Andrew Sarris

Select another critic »
Village Voice
For 67 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 31% higher than the average critic
  • 0% same as the average critic
  • 69% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 4.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Andrew Sarris' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 61
Highest review score: 100 The Birds
Lowest review score: 10 Murder on the Orient Express
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 32 out of 67
  2. Mixed: 29 out of 67
  3. Negative: 6 out of 67
67 movie reviews
view
per page
    • 97 Metascore
    • 100 Andrew Sarris
    Psycho
    Psycho should be seen at least three times by any discerning film-goer, the first time for the sheer terror of the experience, and on this occasion I fully agree with Hitchcock that only a congenital spoilsport would reveal the plot; the second time for the macabre comedy inherent in the conception of the film; and the third for all the hidden meanings and symbols lurking beneath the surface of the first American movie since “Touch of Evil” to stand in the same creative rank as the great European films. [This was Mr. Sarris's first appearance in the Voice.]
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Andrew Sarris
    The Birds
    The Birds is here, and what a joy to behold a self-contained movie which does not feed parasitically on outside cultural references—Chekhov, Synge, O’Neill, Genet, Behan, Melville, or what have you. Drawing from the relatively invisible literary talents of Daphne DuMaurier and Evan Hunter, Alfred Hitchcock has fashioned a major work of cinematic art, and cinematic is the operative term here, not literary or sociological.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 90 Andrew Sarris
    Jules and Jim
    Jules and Jim is that rarity of rarities, a genuinely romantic film. [03 May 1962, p.11]
    • Village Voice
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Andrew Sarris
    Easy Rider
    Easy Rider displays an assortment of excellences that lifts it above the run and ruck of its genre. [03 Jul 1969, p.45]
    • Village Voice
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Andrew Sarris
    Limelight
    There is no test of behavioral range in Limelight that Chaplin does not pass superbly. [01 Oct 1964, p.15]
    • Village Voice
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Andrew Sarris
    Carnal Knowledge
    Carnal Knowledge is a movie that almost lives up to it's brilliant title. [08 Jul 1971, p.34]
    • Village Voice
    • 96 Metascore
    • 90 Andrew Sarris
    Nashville
    I hate to go out on a limb after only one viewing, but Nashville strikes me as Altman’s best film, and the most exciting dramatic musical since Blue Angel.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Andrew Sarris
    McCabe & Mrs. Miller
    Ultimately, McCabe and Mrs Miller shapes up as a half baked masterpiece with a kind of gutsy gradeur. It's personal as all-get-out, and I thought that's what everyone had been screaming for all these years. [08 Jul 1971, p.49]
    • Village Voice
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Andrew Sarris
    Five Easy Pieces
    The plot is sometimes too odd, the style too strained, but the movie holds you just the same. Jack Nicholson plays skillfully and honestly against the sure-fire pathos of the alienated loner, the fallen angel in life’s game of musical chairs.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Andrew Sarris
    Bunny Lake Is Missing
    A pleasure to watch from beginning to end. [21 Oct 1965, p.21]
    • Village Voice
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Andrew Sarris
    The Last Detail
    The Last Detail is the first good honest-to-goodness American movie of 1974.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Andrew Sarris
    There Was a Crooked Man...
    I thoroughly enjoyed There Was A Crooked Man for its inhaling the fresh air of liberty on today's screen without its gagging on the fumes of gratuitous license. [31 Dec 1970, p.39]
    • Village Voice
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Andrew Sarris
    Patton
    George C. Scott's full-bodied performance and Franklin Schaffner's chillingly stylized direction will satisfy neither the doves nor the hawks, but it does reverberate with paradoxical impressions. [28 May 1970, p.60]
    • Village Voice
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Andrew Sarris
    Young Frankenstein
    Longer on charm and cheer than on humor of knee-pounding hilarity...the funniest film of the season by default.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Andrew Sarris
    Downhill Racer
    The film is intelligently realistic about all the interlocking hypocrisies of the amateur code, and there is nothing fakey-humanistic about the sexual encounters with a ski-manufacturer's secretary (Camilla Sparv) and the unbilled but unforgettable girl back home always ready, willing, and able to hope in the back seat for auld lang syne.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 80 Andrew Sarris
    Chimes at Midnight
    Welles displays here a sensibility from the '30s and '40s when choices, however anguished, still seemed morally meaningful. [30 Mar 1967, p.35]
    • Village Voice
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Andrew Sarris
    Husbands
    Husbands confirms, if indeed any confirmation were needed, that John Cassavetes is one of the major American film-makers of the past decade, and one of the most tortured and turgid as well. [10 Dec 1970, p.69]
    • Village Voice
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew Sarris
    Point Blank
    Point Blank never makes too much sense. But the forward momentum of Lee Marvin's mysterious vendetta against the skyscraper underworld manages to overcome Boorman's laborious exposition. [19 Oct 1967, p.31]
    • Village Voice
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew Sarris
    The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
    The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes emerges ultimately as a poetic parable of both storytelling and moviemaking, and somehow it all fits together. [12 Nov 1970, p.59]
    • Village Voice
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew Sarris
    Tommy
    Tommy is turning out to be the kind of movie most people probably like more than they care to admit. Modest charm and unpretentiousness are hardly the qualities that I ever thought I would associate with Ken Russell, but there you are, and there Tommy is. [31 Mar 1975, p.68]
    • Village Voice
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew Sarris
    Sunday in New York
    A triumph of bounce over banality. [19 Mar 1964, p.12]
    • Village Voice
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew Sarris
    Donovan's Reef
    By any interpretation, Donovan's Reef is a beautiful example of cinematic art, and the atavistic desire to let the movie sweep over the spectator without disruptive analysis is at least understandable. [01 Aug 1963, p.13]
    • Village Voice
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew Sarris
    The Boys in the Band
    Mart Crowley's brilliantly bitchy lines are worth standing on line for, and the original off-Broadway cast stands up well on the screen. [28 May 1970, p.53]
    • Village Voice
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew Sarris
    Lady Sings the Blues
    By any formal standards, it is a mess, but, surprisingly often, a moving mess. [23 Nov 1972, p.77]
    • Village Voice
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew Sarris
    Walking Tall
    Like it or not, Walking tall is saying something very important to many people, and it is saying it with accomplished artistry. [21 Feb 1974, p.61]
    • Village Voice
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew Sarris
    The Sons of Katie Elder
    The spectacle of people in Hollywood trying to do something different in a western at this late date is curiously reassuring. [09 Sep 1965, p.15]
    • Village Voice
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew Sarris
    True Grit
    True Grit is well worth seeing, but it is hardly a monument either to Wayne or to the western. [21 Aug 1969, p.37]
    • Village Voice
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew Sarris
    The Honeymoon Killers
    Despite its horror or rather partly because of it, The Honeymoon Killers is memorable more as a deliriously freakish love story than as a grand guignol.
    • Village Voice
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew Sarris
    Papillon
    Shaffner has really made an exhilarating movie out of the most dangerously depressing material. [10 Jan 1974, p.56]
    • Village Voice
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Andrew Sarris
    The Front Page
    It is refreshing to find a director who is still making talkies instead of gawkies, and who thus still believes in the spoken word as a vehicle of expression. [23 Dec 1974, p.83]
    • Village Voice
prev
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »