Pauline Kael

The movie is no more than a novelty, but it may surprise you by making you laugh out loud a few times.

The movie is wonderfully free of bellyaching; it's a large-scale comic vision, with 90-foot barrage balloons as part of the party atmosphere.

The director, Roland Joffe, and his co-screenwriter, Bruce Robinson, took this inherently dramatic subject and got lost in it; the script is a shambles.

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.

This Bond thriller-the sixth, and set mainly in Switzerland-introduces a new Bond, George Lazenby, who's quite a dull fellow, and the script, by Richard Maibaum, isn't much, either, but the movie is exciting, anyway.

The picture hasn’t been thought out in terms of movement or a visual plan. Dylan merely gives his actor friends some clues as to what he’d like them to do and they improvise, without reference to what has gone before or what will follow.

Rob Reiner's film, taken from Stephen King's autobiographical novella "The Body," overdoses on sincerity and nostalgia. Seeing it is like watching an extended Christmas special of "The Waltons" and "Little House on the Prairie" - it makes you feel virtuous. All that stays with you is the tale that Gordie, the central character, tells his friends around the campfire.

The first three-quarters of an hour...is junkily entertaining. but when they're on the road in the South, Willie turns into a curmudgeonly guardian angel, the boy starts learning lessons about life, and the picture is contemptible.

A mosaic that never comes together.

Marilyn Monroe as a psychotic babysitter. She wasn't yet a box-office star, but her unformed--almost blobby--quality is very creepy, and she dominated this melodrama. In other respects, it's standard, though the New York hotel setting helps, and also the young Anne Bancroft, as a singer who works in the hotel.

Kasdan has eliminated all the conflicting interests and the psychological impediments to a happy marriage, leaving the physical separation as the only obstacle. There's nothing left for the movie to be about except how the hero and the heroine can conquer space. (And at the end, the pictured fudges even this.)

Paul Newman in a bungled attempt to recapture the Bogart private-eye world of The Big Sleep. Shelley Winters gives the picture artificial respiration for a few minutes, but it soon relapses. A private-eye movie without sophistication and style is ignominious.

It's a slovenly piece of moviemaking and it's full of howlers. Charly may represent the unity of schlock form and schlock content -- true schlock art.

This rabble-rousing movie appeals to a deep-seated belief in simple, swift, Biblical justice; the visceral impact of the film makes one know how crowds must feel when they're being swayed by demagogues.

The chemistry of pop vulgarization is all-powerful here; factually, this life of Billie Holiday is a fraud, but emotionally it delivers.

This whole production is a mixture of wizardry and ineptitude; the picture has enjoyable moments but it's as uncertain of itself as the title indicates.

It's bright and blithe, like the sound of the 60s girl groups on the track; the flimsy plot hardly matters.

This film brings out all the weaknesses of its director, Sidney Lumet, and none of his strengths. The whole production has a stagnant atmosphere, and the big dance numbers are free-form traffic jams.

The director, Hector Babenco, treats William Kennedy's Albany novel, set in 1938, as a joyless classic; the movie has no momentum--the running time (144 minutes) is like a death sentence.

There's no motivating idea visible in this version, produced abroad by Hal B. Wallis, and the leaden script, by John Hale, lacks romantic spirit and dramatic sense.

The movie has a deep-toned flossy and "artistic" clarity and a peculiarly literary tone - the dialogue doesn't sound like living people talking.

There's nothing to look at except Gino and Jerry's mummified skits, which are directed at a deliberate and unvarying pace. Mamet piles on improbabilities in a matter-of-fact style; flatness of performance seems to be part of the point. This minimalist approach--it suggests a knowingness--takes the fun out of hokum. The result is like a Frank Capra--Damon Runyon comic fairy tale of the 30s in slow motion.

The movie is fatally perfunctory about emotion, atmosphere, suspense. But if the overall effect is disappointing, from moment to moment the details are never less than engaging, and are often knobby and funny.

There's too much metaphysical gabbing and a labored boy-gets-girl romance, but audiences loved this chunk of whimsey.

Perhaps the most likable of all Westerns, and a Grand Hotel-on-wheels movie that has just about everything--adventure, romance, chivalry--and all of it very simple and traditional.

The material hasn't been paced for the screen; there are dead spots (without even background music), but there are also a lot of funny verbal routines and a musical burlesque of Carmen, and Harpo, as a fiendish pickpocket, is much faster (and less aesthetic and self-conscious and innocent) than in the Brothers' later comedies.

The film's mixture of parody, cynicism, and song and dance is perhaps a little sour; though the numbers are exhilarating and the movie is really much more fun that the wildly overrated On the Town, it doesn't sell exuberance in that big, toothy way, and it was a box office failure.

There's something to be said for this kind of professionalism: the moviemakers know how to provide excitement and they work us over.