Pauline Kael
Select another critic »For 828 reviews, this critic has graded:
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26% higher than the average critic
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2% same as the average critic
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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: | The Lavender Hill Mob | |
| Lowest review score: | Revolution | |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 372 out of 828
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Mixed: 406 out of 828
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Negative: 50 out of 828
828
movie
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Pauline Kael
[Ridley Scott] draws you into a dull, sensual daydreaminess, but after watching Tom Berenger and Mimi Rogers for a while, you look around for the stars. With so much buildup - so much terror-tinged atmosphere - you expect actors with some verve, and you wonder why the script doesn't sneak in a few jokes. (Has a good thriller ever been this solemn? Or this simple?)- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
The picture has an almost Kafkaesque nightmare realism to it, but the story line wanders diffusely instead of tightening, and the developments become tedious (thought the final discovery of the right man is chillingly well done).- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
Spacious, leisurely, and with elaborate period re-creations of Louisiana in the 30s, this first feature directed by the young screenwriter Walter Hill is unusually effective pulp, perhaps even great pulp.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
Intermittently dazzling, the film has more energy and invention that Boorman seems to know what to do with. He appears to take the title literally; one comes out exhilarated but bewildered.- The New Yorker
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- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
Ben Kingsley, who plays the Mahatma, looks the part, has a fine, quiet presence, and conveys Gandhi's shrewdness. Kingsley is impressive; the picture isn't.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
In its own terms, the movie--the eighth Garland and Rooney had made together--is just about irresistible.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
There's a sweet, naive feeling to the movie even when it's violent and melodramatic and atrocious, and when it's good it's good in an unorthodox, improvisatory style.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
The machine itself is a beauty, with a red velvet seat and gadgets made of ivory and rock crystal, and the time-travel effects help to make this film one of the best of its kind. However, it deteriorates into comic-strip grotesqueries when the fat ogreish future race of Morlocks torments the effete, platinum-blond, vacant-eyed race of Eloi.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
Edwards pulls laughs, though. He does it with the crudest setups and the moldiest, most cynical dumb jokes.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
Although the script is a conventional melodrama, the director, Edward Zwick, has made something more thoughtful than that.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
This is one of the most entertaining science-fiction fantasies ever to come out of Hollywood.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
Tomlin confirms herself as a star whenever she gets the material, and Dolly Parton's dolliness is very winning, but it's easy to forget that Jane Fonda is around - she seems to get lost in the woodwork. The director, Colin Higgins, is a young fossil who sets up flaccid, hand-me-down gags as if they were hilarious, and damned if the audience doesn't laugh.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
Elia Kazan’s direction is often stagy, and the sets and the arrangement of actors are frequently too transparently “worked out,” but who cares when you’re looking at two of the greatest performances ever put on film and listening to some of the finest dialogue ever written by an American?- The New Yorker
- Read full review
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- Pauline Kael
Though the film has its bright moments, and some weird ones, too, the first freshness is gone. Even the effects seem repetitive.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
Close to perfection--one of the most beautifully acted and paced romantic comedies ever made in this country.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
The failure of innocence here is touchingly absurd; the film is stylized poetry, and it is like nothing else that De Sica ever did.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
The film is far from being a seamless work of art, but it probably comes closer to the confused attitudes that Americans had toward the Vietnam war than any other film has come, and so its messiness seems honorable.- The New Yorker
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- The New Yorker
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- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
The daring of Part II is that it enlarges the scope and deepens the meaning of the first film. Visually, Part II is far more completely beautiful than the fist, just as it's thematically richer, more shadowed, fuller.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
Moore, a big shambling joker who's the director, producer, writer, and star, deadpans his way through interviews with an assortment of unlikely people, who are used as stooges. And he does something that is humanly very offensive: Roger & Me uses its leftism as a superior attitude.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
But all that this encounter-session movie actually does is strip a group of high-school kids down to their most banal longings to be accepted and liked. Its real emblem is that dreary, retro ribbon. [8 Apr 1985, p.123]- The New Yorker
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- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
Scorsese designs his own form of alienation in this mistimed, empty movie, which seems to teeter between jokiness and hate.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
The picture is swollen with windy thoughts and murky notions of perversions, and as Eddie's manager the magnetic young George C. Scott seems to be a Satan figure, but it has strength and conviction, and Newman gives a fine, emotional performance. You can see all the picture's faults and still love it.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
The picture is scrappily edited, and the director seems willing to do almost anything for an immediate effect. It's only in the best scenes that satire and sultriness work together.- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
It's all plot, and the plot is all holes; it's not just that it doesn't add up right - most of the episodes don't quite make sense. About all that carries the movie along is the functional - and occasionally smooth, bright - dialogue.- The New Yorker
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- The New Yorker
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- Pauline Kael
The Marx Brothers in one of their niftiest corny-surreal comedies; it isn't in the class of their Duck Soup but then what else is?- The New Yorker
