Pauline Kael

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The New York Times, The New Yorker
For 828 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 26% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 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: 100 The Lavender Hill Mob
Lowest review score: 10 Revolution
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 372 out of 828
  2. Mixed: 406 out of 828
  3. Negative: 50 out of 828
828 movie reviews
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    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Forbidden Planet
    It's a pity the film, directed by Fred Wilcox, didn't lift some of Shakespeare's dialogue: it's hard to believe you're in the heavens when the diction of the hero (Leslie Nielsen) and his spaceshipmates flattens you down to Kansas.
    • The New Yorker
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    The Friends of Eddie Coyle
    The elements are all there, and Mitchum, looking appropriately square-headed, tries hard and has some good scenes. But you get the impression that the dialogue is moving faster than the action.
    • The New Yorker
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Birdman of Alcatraz
    We don't get enough understanding of Stroud to become involved in how he is transformed over the years.
    • The New Yorker
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    The Bounty
    Based on a script condensed from Robert Bolt's scripts for two projected films about the 1789 mutiny, this misshapen movie doesn't work as an epic -- it doesn't have the scope or the emotional surge of epic storytelling. It's certainly not boring, though.
    • The New Yorker
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    The Idolmaker
    A likable first feature by the director Taylor Hackford; it has verve and snap, despite a rickety script and a sloshy finish.
    • The New Yorker
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Time Bandits
    Gilliam has a cacophonous imagination; even the magical incongruities are often cancelled out by the incessant buzz of cleverness. It's far from a bad movie, but it doesn't quite click together, either. The director doesn't shape the material satisfyingly; this may be one of those rare pictures that suffers from a surfeit of good ideas.
    • The New Yorker
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Anchors Aweigh
    This Gene Kelly-Frank Sinatra musical has an abundance of energy and spirit, and you may feel it could be wonderful if it weren't so stupidly wholesome.
    • The New Yorker
    • 93 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Reversal of Fortune
    Dershowitz's life-enhancing scenes are flatulent, and they're dishonest: the movie seems to be putting us down for enjoying the scandal satire it's dishing up. [19 Nov 1990]
    • The New Yorker
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    The Hospital
    The picture strains for seriousness now and then, but even when it makes a fool of itself it's still funny.
    • The New Yorker
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    A Foreign Affair
    Often seems on the verge of being funny, but the humor is too clumsily forced.
    • The New Yorker
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Slap Shot
    Hill lacks the conviction or the temperament for all this brutal buffoonishness, and he can't hold the picture together; what does is the warmth supplied by Paul Newman.
    • The New Yorker
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Earthquake
    The picture is swill, but it isn't a cheat; it's an entertaining marathon of Grade-A destruction effects, with B-picture stock characters spinning through it.
    • The New Yorker
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Southern Comfort
    Walter Hill has a dazzling competence as an action director; he uses the locale for its paranoia-inducing strangeness (it suggests Vietnam), and he uses the men to demonstrate what he thinks it takes to survive. Its limitation is that there's nothing underneath the characters' macho masks.
    • The New Yorker
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Tess
    Roman Polanski’s version, from 1980, of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles is textured and smooth and even, with lateral compositions subtly flowing into each other; the sequences are beautifully structured, and the craftsmanship is hypnotic. But the picture is tame.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    A Man for All Seasons
    Tasteful and moderately enjoyable.
    • The New Yorker
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    The Poseidon Adventure
    Expensive pop disaster epic, manufactured for the market that made Airport a hit. Ronald Neame directed, with dull efficiency.
    • The New Yorker
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Niagara
    This isn't a good movie but it's compellingly tawdry and nasty -- the only movie that explored the mean, unsavory potential of Marilyn Monroe's cuddly, infantile perversity.
    • The New Yorker
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    The Boys in Company C
    The director, Sidney J. Furie, brings the film energy and he keeps the gags and the sentiment coming.
    • The New Yorker
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    The Lonely Guy
    This comedy has some wonderful gags and a lot of other good ideas for gags, but it was directed by Arthur Hiller, who is the opposite of a perfectionist, and it makes you feel as if you were watching television.
    • The New Yorker
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    The Three Faces of Eve
    Shallow, but the gimmick is appealing, and Woodward's showmanship is very likable.
