Stanley Kauffmann

It is a film of flawless consistency and uncompromised truth.

Whatever the news-linked reasons for its revival, Pontecorvo's film is wonderfully worth seeing, or re-seeing, for its own sake.

But the way that this picture has been so widely ravened up and drooled over verges on the disgusting. Pulp Fiction nourishes, abets, cultural slumming. [14 Nov 1994]

And Ben Kingsley--O rare Ben Kingsley!--is the Jewish accountant whom Schindler plucks from a condemned group to run his business and who combines gratitude with disdain, subservience with pride. (Actors who want to study the basis of acting--concentration--should watch Kingsley.) [13 Dec 1993]

Payne's directing is alert, warm, patient. He knows that the surface must keep us interested until we go below it, and his confidence holds us.

Irons, busily offset by Silver, gleefully choreographed by Schroeder, gives the picture its real bravura reason for being. [19 Nov 1990]

There's a great deal in black America that has yet to reach the screen, and Lee is a prime candidate, in gift and gall, to help fill the gap. [July 3, 1989]

I don't think that 8 1/2 "says" very much, but it is breathtaking to watch. One doesn't come away from it as from, say, the best Bergman or Renoir-with a continuing, immanent experience; one has to think back to it and remember the effect. But that is easy, for the experience is unforgettable.

Leigh, the writer, ties up things somewhat neatly and is a touch homiletic. Leigh, the director of cast and camera, is masterly. [Sept. 30, 1996]

Sembène's love of his people and his commitment to the richness that underlies the poverty of their condition have always made his films gems of truth, as they do once again here.

Coppola handles her film with very pleasant economy, with a kind of warm precision. Her father, who was one of this picture's producers, can be as proud of her as we are grateful.

Neither as sparkling as it is said to be nor as bad as it seems to be at the start. But it's pretty good—thus, as British phenomena go these days, exceptional.

Any film that provides Ian Holm with a large role is off to a good start. The Sweet Hereafter gets off to that start and keeps going. [Dec 8, 1997]

The result is a peculiar small gem, a true Linklater gem. The verity of the film, rather than any novelty or twist, keeps us fixed.

Steven Spielberg's new film begins as a monumental epic; then it diminishes; and, by its finish, is baffling. [August 24, 1998]

Whatever the virtues of The Queen--and it certainly has them--it simply would not exist without Mirren.

The Truman Show is a reminder of the Beckett theme. The screenplay by Andrew Niccol starts from something like Beckett's abstraction and reifies it with details of contemporary culture, then moves on into fantasy. [June 29, 1998]

At least we know this Allen persona, whatever his current name; the other characters, starting from scratch, don't get much past scratch. Although the picture spreads its attention fairly evenly among them, most of them end up as supporting cast because they are only life-size puppets. [Feb 10, 1986]

To see the flight captain and co-pilot checking the plane before takeoff, to watch the varied passengers settling into their seats, is more agonizing than watching passengers board the ship in all those "Titanic" films. With United 93 we see these people unknowingly stepping into a history that is still in terrible process. But as a work in (let's call it) the Akhmatova mode, it does not and could not succeed.

A prime candidate for a time capsule, to disclose a century hence the current state of some of our civilization's discontents, including the ability to be convinced that one is telling the truth even when one is lying.

Gondry's virtuosity lifts the film far past science fiction into cinematic efflorescence. He shows us, more seductively than other directors have done, how freehand use of film can capture the flashes in our minds that slip between words.

Like some wines, The Best of Youth travels well. From its earliest moments the film is intelligently seen.

The overall effect is of a young director treating some old problems with the cinematic lexicon of his time. So he is able to create warmth without slush.

Despite the fact that parts of this film remind us of past pictures with comparable themes, the director and his actors make it immediate, gripping.

Overall, the effect is presumably what Eastwood wanted: we are present at a momentous event, not watching a movie.

A slight conceptual nudge and Capote would have focused on (as the closing line tells us) its true subject: an American author's success story. That theme is there, all right, but because it is not centered it is repellent, as the film pretends to be an account of the author's descent into collateral agony...With the true theme of fame-hunger fully fashioned, the film would have been a more authentic American epic.

Extraordinary--delicate, seriously disturbing, and lovely.

The Coen brothers wrote McDormand’s role best. Much of the time they seem to have had “Pulp Fiction” in their ears--strings of incongruous banalities; but with this pregnant cop, they struck some gold of their own. [March 25, 1996]

There is not much progress in the film: actions are repeated and repeated...Yet the film is sustained--and, for the most part, well sustained--by the children.

The brothers have given us another treasure. Once again they have made a drama of redemption, and once again they convince us that it is possible.

If this weren't a true story, who would believe it? Well, a good many of us, probably. First, it's the kind of exceptional circumstance we like to dwell on as proof that pessimists are wrong; second, Shine is markedly well made, therefore persuasive. [Nov. 18, 1996]

Substantively there is no content. Everything we see or hear engages us only as part of a directorial tour de force. That force is exceptional, but since there is not much more to the picture, it leaves us hungry.

