Pauline Kael

1900 is a romantic moviegoer's vision of the class struggle -- a love poem for the movies as well as for the life of those who live communally on the land.

Williams doesn't seem sure how to resolve the movie, but it's wonderfully entertaining.

Lighthearted and charming story of a black and white team of con artists in the Old South. Very enjoyable.

A debonair macabre thriller--romantic, scary, satisfying.

Doris Day is at her friendliest and most likable as the tomboy heroine of this big, bouncy Western musical about Jane's romance with Wild Bill Hickok.

Davis gives what is very likely the best study of female sexual hypocrisy in film history. Cold and proper, she yet manages to suggest the passion of a woman who'd kill a man for trying to leave her. She is helped by an excellent script (by Howard Koch) and by two unusually charged performances--James Stephenson as her lawyer and Herbert Marshall as her husband.

Moving and impressive in a big-Hollywood-picture-way.

Good-natured, full of verbal-visual jokes, and surprisingly entertaining, though the love is less impressive than the music.

Sydney Pollack's directing is efficient and the film is moderately entertaining, but it leaves no residue. Except for the intensity of Newman's sly, compact performance...and the marvelously inventive acting of Melinda Dillon.

It isn’t a dialogue comedy; it’s visceral and lower. It’s what used to be called a crazy comedy, and there hasn’t been this kind of craziness on the screen in years. It’s a film to go to when your rhythm is slowed down and you’re too tired to think. You can’t bring anything to it (Brooks’ timing is too obvious for that) ; you have to let it do everything for you, because that’s the only way it works.

A celebrated, craftsmanlike tearjerker, and incredibly neat.

A hugely successful slam-bang thriller that zaps the audience with noise, speed, and brutality. It's certainly exciting, bu that excitement isn't necessarily a pleasure. The ominous music keeps tightening the screws and heating things up; the movie is like an aggravated case of New York.

It has a distinctive and surprising spirit. It's funny, delicate, and intense -- all at the same time.

Though the story builds slowly (and the first half may seem a little pokey), the characters are more red-blooded and vigorous and eccentric than in most other Zinnemann films.

Classic, compulsively watchable rags-to-riches-and-heartbreak weeper, from a novel by Fannie Hurst.

Consistently entertaining and eerily beautiful.

Probably the most consistently entertaining of the Bond packages up to the time - not as startling as parts of "Goldfinger" but much superior to "Thunderball."

It's an enormous pleasure to see a movie that's really about something, and that doesn't lay on any syrupy coating to make the subject go down easily.

The dance numbers are funny, amazing, and beautiful all at once; several of them are just about perfection. And though some of the dialogue scenes are awkwardly paced and almost static, they still have a rapt, gripping quality.

A true nightmare.

Richardson is able to encompass so much in the widescreen frame that he shows how the whole corrupt mess works.

A high-spirited, elegantly deadpan comedy, with a mellow, light touch.

Centering on a racetrack robbery, it has fast, incisive cutting; a nervous, edgy style; and furtive little touches of characterization.

It's clever and has some really chilling moments.

It may not be the highest praise to say that a movie is orderly and dignified or that it's like a well-cared for, beautifully oiled machine, but of its kind this Passage to India is awfully good, until the last half hour or so.

A dazzling romantic melodrama.

John Cusack and Mahoney have to carry the unconvincing melodramatic portion of the plot, but they carry it stunningly. [15 May 1989]

The movie is constructed like a comic essay, with random frivolous touches, and much of it is shot in hot, bright color that suggests a neon fusion of urban night life and movie madness. The subtexts connect with viewers' funnybones at different times, and part of the fun of the movie is listening to the sudden eruptions of giggles--it's as if some kids were running around in the theatre tickling people.