Full Metal Jacket – Review by David Denby
07/09/2021
Can the sentiment of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket be anything but mere attitude—death-enthralled chic?
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Movie reviews
2001: A Space Odyssey – Fantastic Journey
08/08/2021
Kubrick has, in one big jump, discovered new possibilities for the screen image. He took on a large challenge, and has met it commendably.
Poltergeist (1982) – Review by Pauline Kael
30/07/2021
Poltergeist, which is about a family besieged by nasty, prankish ghosts, is no more than an entertaining hash designed to spook you. It’s The Exorcist without morbidity, or, more exactly, it’s The Amityville Horror done with insouciance and high-toned special effects.
Shoot the Moon (1982) – Review by Pauline Kael
20/07/2021
There wasn’t a single scene in the English director Alan Parker’s first three feature films (Bugsy Malone, Midnight Express, Fame) that I thought rang true; there isn’t a scene in his new picture Shoot the Moon, that I think rings false.
Heaven’s Gate – Review by Pauline Kael
19/07/2021
Heaven’s Gate” is a numbing shambles. It’s a movie you want to deface; you want to draw mustaches on it, because there’s no observation in it, no hint of anything resembling direct knowledge—or even intuition—of what people are about. It’s the work of a poseur who got caught out.
Film Review: The Mission (1986)
17/07/2021
Roland Joffé’s epic film is well-meaning and technically superb.
The Long Goodbye – Review by Pauline Kael
16/07/2021
Pauline Kael reviews “The Long Goodbye”, Robert Altman’s 1973 movie based on Chandler’s 1953 Los Angeles-set novel.
The Come-Dressed-As-the-Sick-Soul-of-Europe Parties
03/07/2021
La Notte, Last Year at Marienbad, La Dolce Vita
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial – Review by Pauline Kael
12/06/2021
Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial envelops you in the way that his Close Encounters of the Third Kind did. It’s a dream of a movie—a bliss-out.
The First Circle (1973) – Review by Pauline Kael
11/06/2021
Solzhenitsyn’s “The First Circle” is a view of the top echelon of the slave-labor world — the mathematicians, scientists, engineers, and professors working in a technical institute near Moscow.
The Iceman Cometh (1973) – Review by Pauline Kael
30/05/2021
The play is essentially an argument between Larry, an aging anarchist (Robert Ryan), and Hickey (Lee Marvin); they speak to each other as equals, and everything else is orchestrated around them.
Note on L’Avventura – by Pauline Kael
08/04/2021
LʼAvventura is a study of the human condition at the higher social and economic levels, a study of adjusted, compromising man — afflicted by short memory, thin remorse, easy betrayal.
The Emigrants (Utvandrarna, 1971) – Review by Pauline Kael
21/02/2021
Jan Troell’s broad-backed nature epic on the mid-nineteenth-century Swedish emigration to this country, which was shot in Sweden and here, tells the story of why and how Swedes became Americans.
The Exorcist (1973) – Review by James Baldwin
04/02/2021
The mindless and hysterical banality of the evil presented in The Exorcist is the most terrifying thing about the film. The Americans should certainly know more about evil than that; if they pretend otherwise, they are lying.
Casualties of War (1989) – Review by Pauline Kael
24/01/2021
This movie about war and rape is the culmination of Brian De Palma’s best work. In essence, it’s feminist.
Intolerance (1916) – Review by Pauline Kael
24/01/2021
“Intolerance” is one of the two or three most influential movies ever made, and I think it is also the greatest. Yet many of those who are interested in movies have never seen it.
A Clockwork Orange – Review by Paul D. Zimmerman
21/01/2021
A Clockwork Orange is a characteristically frosty piece of film-making, shorn completely of sentiment, working through brilliant ironies and dazzling dramatic ideas that please us, provoke our laughter, galvanize our intellects, win our admiration—but never touch our hearts.
The Last Picture Show (1971) – Review by Pauline Kael
21/01/2021
The Last Picture Show arrives just when it seemed time to announce that movies as pop culture were dead.
The Sorrow and the Pity (1969) – Review by Andrew Sarris
20/01/2021
Marcel Ophüls’s The Sorrow and the Pity runs about four and a half hours . . . but, in terms of moral, intellectual, and emotional absorption, it is one of the shortest movies of the year.
The Sorrow and the Pity (1969) – Review by Stanley Kauffmann
20/01/2021
The Sorrow and the Pity is, first, a record. Second, it is a reminder. Third, most important from any view, The Sorrow and the Pity is a fine film.
The Sorrow and the Pity (1969) – Review by Pauline Kael
20/01/2021
A magnificent epic on the themes of collaboration and resistance.