A methodical, pointlessly gruelling movie in which Steve McQueen keeps trying to escape from Devil's Island and fellow-convict Dustin Hoffman keeps financing his attempts. After flunking a couple of suicide attempts, he begins to write plays about imprisonment and then to stage them, and his activities win him his release. There are few thrills in this big misconceived courtroom thriller, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and ornately produced by David O. Selznick. Jones, Peckinpah, Wurlitzer, and Elisha Cook (Jr.). Ferrer seemed weak even for Ferrer, and the picture had little besides Bergman's astonishing, ripe beauty to recommend it. With Michael Gough, John Hallam, and Robert Lang. To find a movie title, click on a letter. From a script by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes. Find on Wikipedia. The French version has considerably more, although it is far from a success. With Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne. Mississippi Burning US (1988): Historical/Drama 125 min, Rated R, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc Set in Mississippi in the summer of 1964, it opens with a fictionalized re-creation of the murder of the three civil-rights workers--James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner--but it isn't … If ever there was a wrong actor for a man of great spirit, it's McQueen; as Robert Mitchum once remarked, "Steve doesn't bring too much to the party." 20th Century-Fox. His most controversial film, it is also his most powerful; the violence is not used simply for excitement--it's used as in Eisenstein's and Buñuel's films: to force a vision of human experience. She states there is no reality in the film, that everything is so cinematically dramatized that it’s hard to take seriously. by Pauline Kael. Kael tears Raiders of the Lost Ark apart by calling it a product of “machine-tooled” marketing. The Editors | … And these revues did actually reveal the distinctive tone and style of the studios--Paramount was the giddiest, the least self-serious. Though the film won international recognition (the Best Director and Best Actress Awards at Cannes, and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film), it's a rather uneasy mixture of the romantic, melodramatic prewar French style and the harsh, poetic postwar Italian style (especially in the semi-documentary use of the Genoa-waterfront locations and in the attempt at a fresh approach to character). For a more extended discussion, see Pauline Kael's book When the Lights Go Down. For a movie critic to read it now is to experience a mix … In the Veidt-Ivan sequence, which was obviously a major influence on Eisenstein's IVAN THE TERRIBLE, Ivan is a jokester-poisoner who enjoys presenting his victims with hourglasses timed to run out at the precise moment of their deaths; one day he discovers an hourglass labelled "Ivan." He organizes an acting troupe made up of former cons he worked with--a shoplifter (William Forsythe), a murderer (Ernie Hudson), an embezzler (Lane Smith), a pimp (John Toles-Bey), a flasher (Mark Rolston)--and they go on tour in a camper, with no money. Colbert, travelling by train, becomes involved with a bunch of drunken millionaires--members of the "Ale and Quail Club," on board with their hounds and guns--who stage an informal skeet shoot in the club car and demolish the glassware. The plot is Victorian, but the treatment is inspired. 70% lower than the average critic. 2% same as the average critic. Kael was known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated and sharply focused"[1] reviews, her opinions often contrary to those of her contemporaries. Lewin's direction is static, yet his staging is so luxuriantly mad that it's easy to get fixated on what, if anything, he could have had in mind. Berlin Film Review: ‘What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael’ Rob Garver's beautifully crafted documentary channels the timeless headiness of Pauline Kael, … For a more extended discussion, see Pauline Kael's book When the Lights Go Down. With Saverio Marconi, Omero Antonutti, Margella Michelangeli, and Ledda, as himself, at the beginning and the end. With Jean-Paul Belmondo, Madeleine Robinson, Bernadette Lafont, Jeanne Valerie, and-as Léda-Antonella Lualdi. For a more extended discussion, see Pauline Kael's book Hooked. This rabble-rousing movie appeals to a deep-seated belief in simple, swift, Biblical justice; the visceral impact of the film makes one know how crowds must feel when they're being swayed by demagogues. Blurry Timothy Bottoms, who looks like a romantic anarchist who has lost his bombs, as a first-year law student at Harvard, and John Houseman as the professor he idolizes. In French. With Aldo Ray as a sulky boxer, William Ching, Jim Backus, Phyllis Povah, Sammy White, Chuck Connors, Charles Bronson, and Don Budge. Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov, and Aldo Ray trying very hard to be funny as a trio of convicts who escape from Devil's Island late in the 19th century. In its period this was one of the most popular English imports, though it really isn't very lively. In this week’s issue, I write about Pauline Kael, who was a New Yorker film critic from 1968 to 1991, and whose reviewing helped establish several movies… This first film by the masterly Satyajit Ray-possibly the most unembarrassed and natural of directors-is a quiet reverie about the life of an impoverished Brahman family in a Bengali village. next. Beautiful, sometimes funny, and full of love, it brought a new vision of India to the screen. Instant Watch Options; Genres; Movies or TV; IMDb Rating; In Theaters; On TV; Release Year; Keywords; Prime Video (70) IMDb TV (5) Prime Video (Rent or Buy) (448) Drama (495) Comedy (236) Romance (181) … In French. Maybe people were impressed by its serious and poetic intentions, evidenced by the film's having no one higher in rank than the sergeants who take over when their lieutenant is killed, and by the stylized recurrence of such lines as "There's no sense in it--no sense at all" and "That's the way it is--sure as little apples, that's it." In English, French, Italian, and German. Guthrie uses the Yeats translation of Sophocles' tragedy, … A sad disappointment, though Lena Horne is ravishing, and when she sings you can forget the rest of the picture. As Mickey Finn, the villain in love with his own villainy, James Finlayson is practically a co-star, and Sharon Lynne is the voluptuous blond saloon girl. The heel-hero--a hoofer in the Broadway version--is now a crooner, in line with the talents of Frank Sinatra. Directed by Robert Z. Leonard. None of them have the brittle sentimentality necessary for Coward's brand of light social comedy. Match that for lyric eloquence! Peter Sellers plays a bungling actor from New Delhi who accidentally blows up an expensive Hollywood set. It's his vision of Hell and it ranks with the greatest. A young woman (Linda Kozlowski) from the hill country is trying to recover $50,000 that her family was stung for. There is the choreographer Jerome Robbins (who conceived the stage musical) to convert the street rumbles into modern ballet--though he turns out to be too painstaking for high-powered moviemaking and the co-director Robert Wise takes over. Whatever the reasons, Clément seems to be pulled in different directions; his "sensitivity" is like a glue holding the picture together. James Mason, in his gloomily romantic period, is, literally, the doomed sailor, and Ava Gardner (looking unspeakably luscious) is an American playgirl in evening clothes who wanders through exotic, poetic landscapes before sacrificing herself to save him. Her reviews could be controversial and she left an impact on other critics such as Roger Ebert. She had a taste for violence in films, but only when it was purpose and she disliked movies she felt were superficial or manipulative. Originally released in the U.S. in a cut version, partly because of the film's length (156 minutes), and partly because of nervousness about how Americans would react to the sequences touching on the exploitative practices of American oil companies; the footage trimmed was later restored. There will no doubt be many discussions of Kael's work and influence and with the publication of Brian Kellow's new biography Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark, and the Library of America's forthcoming collection of her work. Review by Pauline Kael. The material has been treated not as if it were an escape story but as if it were the escape story. Bottoms meets the professor's daughter (Lindsay Wagner), who's derisive about everything, and he becomes confused about why he's studying. Pauline Kael reviews Luchino Visconti's 'The leopard' (Il Gattopardo). Roberto Rossellini made this episodic film after his breakthrough with OPEN CITY the year before. PAULINE KAEL: TOP RATED FILMS by eean_dee | created - 15 Jun 2017 | updated - 18 Jun 2017 | Public The infamous film critic Pauline Kael's top rated films as of the time of her demise in 2001. Paramount. The opening sequence shows us a verminous South American village and the Europeans trapped in it; they will risk everything for the money to get out. Set in