Another in the Fellini line of semi-autobiographical entertainments, episodic and variable in quality from episode to episode, this one set in the hometown of his youth. In his choice of recollections, there is a strict ban on the banal (it hardly seems possible that this wonderland is the same sort …
The peak adventures, climactic decisions, and profound self-revelations of an inconceivable quartet of bosom buddies (four diverse types, from class prez to hot-rod hood, who would not utter two words to one another throughout four years of high school) are compressed into one long and lively night, placed vaguely at …
The peak adventures, climactic decisions, and profound self-revelations of an inconceivable quartet of bosom buddies (four diverse types, from class prez to hot-rod hood, who would not utter two words to one another throughout four years of high school) are compressed into one long and lively night, placed vaguely at …
Terry Malick's re-examination of the Charles Starkweather case is conducted under antiseptic laboratory conditions. A homicidal maniac, who does an uncanny James Dean impression in T-shirt and cowboy boots, and his baton-twirler girlfriend, take flight, cross-country; but they find themselves continually penned into arty, desolate compositions and saddled with inane …
The clip from director Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman that opens his La Bonne Année (Happy New Year) lasts long enough to remind viewers of the visual gimcrackery that contributed to the former’s success. The film is being screened for a captive audience: a group of convicts, among …
Young Francis of Assisi promoting poverty and naturalness in a Zeffirelli production of unlimited expenditure and frill is a jaw-breaking paradox, although the raucous Italian supporting actors provide plenty of convincing reasons why a sensitive young man should seek a life of simplicity and tranquility. On this difficult path, the …
Truffaut's effusive and somewhat bullying attempt to propose a toast, with which all film lovers are expected to concur, to the charming and intrepid and fallible folks who join together temporarily, strive for the heights, slip and slide somewhat, and ultimately create a little magic for the millions (what is …
Polanski's lickerish private joke about a hippie hitchhiker (someone has described her as a cross between Alice in Wonderland and Little Annie Fanny, though she favors the latter) who stumbles from a highway rape into a secluded Italian villa and into the mixed-nuts company of a bedridden patriarch, a syphilitic …
Nicolas Roeg's psychic thriller, taken from a death-in-Venice story by Daphne Du Maurier, is largely feints and loose ends. What with the free-swingingness of the camerawork and the jaggedness of the cutting (the celebrated Julie Christie-Donald Sutherland lovemaking bout comes out looking like Illustrations A through J in a Danish …
The Jesus Christ Superstar of action films, a chokingly puffed-up portrayal of Arizona motorcycle cops, arranged in a sequence of blocky, unblended set pieces which demonstrate important truths about policemen -- trigger-happiness, sexual inadequacy, uniform fetishism, human-ness, sense of humor, etc. Conrad Hall's liberated camerawork indulges in slow, grandiose wind-ups …
Under the American Robert Clouse's flashy direction, this kung-fu pishposh kicks a little higher than its pure Hong Kong forerunners. Though the attempts to inspire moral outrage and to pile climax upon climax in the combat scenes lead to some typical and ridiculous huffing-and-puffing. And though the ferocity of the …
Under the American Robert Clouse's flashy direction, this kung-fu pishposh kicks a little higher than its pure Hong Kong forerunners. Though the attempts to inspire moral outrage and to pile climax upon climax in the combat scenes lead to some typical and ridiculous huffing-and-puffing. And though the ferocity of the …
Just because the filmmakers do not trouble to work out one interesting development of character, situation, or metaphysics, is no excuse for the viewer to sit back, dull. And it is to the film's credit that there are so many teasing possibilities to pursue privately in this horror story, at …
Just because the filmmakers do not trouble to work out one interesting development of character, situation, or metaphysics, is no excuse for the viewer to sit back, dull. And it is to the film's credit that there are so many teasing possibilities to pursue privately in this horror story, at …
Just because the filmmakers do not trouble to work out one interesting development of character, situation, or metaphysics, is no excuse for the viewer to sit back, dull. And it is to the film's credit that there are so many teasing possibilities to pursue privately in this horror story, at …