painter’s eye.

LAST TANGO IN PARIS: THE UNVISITABLE PAST – Review by Julian Jebb [Sight and Sound]

admin 2018-04-23T16:37:00-07:00 April 23rd, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI, Last Tango in Paris (1972), Movie reviews, Sight and Sound magazine|

In Last Tango there is a quite plain idea—it’s very nearly a film with a message: sex as an instrument of power divorced from tenderness or curiosity results in chaos and despair.

CIMINO, KUBRICK E IL GIOCO DELL’IDENTITÀ E DELLA DIFFERENZA – di Guido Barlozzetti

admin 2018-04-22T13:30:42-07:00 April 22nd, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: Bianco e Nero [Rivista], Full Metal Jacket, Il Siciliano (1987), Michael Cimino, Movie reviews, Recensioni cinematografiche, Stanley Kubrick, The Sicilian (1987)|

Da Nang è lontana da Montelepre. La storia di Salvatore Giuliano e la guerra del Vietnam non si consumano sotto lo stesso cielo. Ma, forse, le traiettorie della "blindatissima" Full Metal Jacket e la parabola fatale del Siciliano attraversano lo "stesso" cinema.

DANGEROUS LIAISONS (1988) – Review by Pauline Kael

admin 2018-04-20T16:59:19-07:00 April 20th, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: Dangerous Liaisons (1988), Movie reviews, Pauline Kael, Stephen Frears, The New Yorker|

Possibly there’s no way to make a picture this fast (it was shot in ten weeks) and achieve something comparable in greatness to the elegant comedy of evil that Laclos left us.

MISSISSIPPI BURNING (1988) – Review by Pauline Kael

admin 2018-04-20T16:02:51-07:00 April 20th, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: Alan Parker, Mississippi Burning (1988), Movie reviews, Pauline Kael, the new york|

The director Alan Parker likes to operate in a wildly melodramatic universe of his own creation. In Mississippi Burning, which is set during the Freedom Summer of 1964, he treats Southerners the way he treated the Turks ten years ago in Midnight Express.

WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN (1988) – Review by Pauline Kael

admin 2018-04-20T14:06:39-07:00 April 20th, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: Movie reviews, Pauline Kael, Pedro Almodóvar, The New Yorker, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988)|

Pedro Almodóvar may be the only first-rank director who sets out to tickle himself and the audience. He doesn’t violate his principles to do it; his principles begin with freedom and pleasure.

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE – Review by Dale Winogura [Cinefantastique]

admin 2018-03-22T16:16:18-07:00 March 22nd, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: A Clockwork Orange, Cinefantastique, Movie reviews, Stanley Kubrick|

Stanley Kubrick has topped a masterpiece with a masterpiece. A Clockwork Orange is not the best Anglo-Saxon language film of 1971, it is the best film of 1971, and there are so many masterful things in it that I hardly know where to begin.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY: PLANS THAT GO WRONG – Review by Philip French

admin 2018-03-22T08:47:53-07:00 March 22nd, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Movie reviews, Philip French, Stanley Kubrick|

Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is remarkable on a number of counts. Firstly, it is perhaps the first multi-million-dollar supercolossal movie since D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance fifty years ago which can genuinely be regarded as the work of one man.

FELLINI SATYRICON – Review by Robert L. Jerome [Cinefantastique]

admin 2018-03-21T16:02:58-07:00 March 21st, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: Cinefantastique, Federico Fellini, Fellini's Satyricon (1969), Movie reviews|

This view of the Satyricon is proof positive that the golden resources lavished on Fellini by his trusting producers can be reduced to brightly-colored but unenriching fare.

HELL IN THE PACIFIC – Review by Pauline Kael

admin 2018-03-12T15:38:15-07:00 March 12th, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: Hell in the Pacific (1968), John Boorman, Movie reviews, Pauline Kael, The New Yorker|

Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune are the stars of Hell in the Pacific, and there’s nobody else in the movie — just this American soldier and this Japanese soldier stranded on a Pacific island during the Second World War, and neither speaking a word of the other’s language.

