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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    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Pauline Kael
    Street Smart
    Often underrated, Jerry Schatzberg can make viewers feel the beauty and excitement of everyday grit.
    • 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
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    The Barefoot Contessa
    The movie is so ornate and so garrulous about telling the dirty truth that it's a camp classic: a Cinderella story in which the prince turns out to be impotent.
    • The New Yorker
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Best Friends
    It's a Velveeta comedy, processed like a Neil Simon picture, with banter and gags and an unctuous score. All its smart talk is low-key and listless. It stays on the surface, yet it's dissatisfied with the surface; it's a deeply indecisive movie.
    • The New Yorker
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Sisters
    The facetious dialogue is a wet blanket, and De Palma isn't quite up to his apparent intention -- to provide cheap thrills that are also a parody of old corn.
    • 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
    • 80 Pauline Kael
    The Duellists
    Consistently entertaining and eerily beautiful.
    • The New Yorker
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Pauline Kael
    Lady in White
    This ghost movie has an overcomplicated plot, but it has a poetic feeling that makes up for much of the clutter.
    • The New Yorker
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Murder!
    It's more languidly paced than his mid 30s work, and the dialogue is spoken in stage rhythms, but there are inventive moments.
    • The New Yorker
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Under the Volcano
    The movie has a deep-toned flossy and "artistic" clarity and a peculiarly literary tone - the dialogue doesn't sound like living people talking.
    • The New Yorker
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Cimarron
    One of Edna Ferber's heartfelt, numbskull treks through the hardships and glories of the American heritage.
    • The New Yorker
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Places in the Heart
    The film isn't just about the widow -- it's about family, community, America, and Christian love. But Benton's gentle, nostalgic presentation muffles this. His craftsmanship is like an armor built up around his refusal to outrage or offend anyone; it's an encrusted gentility.
    • The New Yorker
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Pauline Kael
    Batman
    It has so many unpredictable spins that what's missing doesn't seem to matter much. The images sing. [10 July 1989]
    • The New Yorker
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Body Double
    Most of the movie lacks zest.
    • The New Yorker
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Romeo and Juliet
    The one element Zeffirelli removes that the other bowdlerizers also removed is Shakespeare's language. Only about half the play is left, and what's there doesn't build up the rhythm of a poetic drama. Heard in isolated fragments, the lines just seem a funny way of talking that is hard to understand.
    • The New Yorker
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Pauline Kael
    Here Comes Mr. Jordan
    There's too much metaphysical gabbing and a labored boy-gets-girl romance, but audiences loved this chunk of whimsey.
    • The New Yorker
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Pauline Kael
    Time After Time
    Most of the plotting is ingenious, and soft-faced Mary Steenburgen, as the woman from 20th-century San Francisco who is charmed by the Victorian Wells, makes it all semi-engaging.
    • 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
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Honey Don't!
    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.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Pauline Kael
    Look Back in Anger
    It's something of a mess, but this mess--and The Entertainer, also a mess--are possibly the most exciting films to have come out of England in this period.
    • The New Yorker
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    The Pawnbroker
    The film is trite, and you can see the big pushes for powerful effects, yet it isn't negligible. It wrenches audiences, making them fear that they, too, could become like this man.
    • The New Yorker
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Pauline Kael
    Moonstruck
    Moonstruck isn't heartfelt; it's an honest contrivance – the mockery is a giddy homage to our desire for grand passion. With its special lushness, it's a rose-tinted black comedy. [25 Jan 1988, p.99]
    • The New Yorker
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    Stakeout
    For all the nippiness in the dialogue (the script is by Jim Kouf) and the comic interplay of the actors, the picture doesn't leave you with anything.
    • The New Yorker
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Pauline Kael
    King Solomon's Mines
    A smashing kitsch entertainment.
    • 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
    • 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
    • 69 Metascore
    • 30 Pauline Kael
    Doctor Zhivago
    Neither the contemplative Zhivago nor the flux of events is intelligible, and what is worse, they seem unrelated to each other...It's stately, respectable, and dead.
    • The New Yorker
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Pauline Kael
    The Great Ziegfeld
    Fanny Brice is herself, though she isn't on screen enough to vitalize this lavish, tedious musical biography; it goes on for a whopping 3 hours.
    • The New Yorker
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Pauline Kael
    The Towering Inferno
    The movie doesn’t stick together in one’s head; this thing is like some junky fairground show—a chamber of horrors with skeletons that jump up.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Pauline Kael
    Arthur
    There's always something bubbling inside Arthur--the booze just adds to his natural fizz. This was the only film directed by Steve Gordon (who also wrote the script); he was a long way from being able to do with images what he could do with words, but there are some inspired bits and his work has a friendly spirit.
    • The New Yorker
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