    • The New Yorker
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Lifeguard
    Well thought out and with a feeling for ordinary American talk, but too mechanical, too blandly sensitive, too cool to be popular; it's the sort of small-scale picture that's a drag in a theatre but shines on Home Box Office.
    • The New Yorker
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Murder on the Orient Express
    This all-star version of an Agatha Christie antiquity promises to be a sumptuous spread, and so it is, but not as tasty as one had hoped.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Thunderball
    Not bad, but not quite top-grade Bond. A little too much under-water war-ballet.
    • The New Yorker
    • 88 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    The Little Mermaid
    Disney-style kitsch. It's technologically sophisticated, but with just about all the simpering old Disney values in place.
    • The New Yorker
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
    No one else can balance the ups and downs of wistful sentiment and corny humor the way Capra can - but if anyone else should learn to, kill him.
    • The New Yorker
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Blaze
    Shelton doesn't quite engage with the material; the picture is lame and rhythmless. Still, it's never boring, and it offers a ribald view of Southern politics that contrasts with the stern melodramatic portrait of Earl's older brother Huey as a fascistic demagogue in the 1949 film All the King's Men.
    • The New Yorker
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Tin Men
    The salesmen's scams are entertaining, but their spritzing is too tame, and the action is prolonged with limp, wavering scenes. Levinson wants to be on the humane side of every issue, The best work is done by the supporting players.
    • The New Yorker
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    The Front Page
    Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's rowdy dream of newspaper life, first produced on the stage in 1928, seems to be foolproof, and the structure still stands up in this version, directed by Billy Wilder. But something singular and marvelous has been diminished to the sloppy ordinary.
    • The New Yorker
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Beau Geste
    The picture, rousingly directed by William Wellman, was indeed a success, but Cooper, horribly miscast as a dashing young British gallant...was embarrassingly callow, almost simpering, and he looked too old for the part.
    • The New Yorker
    • 40 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
    Dimples, wigs, bazooms, and all, Dolly Parton is phenomenally likable as the madam; her whole personality is melodious, and her acting isn't bad at all, even though the director, Colin Higgins, has made her chest the focal point of her scenes.
    • The New Yorker
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Brewster McCloud
    The whole thing is amorphous and rather silly, but it's clearly a trial run for some of the effects that Altman brings off in Nashville.
    • The New Yorker
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Trafic
    As a comic figure, Tati had a nice spare buoyancy in Jour de fete and Hulot's Holiday, but here his whimsical bumbling seems precious and fatuous.
    • The New Yorker
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Carnal Knowledge
    As Mike Nichols has directed the material, the effects are almost all achieved through the line readings, and the cleverness is unpleasant -- it's all surface and whacking emphasis.
    • The New Yorker
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    The Three Musketeers
    Lester's decorative clutter is the best thing about the film: he loves scurrilous excess. But the whole thing feels hectic and forced. You want some gallantry and charm; you don't want joke, joke, joke.
    • The New Yorker
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Innerspace
    Mostly it gets by on being good-natured enough for you to accept its being clumsy and padded and only borderline entertaining.
    • The New Yorker
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Tortilla Flat
    A good-natured and engaging minor novel by Steinbeck, turned into a good-natured and engaging (though corny and quaint and picturesque) film at M-G-M.
    • The New Yorker
    • 95 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    My Fair Lady
    The film seems to go on for about 45 minutes after the story is finished. Audrey Hepburn is an affecting Eliza, though she is totally unconvincing as a guttersnipe, and is made to sing with that dreadfully impersonal Marni Nixon voice that has issued from so many other screen stars.
    • The New Yorker
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
    The director, Sydney Pollack, isn't particularly inventive, but he has tight control of the actors. They work well for him, and he keeps the grisly central situation going with energy and drive.
    • The New Yorker
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Barefoot in the Park
    Almost amusing in a harmlessly, pleasantly stupid way.
    • The New Yorker
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Corvette Summer
    The picture doesn't have a snappy enough rhythm, and the repartee is often too slow, and the story takes a bad turn just past midway by making a melodramatic villain out of a likable character. But until then it's generally fresh, and it has a lovely soft visual quality, with unusually pleasing camera placement.
    • The New Yorker
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Eating Raoul
    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
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Watch on the Rhine
    Housebound and fearfully lofty.
