Pauline Kael

The tragedy of these two peoples, killing each other because each has just claims to the same plot of ground, is presented with efficient, impersonal evenhandedness, so that we care about neither of them.

One of the most likable movies of all time.

It's a beautifully made gothic-romantic classic, with many memorable scenes.

It's enjoyably trivial – a piece of charming foolishness. [24 Mar 1986, p.112]

A rowdy burlesque of the Dracula movies, set in Manhattan, with dilapidated stuffed bats and a large assortment of gags; some of them are funny in a low-grade, moldy way, and some are even stupidly racist, but many are weirdly hip, with a true flaky wit.

The theme is richly comic, and the film is great fun, even though it sacrifices Serpico's story--one of the rare hopeful stories of the time--for a cynical, downbeat finish.

Exciting, handsomely staged, and campy.

The slender, swift Bruce Lee was the Fred Astaire of martial arts, and many of the fights that could be merely brutal come across as lighting-fast choreography.

Truffaut's The Wild Child is a more beautifully conceived picture on the same theme, but even with its imperfections and staginess this early Penn film is extraordinary.

It has charm and a lot of entertaining kinkiness, too.

Not as stirring a piece of mythology as the Errol Flynn version (The Adventures of Robin Hood), but a robust, handsome production; made in England, it's a Disney film that doesn't look or sound like one. (That is a compliment.)

This is a visually claustrophobic, mechanically plotted movie that's meant to be a roguishly charming entertainment, and many people probably consider it just that.

Irresistibly enjoyable.

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

Vincente Minnelli directed, in a confident, confectionery styles that carries all--or almost all--before it.

It has a sweetness and a simplicity that suggest greatness of feeling, and this is so rare in films that to cite a comparison one searches beyond the medium.

A wonderful movie...It isn't remarkable visually, but features some of the best young actors in the country.

Robert Altman finds a sure, soft tone in this movie, from 1974, and he never loses it. His account of Coca-Cola-swigging young lovers in the thirties is the most quietly poetic of his films; it’s sensuous right from the first pearly-green long shot, and it seems to achieve beauty without artifice.

Irvin Kershner, who directed this one, is a master of visual flow, and, joining his own kinks and obsessions to Lucas's, he gave Empire a splendiferousness that may even have transcended what Lucas had in mind...The characters in this fairy-tale cliff-hanger show more depth of feeling than they had in the first film, and the music - John Williams' variations on the Star Wars theme - seems to saturate and enrich the intensely clear images. Scenes linger in the mind.

There are few thrills in this romantic comedy-thriller--it's no more than a pleasant minor diversion, but it does have a zingy air of sophistication.

Ray's tense choreographic staging and tightly framed compositions give the film a sensuous, nervous feeling of imminent betrayal. Yet this film-noir stylization, elegant in design terms and emotionally powerful, is also very simplistic; the movie suffers from metaphysical liberalism--social injustice treated as cosmic fatalism.

You have to have considerable tolerance to make it through Chayefsky's repetitive dialogue, his insistence on the humanity of "little" people, and his attempt to create poetry out of humble, drab conversations.

The movie starts out with a promising satiric idea and winds up in box-office romance, but it's likable and well-paced even at its silliest.

Shot in grainy black and white, the material is rather unformed. It's dim and larval, like Danny. Allen leaves us in the uncomfortable position of waiting for laugh lines and character developments that aren't there. The picture has a curdled, Diane Arbus bleakness, but it also has some good fast talk and some push. Allen plugs up the holes with gags that still get laughs; he remembers to pull the old Frank Capra, cutrate Dickens strings, and he keeps things moving along.

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.

Superman doesn’t have enough conviction or courage to be solidly square and dumb; it keeps pushing smarmy big emotions at us—but half-heartedly. It has a sour, scared undertone.

When the film came out, Michelangelo Antonioni's mixture of suspense with vagueness and confusion seemed to have a numbing fascination for some people which they associated with art and intellectuality.

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.