the California Sierras during the gold-rush era before the Civil War, the movie is full of recycled mythmaking (SHANE, HIGH NOON, and Sergio Leone's spaghetti Westerns), but Eastwood goes through his motions like someone exhumed, and in his directing he numbs out what he borrows. She was one of the most influential American film critics of her era. For a more extended discussion, see Pauline Kael's book When the Lights Go Down. Audiences giggle at bits here and there, but not at the sequence in which she refuses to part from her dead baby. Last updated: 09 Jan 2021 at 21:46 UTC. Melanie Griffith and Matthew Modine are the San Francisco lovers who fix up a Victorian house (on Potrero Hill); Michael Keaton is the sicko scam artist who takes over one of their two rental units and calls the police when they try to evict him. Let me make a man of you!" The script was pinned on Alma Reville, but probably her husband (Alfred Hitchcock) and James Bridie and David O. Selznick himself also struggled with it. by Pauline Kael. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1969) Stanley … For a more extended discussion, see Pauline Kael's book Reeling. The director, Paul Leni, a former Max Reinhardt collaborator, was an extraordinarily gifted scenic artist; the macabre Expressionistic decor for the Jack the Ripper sequence is made entirely from sheets of painted paper. This sad botch was directed by George Sidney; choreography by Hermes Pan. She was the most powerful, loved and hated film critic of … Adapted from the Sol Yurick novel. The picture has some atrocious sequences set in Hollywood during the blacklisting troubles, but the romantic star chemistry of Redford and Streisand turns a half-terrible movie into hit entertainment--maybe even memorable entertainment. This admirable version of E.M. Forster's 1924 novel about the tragicomedy of British colonial rule was adapted, directed, and edited by David Lean, who knows how to do pomp and the moral hideousness of empire better than practically anybody else around. Hepburn plays a phenomenal all-around athlete, and in the course of the picture she takes on Gussie Moran, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, and other professionals, touching off the comic possibilities in various sports with grace and ease. With Joe Mantegna, Rita Taggart, J.J. Johnson, and Anne Ramsey. Pauline Kael had an overwhelming presence in a conversation. (Cocteau wrote that this film "seems like an historical document from an era in which the cinema didn't exist.") Ambitious, erotic, peculiarly unrealized account of how Garrett (James Coburn) hunts down his best friend Billy (Kris Kristofferson), with Bob Dylan (who sings the score, written by him) appearing as a buddy of Billy's. Shot in Tennessee; written by Mort Briskin. By far the best version is the parody done by Carol Burnett and Harvey Korman on TV.) This romantic idyll is unusually tough-minded, and effective because it is. A Kingsgate Film, released by De Laurentiis. The film enters into the spirit of urban-male tribalism and the feelings of kids who believe that they own the streets because they keep other kids out of them. Cinematography by Fred Koenekamp; music by Jerry Goldsmith. Directed by Herman Shumlin. Read Movie and TV reviews from Pauline Kael on Rotten Tomatoes, where critics reviews are aggregated to tally a Certified Fresh, Fresh or Rotten Tomatometer score. They take refuge in the home of a none too bright merchant (Leo G. Carroll) and his opaque wife (Joan Bennett), and coyly busy themselves protecting the kindly dumb merchant from his mean, rich cousin and boss (Basil Rathbone). Ray continued the story of Apu in APARAJITO/THE UNVANQUISHED and THE WORLD OF APU/APUR SANSAR, and the three films, all based on a novel by B.B. The movie is about the men's impulses to revert to their former crime patterns, and about their efforts to become professional men of the theatre. The other passengers are lecherous Ethel Merman (who sings "It's Just an Old Spanish Custom"), and Ray Milland and Leon Errol as rich prigs. Herself (archive footage) Blog Posts . With Norma Shearer, Melvyn Douglas, Gail Patrick, Marjorie Main, Florence Bates, Lee Bowman, Reginald Owen, Alan Mowbray, Sig Rumann, and Ava Gardner (in her début). With an amazing cast that includes Jason Robards, Katy Jurado, Rita Coolidge, Emilio Fernandez, Slim Pickens, Chill Wills, John Beck, Richard Jaeckel, Matt Clark, Richard Bright, Jack Elam, Harry Dean Stanton, John Davis Chandler, L.Q. But this is the kind of literate movie that is more impressive than enjoyable. Having built up to the courtroom