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Movie reviews

Suspiria (1977) – Recensione di Guido Fink

I soli fotogrammi relativamente suggestivi di Suspiria (1977) sono quelli iniziali. Spaventata e indifesa, Susy (Jessica Harper) arriva da New York all’aeroporto di Friburgo, e il gioco di campo e controcampo, il ritmo binario della suspense si mantiene ancora nell’ambito del cinema “classico”

Eraserhead (1977) – Review by Russ Island

With his film Eraserhead, David Lynch has created what can only be called a surrealistic masterpiece. Uncompromising in style, this black-and-white film is not merely nightmarish: it is a nightmare captured on celluloid.

Apocalypse Now (1979) – Review by William Cadbury

What does Apocalypse Now mean—the film as we have it, considering the minimal difference between the 35mm version with the title sequence and the 70mm version without, but ignoring all the pre­release stories and versions, preliminary scripts, and encrusted commentary?

Manhattan (1979) – Review by Maurice Yacowar

After the somberness of Interiors, Woody Allen has returned to the romantic comedy style of Annie Hall. The result is his most lyrical and emotional film to date. Although it may not be as complex as Annie Hall, Manhattan is a magnificent film, subtle both in expression and in feeling. It proves that Allen’s genius is still growing and capable of fertile surprises.

Alien (1979) – Review by Laura Sanden

For the filmgoer who can distance himself from the occasional gore of the first viewing, or who can sit through it a second time, Alien furnishes more than simply an opportunity to scream in unison with a couple of hundred other people.

Hardcore (1979) – Review by Charles Schwenk [Cinemonkey]

Amongst film aficionados, the more simple-minded or shy smut fans, and the strong and growing coterie of Paul Schrader enthusiasts, Hardcore was awaited with special enthusiasm; yet all seem to have walked away in varying degrees of disappointment.

The Deer Hunter (1978) – Review by Sid Falko [Cinemonkey]

The Deer Hunter has created such controversy as a political entity that I think it would be valuable to consider it, briefly, purely as an aesthetic object. Certainly art affects us in many ways, but many of these effects are brought to the film by ourselves.

John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) – Review by Sean Mercer [Cinemonkey]

The essence of Halloween is a burst of violence on the part of an insane, though clever, man who is “unstoppable,” ubiquitous, and virtually inhuman. He is set against a small group of young women who remain ignorant of his existence, are powerless to stop him when he does attack, and seem to merit his fury due to the licentious and vain orientation of their actions and thoughts.

The Sting (1973) – Review by Pauline Kael

The Sting, with Paul Newman and Robert Redford, strings together the chapters of a Saturday-afternoon serial, each with its own cliffhanger, and we’re invited to wait around to see what the happy twosome will do next. The happy twosome seem to have something for each other, and for most of the rest of the world, that I don’t tune in to.

Sleeper (1973) – Review by Pauline Kael

Woody Allen appears before us as the battered adolescent, scarred forever, a little too nice and much too threatened to allow himself to be aggressive. He has the city-wise effrontery of a shrimp who began by using language to protect himself and then discovered that language has a life of its own.

Papillon (1973) – Review by Pauline Kael

Papillon is a strange mixture of grimness and propriety. There are unnecessary brutalities involving characters we hardly know , and at the same time the movie absolutely refuses the audience any comic relief.

Shining (1980) – di Enrico Ghezzi [Il Castoro Cinema]

Vedere, rivedere, stravedere. Sarà possibile inventare uno «stravedere» come possibile ulteriore significato di «to overlook». In ogni caso, Shining è un film da vedere rivedere stravedere, portando la «stravisione» oltre l’intransitività dello «stravedere (per – qualcuno o qualcosa – )». Ed è un film che stravede il cinema e nel cinema, il futuro negli anni ’80.

Kubrick and His Discontents – by Hans Feldmann

Since the recognized success of Dr. Strangelove, objections to Kubrick’s obscurity, his enigmatic mind, his bleak view of man, his simplistic view of life, his boring mannerisms abound in the reviews of his films. Barry Lyndon seems destined to encourage the same ambivalent critical reaction.

Serpico: The Hero as Freak – Review by Pauline Kael

What could be a more appropriate subject for a 1973 movie than the ordeal of Frank Serpico, the New York City policeman who became a pariah in the Department because he wouldn’t take bribes? Serpico, whose incorruptibility alienates him from his fellow-officers and turns him into a messianic hippie freak, is a perfect modern-movie hero.

Bonnie and Clyde (1967): Gangsters on the Road to Nowhere – Review by Richard Gilman

Bonnie and Clyde is about violence and crime, and the desire of the ego to define itself, to live in violence and crime if it can’t in anything else. To this end it remains properly sympathetic to the characters it has plucked from history, the sympathy being given not to crime but to a process in which crime figures, to the action by which the ego displays itself as the embattled source of everything—crime, love, violence, goodness, error, dream.

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