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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    • 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
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