pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 2hSan Francisco is like Ireland. If you want to do something, you've got to get out. (1989) 0256
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 4h[THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY?] Jane Fonda goes all the way with it, as screen actresses rarely do once they become stars. She doesn't try to save some ladylike part of herself, the way even a good actress like Audrey Hepburn does. (1969) 0162
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 6hThis is central to the failure of 2001. It’s a monumentally unimaginative movie: Kubrick, with his $750,000 centrifuge, and in love with gigantic hardware and control panels, is the Belasco of science fiction. (1969) 1111
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 8hCLOSE ENCOUNTERS is so generous in its feelings that it makes one feel maternal and protective; there’s also another side of one, which says, “I could use a little dirty friction.” (1977) 090
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 10hMel Brooks grabs us by the lapels and screams into our faces, "Laugh! It's funny!" The open secret of his comedy is that his material isn't necessarily funny—it's being grabbed by the lapels that makes us laugh. (It's being grabbed by the lapels that makes us stop laughing, too.) 0111
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 22hTHE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO (1934) A beautifully made Napoleonic era swashbuckler, telling a story that spans 20 years and moves back and forth among Elba, Marseilles, Paris, and Rome by the fluid use of short, pithy scenes and fade outs. 050
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 05/10/2026This sleazy cynicism became a sly ploy in DELIVERANCE: Reynolds, who kids sex by acting sexy, was able to parody mad Lewis's macho audacity and keep his own. (1974) 081
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 04/10/2026THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY could almost be a textbook demonstration of bourgeois moviemaking: there are painstaking re-creations and restorations...but the camera rarely moves. We seem to be looking at pictures of the past, with people moving around in them. (1979) 090
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 04/10/2026[THE DOGS OF WAR] There's something gnawing away at Walken's Jamie Shannon, and it's going to devour him or explode. Walken convinces you that there is nothing besides fighting left in Shannon's life. (1981) 040
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 04/10/2026Among the films that have moved me most deeply there are two by Carl Dreyer—THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC and DAY OF WRATH; and among the films that have excited me most by thier visual and conceptual daring there is Dreyer's VAMPYR. (1967) 090
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 04/10/2026[Cassavetes] His special talent—it links his work to Pinter's—is for showing intense suffering from nameless causes; Cassavetes and Pinter both give us an actor's view of human misery. (1974) 090
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 04/10/2026SCARFACE is a long, druggy spectacle—manic yet exhausted, with De Palma entering into the derangement and trying to make something heroic out of Tony’s emptiness and debauchery. (1983) 080
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 04/10/2026THE NAKED EDGE (1961) The picture has fancy lighting and tricky camera positions, but they're no fun: you get very tired of the closeups of Kerr's distraught, finely modelled face and her upswept, lady-like hairdo as she agonizes nobly. 040
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 04/10/2026Towne’s memory is stocked with movie tricks, but what he really treasures is the rhapsodic buzz of those moments when two stars hooked into each other’s eyes. That’s what saves TEQUILA SUNRISE. (1988) 091
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 03/10/2026When [Peckinpah] was making movies, it felt, for some of us, as if we were watching an ongoing street accident. We felt helpless; he was determined to be doomed. (1999) 0163
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 03/10/2026[TENDER MERCIES] Duvall's Mac is pure, wrinkled granite; he's such a recessive personality that the few seconds of emotion he lets come through seem to convince some viewers that they're seeing great acting. (1983) 050
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 03/10/2026[CARRIE] Like Buñuel, De Palma has a sacrilegious sense of humor; he plays with a sense of sin. (1976) 0212
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 03/10/2026Madeline Kahn is funny and enticing because she's soaked in passion; when you look at her, you see a water bed at just the right temperature. (1974) 1225
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 03/10/2026[GREMLINS] About two feet high, they’re like the little devils of Hieronymus Bosch, but with a spark of drollery. They torment Giz the way, in the cartoons, Sylvester the cat tormented Tweety Pie. (1984) 1150
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 03/10/2026THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE... (1953) Perfection. This tragedy of love, which begins in narcissistic flirtation and passes from romance to passion to desperation, is set, ironically, in aristocratic circles that seem too superficial to take love tragically. 0123
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 03/10/2026[HEART LIKE A WHEEL] Beau Bridges brings a dazzling radiance to characters like this rowdy, all too lovable philanderer; he shows you the fellow's insides in the flash of a nervous smile. (1983) 040
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 02/10/2026THE WARRIORS is a real moviemaker's movie: it has in visual terms the kind of impact that "Rock Around the Clock" did behind the titles of BLACKBOARD JUNGLE. THE WARRIORS is like visual rock. (1979) 116530
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 02/10/2026[THE LITTLE MERMAID] People are made to feel that this stale pastry is what they should be taking their kids to, that it's art for children...They've been imprinted with Disney-style kitsch. (1989) 0184
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 02/10/2026If you write critically, you have to do something besides get excited. You have to examine what's in front of you. What you see is a movie industry in decay, and they decay gets worse and worse. (2001) 021442
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 02/10/2026Cheech and Chong are so gracefully dumb-assed that if you're in a relaxed mood you can't help laughing at them. (1978) 0224
