Pauline Kael

Schroder inadvertently exposes Bukowski's messianic windbag sensibility at its most self-satisfied. You wouldn't guess at Bukowski's talent from this movie.

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.

Entertaining, though overlong. The director, Tay Garnett, knew almost enough tricks to sustain this glossily bowdlerized version of the James M. Cain novel, and he used Lana Turner maybe better than any other director did.

The director, John Badham, does a glamorous, showy job, and, what with all the stunt flying and the hair-trigger editing, this is the sort of action film that can make you fell sick with excitement, yet it's all technique -- suspense in a void.

Wenders' unsettling compositions are neurotically beautiful visions of a disordered world, but the film doesn't have the nasty, pleasurable cleverness of a good thriller; dramatically, it's stagnant -- inverted Wagnerism.

This thriller doesn't offer the pleasures of style, but it does its job. It catches you in a vise - it's scary, and when it's over you feel a little shaken.

Ousmane Sembene's approach is thoughtful and almost reticent; the viewer contemplates a series of tragic dilemmas. Yet for all its intelligence, the movie isn't memorable--partly because the last section is unsatisfying.

It's a strange, elating movie with the Iceman at its emotional center; his mystical fervor takes hold. The director, Fred Schepisi, is working with a weak script, yet he and his two longtime collaborators, the composer Bruce Smeaton and the cinematographer Ian Baker, achieve that special and overwhelming fusion of the arts which great visual moviemaking can give us.

Gangster whimsey--which is to say the very worst kind.

This movie is terribly uneven -- best when it's gaudy and electric, worst in its more realistically staged melodramatic moments, especially toward the end. Overall, it's an entertaining show.

In spite of his problem of sentiment, it's a happy, unpretentious farce.

Taylor looks very desirable, and the cast is full of actors whooping it up with Southern Accents.

Martin and Tomlin are both uninhibited physical comics. They tune in to each other's timing the way lovers do in life, only more so.

The film errs in many ways, and at times the editing seems glaringly poor, but Olivier's performance gives it venomous excitement.

100% pure-plastic adolescent male fantasy.

Frank Tashlin directed this attempt at a stylish comedy-thriller; it goes very wrong--there's no suspense, because we have no idea what's going on, and the spoofy, slapstick embellishments are almost painfully self-conscious.

Some of the whimsey in this message operetta is hard to take, but, considering the moldering ponderousness of the whole project, the young Francis Ford Coppola did his best to keep things moving in a carefree, relaxing way.

The scattered fine comic moments don't make up for the wide streak of fuddy-duddyism in the notion that the family used to be the bulwark of the nation's value system.

Some of the film's junkiness is enjoyable, but there's also an unenjoyable cultural fundamentalism at work. Marshall is telling us that the complications of the last two decades are unimportant.

Rapturous fun.

The film is honest and watchable. But, unlike Orton, it takes no real delight in misbehaving.

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.

Hitchcock scraping bottom.

The Orson Welles film is generally considered the greatest American film of the sound period, and it may be more fun than any other great movie.

Ritt takes his time in building the atmosphere and introducing the people, and lets an image stay on the screen until we take it in. The movie is impressive yet lifeless.

This classic musical-melodrama with the Jerome Kern songs and the novelistic Edna Ferber plot, full of heartbreaks and miscegenation and coincidences, is hard to resist in any of its versions.

The picture--which is almost surreally entertaining--is also famous for its madcap choreography; chorus girls dancing on the wings of planes, to the title song.

The scenes inside the Institute have a chill, spectral beauty, yet the spookiness doesn't explode. The movie seems a little too cultivated, too cautious.