The General (1927) – Review by Bosley Crowther
16/11/2019
The General, made in 1927, best combines the subtle character of Keaton with material that is perfect for his style.
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Movie reviews
Closely Watched Trains (1966) – Review by Bosley Crowther
16/11/2019
by Bosley Crowther In discussing The Shop on Main Street, I spoke of the characteristic style of many of the Czechoslovakian films of the 1960s
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – Review by Bosley Crowther
14/11/2019
by Bosley Crowther In light of the phenomenal popularity of George Lukas’ 1977 Star Wars, which seems to have done for science fiction movies what
Renaldo and Clara (1978) – Review by Pauline Kael
14/11/2019
Like Mailer, Dylan is an artist who intended to do something in advance of conventional movies—more poetic, more ‘true’—yet “Renaldo and Clara,” like Mailer’s “Wild 90,” “Beyond the Law” and “Maidstone,” is marked by an absence of artistic intelligence. The picture hasn’t been thought out in terms of movement or a visual plan.
The Deer Hunter (1978) – Review by Stanley Kauffmann
11/11/2019
I submit that, if we are going to be moved to thought and action by The Deer Hunter, it ought to be by the implications of its true subject: the limitations for our society of the traditions of male mystique, the hobbling by sentimentality of a community that, after all the horror, still wants the beeriness of “God Bless America” instead of a moral rigor and growth that might help this country.
Summer of ’42 (1971) – Review by Vincent Canby [The New York Times]
10/11/2019
Robert Mulligan’s Summer of ’42 is a memory movie, written, directed and acted with such uncommon good humor that I don’t think you’ll be put off by its sweet soft-focus, at least until you start analyzing it afterwards.
Barry Lyndon (1975) – Review by Stanley Kauffmann
05/11/2019
Beautiful pictures are not film style. Kubrick’s latter-day work is solipsist and smug, isolated and sterile. For me Barry Lyndon is an anti-film, a gorgeous, stultified bore.
The Homosexual Subtext of Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” (1992)
05/11/2019
Reservoir Dogs is one of many films, past and present, that either flirt with or fully incorporate homosexual innuendo, expanding the vast symbolic field that homosexuality embraces. Its subtextual strategy mirrors the longstanding suppression and willful concealment of homoerotic desire in our society.
Slaughterhouse-Five (1972): Billy Pilgrim’S Progress – Review by Judith Crist
15/09/2019
Slaughterhouse-Five is a masterly film, triumphantly original, wittily humane and piercingly cogent
Accattone (1961) – Recensione di Filippo Sacchi
06/09/2019
Credo che ormai sarebbe ingenuo venire a raccontare Accattone al lettore. È da un anno che periodicamente l’Italia è costretta ad occuparsene. Il nostro è un Paese buffo. In nessun altro Paese normale un film come questo sarebbe diventato un affare di Stato.
Rain Man (1988) | Review by Pauline Kael
10/08/2019
Rain Man is Dustin Hoffman humping one note on a piano for two hours and eleven minutes. It’s his dream role. As the autistic savant Raymond Babbitt, he’s impenetrable: he doesn’t make eye contact or touch anyone or carry on a conversation; he doesn’t care what anybody thinks of him.
Once Upon a Time in the West – Review by Wim Wenders
04/08/2019
I don’t want to see any more Westerns. This one is the very end, the end of a craft. This one is deadly . . . Leone’s film is completely indifferent towards itself. All it shows the unconcerned viewer is the luxury that enabled it to be made
2001: L’odyssée de l’espace (1968) – Revue par Jacques Goimard [Fiction]
22/07/2019
D’avance, nous savions que ce serait un événement. Parce que les dix millions de dollars dépensés garantissaient la qualité du spectacle et nous promettaient ce récital d’effets spéciaux, cette fête de l’imaginaire, ce plongeon dans l’inconnu dont le cinéma de SF nous frustre régulièrement.
L’Etranger (Lo straniero, 1967) – Review by Margaret Tarratt
21/07/2019
Whilst L’Etranger is unlikely to hold a major position in Visconti’s oeuvre, it is in several ways remarkable. It is perhaps too easy to underestimate Visconti’s superb ability to render an authentic sense of period (a quality virtually unique to him amongst Western film directors).
2001: A Space Odyssey – Review by Robert O’Meara [Screen]
21/07/2019
These are four key scenes from the main sections of 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film that can be considered, with some reservations, a cinematic milestone in both the technical achievement and in its aesthetic exposition.
Eyes Wide Shut (1999) – Review by Janet Maslin [The New York Times]
16/07/2019
Given the grippingly bizarre settings and situations that Stanley Kubrick’s films favored, what could be more startling than the scene that opens “Eyes Wide Shut”? It’s only the sight of two people who resemble glamorous movie stars getting ready for a black-tie party.
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: Storytelling in the Novel and the Film
07/07/2019
In the history of Ukrainian literature and cinema one and the same title marks the tarn to the modem. Tini zabutykh predkiv (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors), a novel by Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky and a film by Serhii Paradzhanov (Sergei Paradjanov), became milestones in the development of their respective art forms.
Uccellacci e uccellini (1966) – Recensione di Mario Verdone
06/07/2019
Uccellacci e uccellini di Pier Paolo Pasolini affronta coraggiosamente e con novità, sul piano tematico e linguistico, le crisi di valori, di credenze, di sistemi ideologici, che sono caratteristiche del nostro tempo
The New Land (Nybyggarna, 1972) – Review by Pauline Kael
23/06/2019
Seeing The New Land a year after The Emigrants is like picking up a novel you had put down the day before. The story comes flooding back, and what you saw in the first half—the firm, deep-toned preparation—“pays off” in the second half.
Day for Night (La Nuit Américaine, 1973) – Review by Pauline Kael
16/06/2019
Day for Night has the Truffaut proportion and grace, and it can please those who have grown up with Truffaut’s films — especially those for whom Jean-Pierre Leaud as Antoine Doinel has become part of their own autobiographies, with Antoine’s compromises and modest successes paralleling their own.