Warhol and his crew appear perfectly pleased to be identified as loathsome vermin from the counter-culture, as they invade the Western genre and a stock Hollywood replica of a frontier town, with clear intent to desecrate. They also appear far too low on inspiration and energy to be able to …
Incessant, insistent irreverence, taking its lead from a Terry Southern book and having to do with the contaminating value of money. It's quite a sizable dud, though snatches work well, seeing as how Peter Sellers is in it and Joseph McGrath (The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom) directed it.
James Leo Herlihy's appealing tale about a misguided Texas stud (Jon Voight) who travels to Manhattan in order to sell his body to deprived city women and who rapidly sinks into a gutter companionship with a greasy, gimpy scrounger (Dustin Hoffman). Except, on occasion, for Voight's performance, the movie is …
Two trampish pilgrims are led along the road to a Catholic shrine, with magical sidetrips into historic Church crises and classic questions, by the hand of the indefatigable Luis Buñuel. He is once again in his comfortable "Thank God I am an atheist" mood -- ironical, profane, captious, subversive. But …
An Eric Rohmer "moral tale" set in the Clermont-Ferrand winter, where citizens apparently go around turning over Pascal's Pensées in their minds, and seize upon chance encounters with old acquaintances and new to discharge their sober thoughts. Because of that, the movie attains a high-toned, bookish quality suggestive of a …
Elaborated considerably beyond the Joan Littlewood stage production, this vast patchwork of anti-war skits takes special aim at jolly British jingoism, trying out a variety of attacks, from the tartly satirical to the heart-tugging, in order to win its point. It coincides curiously with the release of The Battle of …
The somewhat abridged -- but plenty long as is -- American version of Sergio Leone's sprawling epic Western. It goes in, in a big way, for slow buildups and stretch-outs, for prolonged and perspiry agonies, for grizzle and grime, for cynicism about the larceny in the hearts of men, and …
The fifth James Bond installment, made while Sean Connery was saying no, no, not again. For just this once, the 007 role is essayed by George Lazenby, an actual, flesh-and-blood human being who looks as if he stepped straight out of a Terry and the Pirates strip. Slighter of build …
A brutal London mobster (James Fox), who takes too much pleasure in his work, seeks refuge from the angry Mob in the townhouse of a reclusive rock-and-roll singer (Mick Jagger), and discovers, there, new dimensions of depravity. The notions, swimming throughout, of perverse lifestyles and perverse interior decoration are mushily …
Good old-fashioned character drama in bad old-fashioned British studio technique. It's adapted from Jay Presson Allen's play adaptation of Muriel Spark's novel about a Scottish girls'-school teacher, who, in the 1930s, impresses her own peculiar romantic ideals (pro-Franco, for instance) on her loyal students. Pamela Franklin, as the pivotal pupil, …
Francis Ford Coppola's Odyssey-in-reverse about a pregnant wife stealing away from home and husband in the quiet of a wet morning while only the milkman is about, and hitting the road to who-knows-where. Shirley Knight maintains an always-on-edge performance, sometimes quite compelling (a long-distance call to her husband from the …
Skimpily produced, lavishly talky historical drama betrays its stage origins every minute; but Christopher Plummer keeps it entertaining by endowing his exotic character, the Inca demigod, with a collection of traits plucked out of cuckoo-land. Robert Shaw as Francisco Pizarro; directed by Irving Lerner.
Ancient Rome, as built by Fellini. The characters may be split, as usual, into two camps, the lithe Beauties and the gross Uglies, and the grandly conceived scenes swim before your eyes as though they are revolving on a Lazy Susan. The production is undeniably impressive for its consistent lack …
Bud Yorkin's highly inventive, highly inebriated spoof on the preposterous intrigues of Dumas-esque historical fiction, with Gene Wilder, often a scream, and Donald Sutherland each portraying mismatched twins — dimwit peasants on one side and cruel nobles on the other — who are all brought together by Destiny's design on …
François Truffaut updates us on the no longer worrisome Jean-Pierre Léaud character from The 400 Blows, who, posted now in a private eye's job, has developed into a sort of young Bob Hope, bumbling and flailing to no ill effect in a world of lambs, over which Truffaut hovers protectively, …