Vincent Canby
Select another critic »For 925 reviews, this critic has graded:
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43% higher than the average critic
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3% same as the average critic
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54% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 4.9 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Vincent Canby's Scores
- Movies
- TV
| Average review score: | 61 | |
|---|---|---|
| Highest review score: | Victor Victoria | |
| Lowest review score: | Revolution | |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 405 out of 925
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Mixed: 405 out of 925
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Negative: 115 out of 925
925
movie
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Vincent Canby
It hits a couple of ecstatically funny high points, only to plummet into a bog of second-rate gags, emerging a long time later to engage the audience by the sheer, unstoppable force of the Brooks chutzpah.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
After Hours is not, ultimately, a satisfying film, but it's often vigorously unsettling.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
Jo Jo Dancer is a far from great movie. However, there's something revivifying about seeing Mr. Pryor take this flyer in writing, directing and acting in his own work.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
An amiable, $20-million musical. That's a high price to pay for something that is more an expression of good intentions than evidence of sustained cinematic accomplishment. However, because amiability is never in over abundant supply, especially in Hollywood super-productions, the movie can be enjoyed more often than simply tolerated.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
Mr. Day-Lewis, Miss Binoche and Miss Olin (who was spectacular in Ingmar Bergman's ''After the Rehearsal'') are surprisingly fine -both modest and intense as lovers whose private lives are defined by public events.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
Mr. De Niro and Mr. Grodin are lunatic delights, which is somewhat more than can be said for the movie, whose mechanics keep getting in the way of the performances. [20 July 1988, p.C15]- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
Mr. Aykroyd and Mr. Hanks play well together, but the funniest performance in the film is that of Dabney Coleman, as the smut king (who lisps). Somewhat less diverting are the car chases and the time out necessary to explain the throwaway story.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
The film conveys a fine sense of place and period, of weather and mood and the precariousness of life, which are things that Mr. Nicholson responds to as an actor. Yet the plot, along with Mr. Brando, keeps intruding and throwing things out of balance.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
The Lord of the Rings, is both numbing and impressive. Yet it would be difficult to recommend this movie to anyone not wholly absorbed by the uses of motion-picture animation or to anyone not familiar with Tolkien's home-made mythology, which borrows liberally from various Norse myths, the Eddas, the Nibelungs and maybe even Beatrix Potter.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
A terribly gentle if wisecracking comedy about the serious business of growing up.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
Has a number of other virtues that make it a surprisingly painless adventure. Among these are the screenplay by Bill Lancaster, Burt's son, who has the talent and discipline to tell the story of The Bad News Bears almost completely in terms of what happens on the baseball diamond or in the dugout.- The New York Times
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- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
Class Action won't put you to sleep. Yet it vanishes from the memory as fast as anything dreamed in the conventional manner.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
There are a number of hefty laughs scattered throughout "Noises Off," Peter Bogdanovich's screen version of Michael Frayn's English stage farce. Yet there are nowhere near as many as the source material deserves and Mr. Bogdanovich's cast might otherwise have earned.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
The dialogue is often brutally comic, and individual scenes cut deep. Yet the narrative finally becomes almost impenetrable. The focus that the director would have demanded of another writer is lacking here.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
A good deal more tolerable than any such gimmick movie has a right to be.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
A comedy so lazily hip and so laid back that it often seems to be asleep.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
The Last Tycoon doesn't really build to any climax. We follow it horizontally, as if it were a landscape being surveyed by a camera in a long pan-shot.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
The movie grows more and more desperate until it seems to go to pieces like poor brilliant Bagley. The final madness has less to do with wit than with a cinematic effect. The film's good humor, however, is consistent.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
The problem with "Nicholas and Alexandra" is not inflation, but deflation, the attempt to cram too big a picture into too small a frame.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
Bad Influence is full of sharply observed subsidiary characters and details of dress and behavior. Among other things, they help ease one past the plot's point of no return.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
A velvety-smooth looking romantic mystery melodrama that has far less to do with life than with other movies. It's clever but chilly in the way of something with a mechanical heart.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
It is a movie without a single thought in its head, but its action sequences are so ferociously staged that it's impossible not to pay attention most of the time.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
When eventually, as it must, the story makes its demands on the characters, things slow down considerably. However, The Secret of My Success still leaves you with a good feeling about the idiocies of Big Business.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
Mr. Lester's interpretation of The Three Musketeers looks like an evening in a bump-o-car arena, with magnificently costumed people in place of cars. The adventures are less swashbuckle than slapstick.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
It's also full of lyrical slow-motion footage of women athletes' training - jogging, sprinting, running the high hurdles, throwing the shot, broad jumping and high jumping. These sequences are accompanied by not-great pop music that has been poured over the images in a way that suggests fudge sauce on top of fried chicken.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
With the exception of Miss Streep's performance, the pleasures of Out of Africa are all peripheral – David Watkin's photography, the landscapes, the shots of animal life – all of which would fit neatly into a National Geographic layout.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
The movie, which is simultaneously arrogant and timorous, has been unable to separate the important material from the merely colorful.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
Though it's as foolish as the first film, is rather more fun to watch and sometimes very stylish-looking.- The New York Times
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- Vincent Canby
The film sounds pretty silly, and it is, but it's not painful to watch. Harley Cokliss, the director, and John Carpenter, Desmond Nakano and William Gray, who wrote the screenplay, never allow credibility to worry them, or even those of us in the audience. Like a stolen car, it moves pretty fast, if erratically. It has a tendency to put Quint into impossible situations from which he walks away with unexplained ease.- The New York Times
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