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 02/10/2026I wish Stanley Kubrick would come home to this country to make movies again, working fast on modern subjects—maybe even doing something tacky, for the hell of it. (1975) 2100
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 02/10/2026THE GORGEOUS HUSSY (1936) The title is deceptive. The film is about Andrew Jackson (Lionel Barrymore) and his Presidential problems. Specifically, it deals with his dissolving his Cabinet because the wives of the members had cut a certain Mrs. Eaton (Joan Crawford). 030
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 02/10/2026[BLADE RUNNER] But we're always aware of the sets as sets, partly because although the impasto decay is fascinating, what we see doesn't mean anything to us. (It's 2019 back lot.) (1982) 051
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 01/10/2026When you see a highly praised new work by the man who is the greatest innovative artist of modern movies—the man who reenergized movies—it’s a letdown to see something as thin and precious as FIRST NAME: CARMEN. (1984) 020
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 01/10/2026Watching old movies is like spending an evening with those people next door. They bore us, and we wouldn't go out of our way to see them; we drop in on them because they're so close. (1967) 1110
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 01/10/2026The danger for criticism is that people will want to become critics in order to become television celebrities, rather than enjoying the pleasure of writing and the excitement of trying to define and describe what you’ve seen. (1992) 013435
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 01/10/2026[NASHVILLE] The picture is unmistakably Altman—as identifiable as a paragraph by Mailer when he’s really racing. NASHVILLE is simply “the ultimate Altman movie” we’ve been waiting for. (1975) 0121
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 01/10/2026[FLASHDANCE] It's soft-core porn with an inspirational message, and it may be the most calculating, platinum-hearted movie I've ever seen. (1983) 0251
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 01/10/2026SAHARA (1943) Excitingly staged and stunningly photographed, the film might have been a classic wartime melodrama if it weren't so offensively didactic...The picture has the self-righteous, uplifting formula of many Soviet films. 020
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 01/10/2026[FINGERS] There's almost a swagger in the way [Toback] consciously goes beyond the rationally acceptable: he's looking for art in that beyond, wanting the unknown—the dangerous—to take over. It's a willed hysteria. (1978) 050
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Movies—and they don’t even have to be first-rate, much less great—can invade our sensibilities in the way that Dickens did when we were children, and later, perhaps, George Eliot and Dostoevski, and later still, perhaps, Dickens again. (1978) 0439
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Steve Martin is all persona. That's what's dizzying about him—and a little ghoulish. He and some of the other comics of his generation make the idea that they're doing comedy funny. (1983) 071
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 30/09/2026The only criticism in any of the arts that's worth anything is based on instinctive responses. I think anybody who tries to apply a yardstick or theory in evaluating art is going to do something very limited and valueless. (1982) 0185
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 30/09/2026What distinguishes De Palma's visual style is smoothness combined with a jazzy willingness to appear crazy or campy; it could be that he's developing one of the great film styles—a style in which he stretches out suspense while grinning his notorious alligator grin. (1978) 0110
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Arthur Laurents, though, writes sodden, expository dialogue in which people are forever revealing truths to each other and then explaining those truths—THE TURNING POINT comes with its own footnotes. (1977) 040
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 30/09/2026SALOME (1923) The movie looks better in stills than when one actually sees it, but a folly like this should probably be experienced. 1121
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 30/09/2026[BROADCAST NEWS] From the reaction of the audience, young women careerists must love to think of themselves as pros who are adorably screwy kids underneath. (1988) 0181
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 29/09/2026[UNFAITHFULLY YOURS] Albert Brooks, who plays the conductor's manager, is really brilliant; his dialogue—some of which, I gather, he himself came up with—gives the film a crazed, hip subtext. (1984) 0161
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 29/09/2026[LA FEMME INFIDÈLE] The way the camera pans to make points and the way it backs away are truly remarkable; the camera never makes a false move. (1969) 071
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 29/09/2026Audiences who reject the slick kind of commercial manipulation are not as much aware of the manipulation that looks amateurish and spontaneous. (1968) 0101
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 29/09/2026Half of the reason that people become interested in movies in the first place is sex and dating and everything connected with eroticism on the screen. I felt that not to deal with all of that in its most naked form was to shirk part of what's involved in being a critic. (2001) 28219
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 29/09/2026[THE COLOR PURPLE] Spielberg's version comes from a man who filters everything through movies. He sees Georgia in 1909 the way a European director might; visually, the picture suggests SONG OF THE SOUTH remade by Visconti. (1985) 0131
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 29/09/2026A STAR IS BORN (1954) Grandiose, emotionally charged musical version of the 1937 tearjerker. Garland and James Mason are the leads (although she looks tired and worn and he gives such a remarkable performance as the washed-up, decaying star that he brings a bloom to the movie). 090
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 29/09/2026[THE GREY FOX] This picture has the most lovingly photographed rain since MCCABE & MRS. MILLER, and there are wonderful scenes with snow on frozen dark-green grass. The images are dense and ceremonious. (1983) 0110
pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 28/09/2026[Robert Altman] When he's bad he's very bad, but when he's good he's extraordinary. (1972) 2237
