Andrew Sarris

If it were even remotely realistic, it would be intolerable, but the first half of its premise, Bronson as a bleeding-heart liberal who turns, because of a personal tragedy into a gun-toting vigilante, is so patently unconvincing as to make the payoff an irresistibly entertaining exercise in backlash titillation. [29 Aug 1974, p.65]

The War Wagon is good for a few laughs and some spectacle while John Wayne and Kirk Douglas are taking Bruce Cabot and an outlandishly armored wagon apart. [14 Sep 1967, p.31]

The problem is not with the subject, nor even with its presumably escapist spirit. The problem is that Mike Nichols and Buck Henry fail to bring it off successfully. [27 Dec 1973, p.51]

The Ipcress File was reasonably entertaining while I was watching it, but after it was over I felt I'd been had... Among the tiresome directorial tricks in The Ipcress File is the repetitively off-angle anti-climax with the heavies feeding parking meters, hibernating in libraries, and plotting at band concerts. Nothing happens most of the time, and this is supposed to be funny and ironic.

Pleasantly inoffensive. [29 Jul 1965, p.8]

Nichols has actually committed all the classic errors of the sophisticated stage director let loose on the unsophisticated movies. For starters, he has underestimated the power of the spoken word in his search for visual pyrotechnics.

Unfortunately, Support Your Local Sheriff is basically serial material that in straining to be something more ends up being something less. [08 May 1969, p.47]

After two hours of which I felt almost every minute, I could find only a handful of positive things to say about this production. [25 Jul 1974, p.67]

I thought there were about 11 good minutes in it, and the rest confused and uncertain. [22 Jul 1971, p.55]

The film doesn't succeed even on its own dubious terms, the phony soliloquies of the salesmen while driving ostensibly alone being particularly disconcerting and unconvincing and ultimately unrevealing. [01 May 1969, p.48]

The Long Goodbye rides off furiously in too many different directions with too many gratuitously Godardian camera movements to make even one good movie. [29 Nov 1973, p.84]

California Split never comes to a very fine point in the psychological development of its characters. California Split is thus more about moment-to-moment living than momentous life. [03 Oct 1974, p.81]

Help does not indicate that Lester has depleted his bag of tricks, but rather that he is too addicted to fragmentation for its own sake. [09 Sep 1965, p.15]

Kubrick goes through the motions with a hula hoop and the munching of potato chips, but there is nothing intuitive or abandoned about the man-nymphet relationship. The Director's heart is apparently elsewhere. [05 Jul 1962, p.11]

The director's deepest instincts are less epic than dramatic, with the result that he gets sidetracked more often than his errant hero. The picturesque is gained too often at the expense of the picaresque, and the contour of a legend is obscured time and again by the pointless intimacy of a close-up. [09 Jan 1964, p.12]

Considerably weaker than The Nutty Professor. [10 Sep 1964, p.17]

The Conversation could have used a great deal more vulgar curiosity about its own plot and its own characters. Coppola's good taste has been misplaced on this occasion, but he remains one of our most promising new filmmakers nonetheless. [20 June 1974, p.78]

Zardoz quickly degenerates from a voyage through a labyrinth into an ego trip round and round the inside of a goldfish bowl. [28 Feb 1974, p.62]

The parts are better than the whole. [24 Feb 1975, p.58]

There doesn't seem to be enough plot for a minute commercial, much less 100 minutes plus of madcap farce. [12 Jun 1969, p.53]

The humor isn't much here either despite a trio of classic bad goon performances by Jack Elam, Strother Martin, and Ernest Borgnine. [06 Jul 1972, p.49]

Plaza Suite is a strenuous bore, far less amusing than the play, but no less empty and heartless in its insistence on creating grotesques for easy laughs and then forcing them to feel sorry for even easier pathos. [20 May 1971, p.61]

I found myself reasonably absorbed in this grown-up though not sufficiently lived-in and thought-through entertainment. [01 May 1978, p.45]

The plot has many twists, few surprises, and one gaping hole, which becomes apparent only after you walk out of the theater and have a chance to think. But pure popcorn like this is hardly worthy of serious analysis...Fortunately, the stars have not lost their charm and authority.

Ronald Neame's civilized anemia is appropriate enough for the direction of material that is going in no direction in particular. [23 Feb 1967, p.23]

The sobriety of the entire enterprise is ill-suited to the lurid period in history it represents. [23 Dec 1971, p.61]

Gene Saks directs his first film so clumsily that he even muffs Mike Nichol’s exploitation of the climbing the stairs gag that kept Neil Simon’s feeble farce running for 79 years on Broadway.