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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 10m

ARSENIC AND OLD LACE (1944)

The director, Frank Capra, has Cary Grant performing in such a frenzied, dithering manner that during much of the action he seems crazier than anybody else...Capra's hick jollity turns Grant into a manic eunuch.

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 2h

[FAT CITY] I watched all those losers losing and I didn't know why they were losing or why I was watching them; their losing wasn't even a metaphor, it was just a plot necessity for the sake of a faded idea of classic structure. (1972)

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 4h

[THE EMIGRANTS] Initially, for a long stretch, the film gave me some trouble: those crabbed, morose Swedes. (1972)

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 6h

[DELIVERANCE] You're held by the director's control, and the picture has a wollop, but you don't take anything away. When you come out, the movie is really over, because there's no counterpoint, nothing else going on in it. These are cool, soulless exercises. (1972)

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 8h

It's sometimes discouraging to see all of a director's movies, because there's so much repetition. The auteurists took this to be a sign of a director's artistry...But for all of a director's movies to be alike in some essential way can also be a sign that he's a hack. (2001)

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 10h

There hasn't been a funny girl on the screen for so long now that moviegoers have probably also go used to doing without one of the minor, once staple pleasures of moviegoing: the wisecracking heroines, the clever funny girls. (1968)

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 12h

Frank Capra destroyed Gary Cooper's early sex appeal when he made him childish as Mr. Deeds; Cooper, once devastatingly lean and charming, the man Tallulah and Marlene had swooned over, began to act like an old woman and went on to a long sexless career. (1971)

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 1d

THE HUSTLER (1961)

You can see all the picture's faults and still love it. It's the most vital and likable of Rossen's movies.

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 1d

When Tom Hanks does comedy, his slightly blank quality is a form of stylization. But when he's sobbing he's blank like Rob Lowe sobbing. (1986)

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 1d

SWEET NOVEMBER is the kind of squishy whimsey that is always referred to as a "woman's picture." This means not that it was written or directed by a woman but that, as the trade press says, it will "undoubtedly appeal to femme audiences." Doubt might give us hope. (1968)

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 1d

[COMING HOME] The other characters are playing abstractions, too. Jon Voight, round-faced and blond-bearded, is like a Kris Kristofferson who studied acting. (1978)

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 1d

It is really incredible that a great nation can be so culturally demoralized that the high point of children's entertainment for hundreds of thousands of people is a visit to a tourist trap. (1970)

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 1d

[Richard Gere] He does a soap-opera actor's impersonation of De Niro, with some feints and scowls from Brando, and he imitates Warren Beatty's self-love without having it. (1977)

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 1d

Trintignant, who has always gained from his elusive, submerged resemblance to Bogart, toys with the Bogart snarl-grin and makes the identification explicit; this seems a pity, but he can get by with it. So far, he's the only one who can. (1972)

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 2d

THE LAVENDER HILL MOB (1951)

As the prim, innocuous civil servant with a hidden spark of nonconformity, Alec Guinness carries out a dream of larcenous glory: robbing the Bank of England...It's a minor classic, a charmer.

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 2d

Tommy Lee Jones, with his cat burglar's grace, his sunken eyes, rough skin, and jagged lower teeth that suggest a serpent about to snap, takes us into the world of punk. (1978)

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 2d

Though BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK is crudely melodramatic, it is a very superior example of motion picture craftsmanship. John Sturges is an excellent director—each movement and line is exact and economical. (1967)

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 2d

[THE EYES OF LAURA MARS] Faye Dunaway, with long, thick dark-red hair, brings it emotion and presence, as well as a new erotic warmth. (Her legs, especially the thighs, are far more important to her performance than her eyes; her flesh gives off heat.) (1978)

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 2d

Dimples, wigs, bazooms, and all, Dolly Parton is phenomenally likable in THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS. (1982)

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 2d

[THE DEER HUNTER] At times, we feel that we're there to be awed rather than to understand. (1978)

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 2d

[WELCOME TO L.A.] Baskin sings like someone trying to play the double bass who doesn't know how; the quavering anal growl on the sound track might be Kissinger serenading NBC. Baskin is so serious he won't even grant us the relief of a few inflections. (1977)

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 3d

CLEOPATRA (1934)

The extravaganza is moderate, with too much Rome and too little Egypt...Cleopatra (Claudette Colbert) wiggles her slim hips and wonders if her dress is becoming. It is, and the big bash aboard her barge has its own dreamy chic.

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 3d

There's hokey melodrama in Hemingway's masculine rites: you see the test being set up and you know how you're supposed to judge the person, and how he judges himself. (1977)

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 3d

There are dozens of musicals that have one or two good numbers, but that's all they've got; and to get that much you may have to writhe in sympathy while poor Gene Kelly, rose clenched between his teeth, ogles Kathryn Grayson as she shrills a high C. (1967)

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pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 3d

Nothing in L.A. looks as if it were meant to last anyway; it isn't a city you expect will sustain the ravages of time. (1974)

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