    • The New Yorker
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Bad Boys
    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
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    A Star Is Born
    Sentimental, without being convincing for an instant.
    • The New Yorker
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Oh, God!
    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
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Fort Apache the Bronx
    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
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Suspect
    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
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Inherit the Wind
    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
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
    A tacky, lighthearted parody of crime-wave movies--camp for kiddies.
    • The New Yorker
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
    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
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    On the Beach
    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
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Lover Come Back
    Broadly played, in the 50s telegraphing-every-thought comic style.
    • The New Yorker
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Unfaithfully Yours
    This version isn't a total dud, but it's a coarser piece of slapstick, and not at all memorable.
    • The New Yorker
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    A Dry White Season
    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
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Phantom of the Opera
    Someone at Universal had the brainstorm of redoing the 1925 silent Lon Chaney horror picture and taking advantage of the fact that it was set in an opera house to make it not only a sound picture but a high-toned musical. The result is this flaccid, sedate version.
    • The New Yorker
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    A Star Is Born
    The film is peculiarly masochistic and self-congratulatory.
    • The New Yorker
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Outland
    Peter Hyams, who directed, knows how to stage chases and fights. But he also wrote this script, which deadens everything and doesn’t even make sense.
    • The New Yorker
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Looking for Mr. Goodbar
    Richard Brooks, who adapted the novel by Judith Rossner and directed, has laid a windy jeremiad about our permissive society on top of fractured film syntax. He's lost the erotic, pulpy morbidity that made the novel a compulsive read.
    • The New Yorker
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
    A fantasy with music for children that never finds an appropriate style; it's stilted and frenetic, like Prussians at play.
    • The New Yorker
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Angel Heart
    It all looks fussed over. Parker simply doesn't have the gift of making evil seductive, and he edits like a flasher.
    • The New Yorker
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Barfly
    Schroder inadvertently exposes Bukowski's messianic windbag sensibility at its most self-satisfied. You wouldn't guess at Bukowski's talent from this movie.
    • The New Yorker
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Dracula
    This first American version, directed by Tod Browning, was adapted from a play based on the Bram Stoker novel, rather than from the novel itself, and it becomes too stagey.
    • The New Yorker
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    The Road Warrior
    The film is one continuous spurt of energy...But the picture is abstract in an adolescent way. Miller's attempt to tap into the universal concept of the hero (as enunciated by Jung and explicated by Joseph Campbell in "The Hero with a Thousand Faces") makes the film joyless.
    • The New Yorker
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    The Tales of Hoffmann
    It's apparent that the decor and color were intended to create moods, but the whole thing seems to be the product of an aberrant, second-rate imagination that confuses decor with art.
    • The New Yorker
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Pumping Iron
    It holds the viewer's interest, but it does so by setting up the bodybuilding champions for you to react to in a certain way, and then congratulating you for seeing them in that psychologically facile way.
    • The New Yorker
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    The Paper Chase
    The picture, written and directed by James Bridges, tries to be thoughtful and provocative, but it has nothing to say.
    • The New Yorker
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    The Naked City
    The drab script is by Albert Maltz and Malvin Wald; the film is visually impressive only.
    • The New Yorker
    • 88 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    A Woman Under the Influence
    The scenes are often unshaped, and so rudderless that the meanings don't emerge. Rowlands externalizes schizophrenic dissolution; she fragments before our eyes. But her prodigious performance is enough for half a dozen tours de force--it's exhausting.
    • The New Yorker
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Racing with the Moon
    The picture isn't enough of anything; there isn't a thing in it that you can get excited about or quarrel with.
    • The New Yorker
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy
    Woody Allen is trying to please, but his heart isn't in it, and his talent isn't either. He is so much a man of our time that his comedy seems denatured in this classy, period setting
    • The New Yorker
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    The Bedroom Window
    It's an erratic and, finally, disappointing picture (it loses its snap). Yet you keep rooting for it, because Elizabeth McGovern, as the assault victim, a cocktail waitress, has the style and resources that the other two leads lack, and the cinematography, by Gil Taylor, his a snazzy verve, and Hanson has some clever ideas, such as the way he sets up a courtroom sequence and the way he directs the almost mute psycho (the chilling, well-cast Brad Greenquist).
    • The New Yorker
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