KAGEMUSHA (1980) – Review by Pauline Kael

admin 2018-03-09T09:08:05-08:00 March 9th, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: Akira Kurosawa, Kagemusha (1980), Movie reviews, Pauline Kael, The New Yorker|

Visually, the movie is without depth or shading, and often the compositions seem cramped; possibly the chalky, off-key look was by choice, but, if so, I'm not sure what dictated it. This is Kurosawa's first period film in color, and he has used color in an eerily unrealistic, painterly way.

THE SHINING – Review by John Hofsess

admin 2018-03-08T19:07:19-08:00 March 8th, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: John Hofsess, Movie reviews, Stanley Kubrick, The Shining (1980), The Washington Post|

"The Shining" is not Kubrick's greatest film or his greatest gamble, but it is his most ambitious attempt to connect with a mass audience.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY – Review by John Hofsess

admin 2018-03-08T18:45:20-08:00 March 8th, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: 2001: A Space Odyssey, John Hofsess, Movie reviews, Stanley Kubrick, Take One (Canadian magazine)|

2001 no less than Dr. Strangelove is an apocalyptic vision: it i is an alternate future but no less pessimistic. Beneath its austerely beautiful surface an alarm is sounded for us to examine a problem of which Dr. Strangelove was a pronounced symptom: the possibility that man is as much at the mercy of his own artifacts as ever he was of the forces of nature.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY – Reviews by Louise Sweeney and John Allen [The Christian Science Monitor]

admin 2018-03-08T16:13:04-08:00 March 8th, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Movie reviews, Stanley Kubrick, The Christian Science Monitor|

Louise Sweeney, New York-based film critic for The Christian Science Monitor, wrote a generally favorable review following the New York premiere of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Boston staff critic John Allen’s full-page review appeared in the Monitor a month later and M-G-M reprinted it as an ad in a Sunday edition of The New York Times.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY – Review by Charles Champlin [The Los Angeles Times]

admin 2018-03-08T00:46:23-08:00 March 8th, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Charles Champlin, Movie reviews, Stanley Kubrick, The Los Angeles Times|

Any annoyance over the ending—if indeed it is widely felt—cannot really compromise Kubrick’s epic achievement, his mastery of the techniques of screen sight and screen sound to create impact and illusion.

POPEYE (1980) – Review by Pauline Kael

admin 2018-03-07T08:52:35-08:00 March 7th, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: Movie reviews, Pauline Kael, Popeye (1980), Robert Altman, The New Yorker|

Sometimes the components of a picture seem miraculously right and you go to it expecting a magical interaction. That's the case with Popeye. But it comes off a little like some of the Jacques Tati comedies, where you can see the intelligence and skill that went into the gags yet you don't hear yourself laughing.

TESS (1979) – Review by Pauline Kael

admin 2018-03-05T15:17:04-08:00 March 5th, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: Movie reviews, Pauline Kael, ROMAN POLANSKI, Tess (1979), The New Yorker|

Polanski's Tess is Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles under sedation. The film has a penitential attitude toward the suffering that men inflict on women. This Tess becomes a tribute to women's dear weakness.

WE STILL KILL THE OLD WAY (A CIASCUNO IL SUO, 1967): BUSINESS AS USUAL – Review by Pauline Kael

admin 2018-03-05T08:55:38-08:00 March 5th, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: A ciascuno il suo (1967), Elio Petri, Movie reviews, Pauline Kael, The New Yorker, We Still Kill the Old Way (1967)|

We Still Kill the Old Way is an unusual thriller, for it’s not about a big heist or a cute gang of thieves and it doesn’t ingratiate itself by making things easy for the hero or the audience.

IF…. (1968): SCHOOL DAYS, SCHOOL DAYS – Review by Pauline Kael

admin 2018-03-04T16:27:07-08:00 March 4th, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: If.... (1968), Lindsay Anderson, Movie reviews, Pauline Kael, The New Yorker|

I think If . . . . will be a success, but I think it’s far from a masterpiece, and I should like to make this distinction, because so many people are beginning to treat “youth” as the ultimate judge — as a collective Tolstoyan clean old peasant.

‘THE GODFATHER’ AND THE DECLINE OF MARLON BRANDO – Review by Stanley Kauffmann

admin 2018-03-02T22:07:19-08:00 March 2nd, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: Francis Ford Coppola, Movie reviews, Stanley Kauffmann, The Godfather (1972), The New Republic|

Hurricane Marlon is sweeping the country, and I wish it were more than hot air. A tornado of praise—cover stories and huzzahs—blasts out the news that Brando is giving a marvelous performance as Don Corleone in The Godfather, the lapsed Great Actor has regained himself, and so on. As a Brando-watcher for almost 30 years, I’d like to agree.

FULL METAL JACKET: BLANK CARTRIDGE – Review by Stanley Kauffmann

admin 2018-03-02T21:25:26-08:00 March 2nd, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: Full Metal Jacket, Movie reviews, Stanley Kauffmann, Stanley Kubrick, The New Republic|

Full Metal Jacket betrays Kubrick’s avant-garde admirers.

SPARTACUS (1960) – Recensione di Ernesto G. Laura

admin 2018-03-02T09:27:27-08:00 March 2nd, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: Bianco e Nero [Rivista], Ernesto G. Laura, Movie reviews, Spartacus (1960), Stanley Kubrick|

Spartacus ha il pregio di inserire una voce autentica nella grande produzione di Hollywood e dunque di incidere sul gusto di milioni di spettatori e di dimostrare che incassi ed impegno d’arte non sono per forza in contraddizione fra loro.

BAND OF OUTSIDERS: GODARD AMONG THE GANGSTERS – Review by Pauline Kael

admin 2018-02-27T23:24:31-08:00 February 27th, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: Band of Outsiders (1964), Jean-Luc Godard, Movie reviews, New Republic, Pauline Kael|

Jean-Luc Godard intended to give the public what it wanted. His next film was going to be about a girl and a gun—”A sure-fire story which will sell a lot of tickets.” And so, like Henry James’ hero in The Next Time he proceeded to make a work of art that sold fewer tickets than ever. What was to be a simple commercial movie about a robbery became Band of Outsiders.

POLTERGEIST (1982): HOOPER’S VISION & SPIELBERG’S CHARM CREATE A GREAT GHOST STORY – Review by Kyle Counts

admin 2018-02-25T11:45:23-08:00 February 25th, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: Cinefantastique, Movie reviews, Poltergeist (1982), Tobe Hopper|

Spielberg, as co-author/producer (and some say director), has tempered Hooper’s harsh, visceral style with folksy humor and near-bloodless titillation, while Hooper has underscored Spielberg's conservative, child-at-play consciousness with dark touches of Grand Guignol.

THE DEER HUNTER: “GOD BLESS AMERICA” – Review by Chris Auty [Time Out]

admin 2018-02-24T19:28:02-08:00 February 24th, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: Chris Auty, Michael Cimino, Movie reviews, The Deer Hunter, Time Out (magazine)|

The Deer Hunter is a brilliant epic about the simple things of life. To its director Michael Cimino they are 'friendship, courage, dignity, grace' and through them the movie's Vietnam veterans turn into Homeric heroes. Chris Auty pays his respects, but wonders if this catalogue of rituals hasn't tried to make time stand still.

CRIES AND WHISPERS: BERGMAN’S WOMEN – Review by Paul D. Zimmerman

admin 2018-02-23T08:20:53-08:00 February 23rd, 2018|Categories: CINEMA|Tags: Cries and Whispers (1972), Ingmar Bergman, Movie reviews, Newsweek, Paul D. Zimmerman|

Ingmar Bergman—the Swedish creator of The Seventh Seal—long ago abandoned his interest in the mysterious ties between God and man in favor of a broader humanism. His latest film, Cries and Whispers, confronts the realities of the human condition—man’s destiny on "the dark, dirty earth under an empty, cruel Heaven.” Now Bergman seeks his answers in the workings of the human heart alone.