Both Kubrick and King merit congratulations for making The Shining one of the most overpowering experiences of horror ever committed to celluloid. It manages to treat intangible, elusive subjects—ghosts, demons, spirits and the like—as if they were as real as this morning’s headlines.
The thaw in the Soviet Union made it possible for new filmmakers, although not without difficulty, to assert their personal vision. The most striking of these was indisputably Andrei Tarkovsky, Emmanuel Carrère discusses the grandeur of Stalker.
by Pauline Kael In Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands, the towers and spires of a medieval castle rise high in the air right out of the
Andrew Sarris famously panned Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, then reversed himself after seeing it under the influence.
In this review of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Tom Milne dismisses Spielberg’s classic as dross. In a scathing review he objects to the film’s many flaws, including its ‘simple-mindedness’ and its reliance on ‘limp clichés’.
Buñuel attacks the Church as the perverter and frustrater of man—the power trying to hold down sexuality, animality, irrationality, man’s “instinctual nature.’’
The movie—Costner’s debut as a director—is childishly naïve. When Lieutenant Dunbar is alone with his pet wolf, he’s like Robinson Crusoe on Mars. When he tries to get to know the Sioux, and he and they are feeling each other out, it’s like a sci-fi film that has the hero trying to communicate with an alien race.
This excruciatingly violent, three-hour Viet Nam saga demolishes the moral and ideological cliches of an era: it shoves the audience into hell and leaves it stranded without a map.
The Deer Hunter has done what The Green Berets could not do more than a decade ago: it has moved audiences to actively root for the American military fighting the Vietnam war.
For all its pretensions to something newer and better, this film is only an extension of the old Hollywood war-movie lie. The enemy is still bestial and stupid, and no match for our purity and heroism; only we no longer wipe up the floor with him—rather, we litter it with his guts.
by Andrew Sarris I It came over the car radio while I was driving out to wintry, stormy Long Island for the Memorial Day weekend.
I am convinced that The Godfather could have been a more profound film if Coppola had shown more interest (and perhaps more courage) in those sections of the book which treated crime as an extension of capitalism and as the sine qua non of showbiz.
The key of the brilliant comic tone of the film is in the title. What makes the picture so funny, terrifying and horribly believable is that everyone in the film really has learned to stop worrying, as smokers do about lung cancer after living with the statistics for a bit.
Last Tango in Paris is an important film because of the way it deals with film history. By showing the inadequacy of and parodying two recent influential film styles, 1950s Hollywood and French New Wave, Bertolucci critiques and condemns the outmoded ideas and attitudes which informed these styles.
In this review of Last Tango in Paris, Norman Mailer offers an extensive critique of Bertolucci’s film on the basis of Marlon Brando’s compromised acting.
Some people want to call this art in the postmodern age, but no matter how inflated with esteem Lynch becomes, his art isn’t so great that it transcends political reading or vicious, regressive, conservative meaning.
Imagine The Wizard of Oz with an oversexed witch, gun-toting Munchkins. and love ballads from Elvis Presley, and you’ll get some idea of this erotic hellzapoppin from writer-director David Lynch.
The movie is a disgrace: an ugly, incoherent, dishonest piece of work. The original picture, directed by a skillful journeyman, J. Lee Thompson, is memorable without being especially artful.
J. Hoberman’s review of “Cape Fear” (1991) by Martin Scorsese
Tullio Kezich recensisce “Per un pugno di dollari”, primo capitolo della “trilogia del dollaro” di Sergio Leone. Articolo pubblicato sulla rivista ‘Bianco e Nero’