"You'll have to be patient." Philibert said, "That's the point." This is the film's success: its patience, which in a way mirrors the teacher's.

With most historical films the informed viewer scrutinizes in order to cluck at errors. (There are books full of such cluckings.) With Shakespeare in Love, the more one knows, the more one can enjoy the liberties taken. [Jan. 4, 1999]

It contains little that will be new to any informed viewer; yet it fascinates for all of its 140 minutes.

So in all the tumult about this film, the eruption of its subject into wide attention and the consequent revelations about cowboys' lives in the past, let us--without forgetting the American sources of the screenplay--acknowledge the anomaly that the director is Chinese.

Caouette has opened up a case history vividly, but he has left us without any conclusions, not even with much enlightening empathy. Something more than truth--dare one say "mere truth"?--is needed.

As with much art of our time--music, painting, sculpture, theater--Caché in a certain way affronts us. Its deliberate contravention of our expectations, and not necessarily stodgy expectations, is part of its intent.

Soderbergh is helped enormously by the interplay of his actors, whom he has cast like a master... [He makes] a film that goes past what it shows to disclose what can't be seen. It's a fine achievement. [4 Sept 1989, p.26]

If Boogie Nights were poorly made and acted, its materials would make it intolerably tawdry. But its so well done that we keep watching. [Nov. 10, 1997]

The ability to conceive a compact drama on this huge subject and to embody it as perfectly as they have done, added to what they have already accomplished, puts Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne among the premier film artists of our time.

Demme's pacing is tight throughout, marred only by some low-angle close-ups of the cannibal that are right out of old Vincent Price thrillers. [Feb 18, 1991]

To name only one of its predecessors -- for me, the towering one -- doesn't "Schindler's List" do everything that Polanski achieves and more?

Both these stories, which of course develop further, are more engaging than they may sound, because Desplechin directs them so intelligently and because they are so well acted.

Who is Billy Bob Thornton? The question fascinates after seeing Sling Blade, the extraordinary first film that he wrote and directed and in which he plays the leading role. [Feb. 10, 1997]

Turtles Can Fly, is masterly: it courses before us with grace, a control that paradoxically bespeaks love and anger.

Stands as a poignant marker in the career of a major artist.

The five stories are deftly interwoven by Moll, along with archival footage that puts these stories in contexts of time. [08 Mar 1999]

The last minutes of the film are exhilarating, but its real triumph is in everything that precedes the ending--the relatively simple lives of the three women up to that point.

One other element helps Out of Sight tremendously: the editing. [3 Aug 1998]

For the eye and for the spirit, it is a study in varying shades of gray.

The segments are so cleverly arranged--Apted includes past pictorial references for each of the people we revisit--that now there is something almost mystical involved. It is as if a wizard were giving us an overview of forty-two years that mortals were possibly not meant to see.

A good Listless Film carries a double melancholy for all: it makes us sad for its characters and sad for the world that has thus affected them. Old Joy is such a film.

Sheridan and colleagues understood their chief problem: how to sustain interest in a story that was well-known in advance, not a large historical subject with its own prestige but a news story now dated. So they concentrated on character and on acid irony. [03 Jan 1994 Pg. 28]

Every moment of Longley's film is interesting, and the more we watch, the more clearly we realize that the film cannot solve anything for us.

Tsai's film is not free of longueurs, but like much modern work in almost every field, these stretches are deliberate assaults on conventional expectation.

All the talents involved in The Graduate make it soar brightly above its shortcomings and, for reasons given, make it a milestone in American film history. Milestones do not guarantee that everything after them will be better, still they are ineradicable.

We are certainly entitled to marvel at its very existence, but that isn't enough. The work itself is extraordinary.

This is Sollett's first feature film -- he has previously made only one short -- and it shows, more than exceptional talent for cinema itself, his ability to evoke character, in a kind of sidewise offhand way, and to create a sense of community both within and around the film.

Spider is not a pulse-quickening experience, but Fiennes's art makes it engrossing.

It is Akinshina's presence and performance that make the pedestrian story heart-wrenching. She is pretty, responsive, reflective. Without the slightest strain, she convinces us of the beauty and pathos and hope within Lilya.

Leigh's directing is lean and tight. In Imelda Staunton as Vera, he has an actress who can make her only two emotions interesting.

Why was this film made after the homes had already been abolished? One reason, hardly trifling, is that it was made excellently. Thematically, however, it stings -- as a reminder that Catholicism is only one religion that is dominated by males and that this domination is proprietary.

The present film-makers have retained the essences of the plot and characters but have moved the ambience toward the next stylistic era, romanticism.

Melancholy but enjoyable.

