Bob Downey's bloodthirsty satire about a Madison Avenue ad agency that falls into the hands of blacks. Totally undiscriminatory about whom or what it assaults, and about how good or bad the gags are. Just on the law of averages, there are a number of raunchy laughs.
The moviemakers' unwillingness to anchor their story to a particular time and place imbues it with a quality of generalization, vagueness, and timidity rather than, as intended, universality. (The timidity is nowhere better seen than in the freeze-frame, will-he-or-won't-he ending.) In their detachment, though, the moviemakers at least save themselves …
Howard Hawks's nonchalant second remake of his 1959 Rio Bravo. Except for the bizarre beginning — a train robbery pulled off with axle grease and beehives — this is a far less distinguished remake than was the 1967 El Dorado. Nevertheless, there are several elevated scenes, plus Hawks's typical familiarity …
An Irish Madame Bovary, letting her gaze wander outside her staid marriage, romanticizes a battle-shocked British officer into wildly subjective visions -- dramatic silhouettes highlighted by unearthly lights and rushing winds. The expansive novelistic detailing of events makes for an unusually dense and deliberately paced movie; but director David Lean's …
Peter Strauss is the West Point tenderfoot, and Candice Bergen, a thorn in his side, is the tough, cussing, all-knowing spokesperson for the Ways of the West and for the Indians' Rights. In her tireless nagging and her talentless acting, Bergen assumes the dimensions of an offense against humanity which, …
Smirkingly perverse fairy tale, about a smartly groomed young man on the make, set amid the disenchanted castles and forests of Central Europe, modernday. With Michael York, Angela Lansbury; directed by Harold Prince.
Last-gasp emoting by Richard Jaeckel and Henry Fonda in respective death scenes are the big events in Kesey's Oregon lumberjack epic. Paul Newman, as directed by Paul Newman, gets to splash around in his favorite pastimes — cycling, beer drinking, and looking sexily rebellious in Levis. It has a real …
The change of locale, to post-war Italy, would surely be acceptable to the original story's author, Borges, who often affects a hypothetical and equivocal air in his two- or three- or four-page fictions. Not as acceptable, probably, would be the pretentious puffing up of the story ("Theme of the Traitor …
This moment-by-moment account of the Pearl Harbor calamity has its eye on the military-diplomatic snafus, but it keeps a leveler head and a stiffer upper lip than does the Catch 22 type of mud-slinger. The Washington, D.C. scenes revolving around handsome, top-secret leather valises, harried phone calls, and wee-hour taxi …
Days in the life of a dope addict, done in picaresque form, by Warhol acolyte Paul Morrissey, with lots of believable needles and shoot-ups, along with lots of unbelievable send-ups of soap opera, welfare agents, rich Manhattanites, etc. Starring the slothful Joe Dallesandro, rubbing his face and pulling on his …
An unfinished Galdos novel, about a Spanishwoman's hard-earned liberation from the tidy and traditional male-dominated social order, becomes a conservative, even-tempered, creamy-colored Bunuel exercise. For the most part, it slips through your fingers as it goes, leaving little trace; and the prevailing calmness seems a wise, resigned attitude for the …
Joseph Strick continues his respectful plunder of 20th-century literature -- The Balcony, Ulysses, even after being ejected from the Justine project. He adheres doggedly to Henry Miller's sloppy prose; but the events, reproduced without flavor or atmosphere or period, seem as thin and flat as a paperback page. All that …
Exclamatory portrayals of stock figures, revelatory fantasy scenes, and a raft of transparent symbols elucidate the socio-sexual tensions which the title baldly forecasts. The book-to-movie translation aims to satisfy the expectations of those who know D.H. Lawrence by reputation only. With Joanna Shimkus and Franco Nero; directed by Christopher Miles.
Mr. “Candid Camera” himself, Allen Funt, was the architect of reality television. With the show absent from the airwaves for going on three years, Funt turned his hidden camera in the direction of the big screen for what he called, “A series of sex-related comic incidents.” My first X-rated movie: …
François Truffaut’s factual, unembellished re-enactment of the events set down in a French doctor’s journal, having to do with the capture and gradual domestication of an adolescent found roaming the forests as a beast. The plain, semi-documentary style sits a bit strangely amid the quaint 18th-century trappings (ruffled shirts, horse-drawn …