Pauline Kael
Select another critic »For 828 reviews, this critic has graded:
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26% higher than the average critic
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2% same as the average critic
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72% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 2.8 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Pauline Kael's Scores
- Movies
- TV
| Average review score: | 63 | |
|---|---|---|
| Highest review score: | The Lavender Hill Mob | |
| Lowest review score: | Revolution | |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 372 out of 828
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Mixed: 406 out of 828
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Negative: 50 out of 828
828
movie
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Pauline Kael
Visceral though it is, “Honey Don’t!” whips up a merely decorative frenzy, concealing the well-worn tropes (hectic criminal ventures and blunders toward justice) on which it relies. Yet something of substance remains, even if it takes a long, clattery while to show itself.- The New Yorker
- Posted Aug 21, 2025
- Read full review
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- Pauline Kael
You keep wanting it to turn into wonderful romantic fluff, but it's only spottily successful.- The New Yorker
Posted Jun 7, 2022 -
- Pauline Kael
William Shatner's Kirk is less stoic here than in III--he's pleasantly daffy. The others in the crew also have an easy, parodistic tone. But the picture doesn't have much beyond the interplay among them and the jokey scenes in San Francisco.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
The script and conception are so maudlin and degrading that Cagney's high dedication becomes somewhat oppressive.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
This spoofy black comedy is thin-textured and it's sedated; it doesn't have enough going on in it -- not even enough to look at. The nothingness of the movie is supposed to be its droll point, but viewers may experience sensory deprivation.- The New Yorker
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- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
Penn is given so little to work with here that it's practically a pantomime performance. He's worth watching, even though the picture is singularly unimaginative.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
The script, by James Toback, is a grandiloquent, egocentric novel written as a film; it spells everything out, and the director Karel Reisz's literal-minded, proficient style calls attention to how airless and schematic it is.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
The jokes get rather desperate, but there are enough wildly sophomoric ones to keep this pop stunt fairly amusing until about midway. It would have made a terrific short.- The New Yorker
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- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
The picture is so cautious about not offending anyone that it doesn't rise to the level of satire, or even spoof.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
The Oscar Wilde story has its compelling gimmick and its cheap thrills, and despite the failings of Albert Lewin as writer and director, he has an appetite for decadence and plushy decor.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
Ragged when it tries for philosophical importance, but it's fun to see so many stars at an early stage in their careers.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
The film has many of the ingredients of a shocking, memorable movie, but it's shallow and earnest...It's a mess, with glimmerings of talent and with Newman's near-great performance.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
Is there a piece of casting more ineffably Hollywood than Cher as a busy, weary public defender? She's all wrong for this role: her hooded, introspective face doesn't give you enough--she needs a role that lets her use her body.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
It's intended to be a thriller, but there's little suspense and almost no fun in this account of a schizophrenic ventriloquist.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
The case itself had so many dramatic elements that the movie can't help holding our attention, but it's a very crude piece of work, totally lacking in subtlety; what is meant to be a courtroom drama of ideas comes out as a caricature of a drama of ideas, and maddeningly, while watching we can't be sure what is based on historical fact and what is invention.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
An aggressively silly head-horror movie, the result of the misalliance of two wildly different hyperbolic talents-the director Ken Russell and the writer Paddy Chayefsky.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
This one is really only for Trekkies; others are likely to find it tolerable but yawny.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
Directed by Bob Clark, this handsome Anglo-Canadian production features fine Whistler-like dockside scenes and many beautiful, ghoulish gothic-movie touches, but the modern political attitudes expressed by the writer, John Hopkins, misshape the picture.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
In the film's second half, Hudson twists the story into knots in order to deliver his "statement" that apes are more civilized than people; the movie simply loses its mind, and dribbles to a pathetically indecisive conclusion.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
A tacky, lighthearted parody of crime-wave movies--camp for kiddies.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
The film loses its imaginative energy once it moves out of the ripe, sleazy carny milieu, and from the start the technique of the director, Edmund Goulding, is conventional, even a little stodgy. Still, the material, adapted from William Gresham's novel by Jules Furthman, is unusual and the cast first-rate.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
Meryl Streep gives an immaculate, technically accomplished performance as Sarah Woodruff, the romantic mystery woman of John Fowles' novel, but she isn't mysterious. We're not fascinated by Sarah; she's so distanced from us that all we can do is observe how meticulous Streep -- and everything else about the movie -- is.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
The action simply doesn't have the exhilarating, leaping precision that Spielberg gave us in the past... The joyous sureness is missing. [12 June 1989]- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
Linus Pauling was quoted as saying, "It may be that some years from now we can look back and say that On the Beach is the movie that saved the world." The greatest ability of the director, Stanley Kramer, may have been for eliciting fatuous endorsements from eminent people.- The New Yorker
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- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
This version isn't a total dud, but it's a coarser piece of slapstick, and not at all memorable.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
The emotion got to many viewers, even though the manipulated suspense and the sentimental softening prevent the film from doing anything like justice to its subject.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
Marlon Brando is airily light and masterly as the veteran anti-apartheid barrister who takes the case even though he knows that he can't get anywhere with the rigged court. He saves the picture for the (short) time onscreen. But the director, Euzhan Palcy, seems lost; her work is heavy-handed, and the script (by Colin Welland and the director, from a novel by Andre Brink) is earnest and didactic.- The New Yorker