A comedy that surfs from beginning to end on a wave of high spirits. The tone is young but not juvenile, sexy but not cynical, optimistic but not stupid. [22 April 1996, p.28]

Well-knit, generally lucid documentary.

The cast could not -- one could almost say need not -- be improved.

One of the best elements in the adaptation is Caine's blending, like le Carré's, of the past and the present so that one can enrich the other. There are no stilted flashbacks: both past and present are treated as present, which gives the film a texture of depth.

Loach's cast fits perfectly, and his directing has his usual extra tang of commitment. He provides almost a sensory response to his material: we seem to feel the textures and scent the air.

All four of the roles are written with pungency. There is even an implication that the two adults realize the triteness of the situation and that they--the characters, not Baumbach--want to speak from inner sources, not from a script. Baumbach pulls this off with some sting and wit.

What an extraordinary idea it was to make this film. What a splendid achievement.

In every aspect, his film is superbly made.

The film, directed almost with fierceness by Kevin Macdonald, is a wondrous recreation of that physical adventure. The most profound element, the moral crux, is skimped, but I kept wondering, not so much about the actors who were playing Simpson and Yates, as about the cameramen who were photographing them on that icy face, possibly suspended while they were doing it.

The film is emotionally and visually sustained, so it is pleasant.

Welcome to Yoji Yamada. After decades of comedies, he arrives--in this country, at least--with a uniquely touching samurai film. At the age of seventy-three, he starts a new career.

Sissako makes his point: Africa's best treasure is its humanity.

Happiness very quickly displays finesse and control, colored by a nearly exultant glee. [9 Nov 1998]

The son has served the father well, though he faced an odd difficulty: the architect's life was so unusual that his son's understandable absorption with it steals a bit of time from his treatment of the work.

Grant does have charm, wit and intelligence, displayed through subtlety of inflection, timing and an ability to convey unspoken thoughts between utterances. That's quite a good deal. [April 4, 1994]

Much Ado, for reasons given below, is not quite up to the level of Henry, but once again Branagh has adapted Shakespeare dexterously. Once again he has followed Granville Barker's advice about pace in Shakespeare, understanding that the essence of pace is not speed but energy. Once again he has excellent colleagues off-camera, most notably Doyle, that open-throated composer, and the editor Andrew Marcus, who knows how to tip in glimpses of others to give dialogues a balletic lift. Once again Branagh has his attractive self on screen. Once again--and may I live to type these words a hundred times more--there is Emma Thompson.

It's not the most violent picture ever; what film could aspire to that title? But it's so well made, the violence is so gratuitous, and the general reception has been so delighted, that attention must be paid. [23 Nov 1992]

The picture holds us, not only through our wonderment at the mixture but through Serreau's dexterity and her casting.

Cunningham's novel was helped by his prose, which curves gracefully in the historical present to unify the book in some degree. Stripped of that tegument, the film depends more blatantly on Woolf's fate to give it organism and depth.

The screenwriter Angus MacLachlan and the director Phil Morrison and an astonishingly perfect cast have quietly made a daring picture.

Not many of us, I think, would want to see many films made this way, possibly not one more, but this one is an intriguing glance at the director-as-god, deigning to treat human frailty with imperial sway, assuming that his art justifies this slender material.

Tornatore has learned much from Fellini--especially in the long shots where someone suddenly appears close up. Let's hope he moves on to his own style. Meanwhile, he has given us a nice bask in Sicilian warmth. [Feb. 19, 1990]

The screenplay of Saraband feels concocted, not absorbed from life in sense and soul like so much of Bergman's work.

García wanted to paint a canvas of nine elements, rather than one large element; and, though only a few of the vignettes are related, the film leaves us with a sense of wholeness, not of stunt.

An unusually fine screenplay, then, yet LaBute's accomplishment goes further. He has envisioned a cinematic style for his film that harmonizes exactly with its theme and mood. [Sept 1, 1997]

Like much that he has done, Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry (Zeitgeist) is so simple that initially it's difficult. [13 Apr 1998]

Noyce has treated this story almost like a page of holy writ. If he has erred, it is in the very awe of his approach.

In this film the lovers are seeking the impossible through the possible. The knowledge of that impossibility makes the scenes all the more powerful. This is the core of Lawrence's novel, and Ferran has understood it.

Sitting in front of Tristram Shandy for an hour and a half lets us enjoy the fact that, smooth though its making is, the picture is winking at us.

At the last, My Mother's Smile conveys that, if Bellocchio is just doggedly hanging on to a career, he is still able to make us feel nostalgia for those high Italian days.

Crudup is whole. He creates the man who has pride in what he does, who is suddenly stripped of the work and the pride; and who makes his way, somewhat painfully, to another sort of pride. His story is a small but acute poignancy in the history of the theater, and Crudup realizes it completely.

Throughout the film a question tugs at the viewer. Kinsey's work was inarguably important, but his life is not especially interesting.

So much of this adaptation is engrossing that the script's additions are jarring.