drama, Lean isn't able to regain a narrative flow when it's over; the emotional focus is gone, and the concluding scenes wobble all over the place. If Lean's technique is to simplify and to spell everything out in block letters, this kind of clarity has its own formal strength. Pauline Kael movie reviews & film summaries | Roger Ebert. CinemaScope. Pauline Kael Reviews A-Z. But when this boy accidentally plugs into the Defense Department's war-games system and gets into what he thinks is just another video game--Global Thermonuclear War--the machines take over, especially a huge box of flashing light that sounds like an 18-wheel truck rumbling down the highway. Pauline Kael' Reviews by antoniomendes1222 | created - 14 Jul 2014 | updated - 23 Nov 2014 | Public Refine See titles to watch instantly, titles you haven't rated, etc. For a more extended discussion, see Pauline Kael's book Reeling. Indiana Jones “makes the kind of bright-eyed entrance that’s so intensely dramatic it’s funny” (Reviews). His life begins to resemble paranoid fantasy--which, the movie suggests, is what life is for people who live in a corrupt society. The picture goes much further--sometimes majestically, sometimes with surreal details that suggest an affinity between Godard and Buñuel, sometimes with methods and ideas that miss, badly. One of the most talked about hits of the 60s, it was a formative influence on the counterculture, and it was the movie that made Dustin Hoffman a star. Instant Watch Options; Genres; Movies or TV; IMDb Rating; In Theaters; On TV ; Release Year; Keywords; Prime Video (31) … An ancient royal charter ceding Pimlico to the Dukes of Burgundy is unearthed in a London shell hole, and the people of Pimlico are "just British enough to fight for our rights to be Burgundians." This ingenious thriller by Claude Chabrol was made directly after THE COUSINS. The setting is the New Orleans waterfront; a murder victim is discovered to be carrying plague, and a Public Health doctor (Richard Widmark) and a city detective (Paul Douglas) hunt for everybody who came into contact with him. Talky and stiff, the film never finds the passionate tone that it needs. She is regarded as one of the most influential American film critic of her … The songs (mostly by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon) are not top drawer. The screenplay is by Daniel Pyne; the cinematography is by Amir Mokri. (You'd have to go back to Odets.) (The Wedekind material was first filmed in 1919 with Asta Nielsen; the most recent version was probably the 1962 LULU with Nadja Tiller.) Vestron. It doesn't seem weighted down with talk, like most of the others, and though a trifle slow in spots, it has a very satisfying … Two years before THE CONFORMIST, Bernardo Bertolucci made this inventive but bewildering political vaudeville--a modernization of Dostoevski's The Double, in which a young drama teacher (Pierre Clémenti) has fantasies of extending the theatre of cruelty into political revolution. Paul Lukas is the European Underground leader who brings his American wife (Bette Davis) and three children home to the Washington mansion of her mother (Lucile Watson). Shows like this, in which the studios showed off their contract players, were a form of institutional advertising that paid for itself. The rather literary screenplay is by Dale Wasserman, from a novel by Hans Koningsberger; music by Georges Delerue; costumes by Leonor Fini. It has--in visual terms--the kind of impact that "Rock Around the Clock" had when it was played behind the titles of BLACKBOARD JUNGLE. And the Tavianis' technique is deliberately barbaric; their vision is on the nightmare side of primitivism, where the elements themselves are the boy's enemies. Besides, Americans don't move their mouths right for that British chat. Seeing this film, one wouldn't know that he had ever worked in the theatre: everything is kept moving, in a feverish, seething way, yet the performances are never sacrificed to the action. The Taviani brothers, who wrote and directed this film version of Gavino Ledda's 1974 autobiography, have learned to fuse political commitment and artistic commitment into stylized passion. (The Florence episode is by Vasco Pratolini, who isn't credited.) There isn't a laugh in its 2 hours. As "auntie," she is so remarkably likable that you may find the relationship between her and the mother, who is trying to feed her children and worries about how much the old lady eats, very painful. In this vision, cops and kids are all there is, and the worst crime is to be chicken. 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