The first Disney animated feature put into production after Uncle Walt's death; and the decline, while not teeth-rattling, is definitely felt. O'Malley the Alley Cat (with the hep-cat voice of Phil Harris) does the most to uphold the tradition. Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman.
And bored. The third installment (The 400 Blows, the first; Stolen Kisses, the second) in François Truffaut's history of Antoine Doinel, this chapter takes up the subject of conjugal life, and reduces the moviemaker to grinding out an episodic sitcom, to TV specifications. With Jean-Pierre Léaud, Claude Jade.
Russ Meyer's supreme -- or maybe just extreme -- achievement in high spirits and low morals, having to do with an all-girl rock-and-roll group (The Carrie Nations) travelling to Hollywood and falling into wayward, wicked, and weird ways. The whirlwind tour of Tinsel Town and the finger-snapping, bus-rocking, cross-country trip …
Horrormeister Dario Argento establishes his durable and elegant pattern in his first feature: a witness to a crime knows more than he knows he knows. How and when will his subconscious cough it up? More of an atmosphere, more of an air of mystery, less of a blood bath, than …
His trademark fast-shuffle editing does wonders to disguise the fact that one-third of this Russ Meyer film was accidentally destroyed in the laboratory. A slight setback, that. To plug up the gaps, Meyer belatedly added a voluptuous mute pixie named Haji, who flits mischievously through the movie and establishes a …
For its mountain-lake summer-resort setting, this is the most bracing -- climatically if not intellectually -- of Eric Rohmer's even-tempered Contes Moraux. Other material assets are a couple of dusky-complexioned actresses: a skinny, wiry-haired adolescent and a mature, handsome woman novelist who gets an aesthetic pleasure out of the sentimental …
An enchanting start -- a child rises from bed to watch the hoisting of a circus tent below his window in the dawn light. The delicate mood there is soon flattened under an avalanche of Fellini-isms -- parades, painted faces, slapstick, bathos, oily color, and the director's uncurbed exhibitionism.
Costa-Gavras's nose for the irresistible subject (the Communist Party purges in Czechoslovakia) and Yves Montand's eagerness to participate (he drops enough pounds to appear impressively emaciated) yield a credible drama of historical speculation, done, in prison and courtroom mainly, with far fewer cars and tighter reins than normal for Mr. …
Four fleshy and sophisticated Calcuttans go on rural holiday. Not a lot "happens," but a lot comes to light. Shakespeare's Polonius, one might imagine, would flourish in the attempt to pin down what kind of movie this is. It is comical, pastoral, political, poetical, historical, spiritual, and God knows what …
Ken Russell's ghoulish version of the exorcising of evil spirits at Loudun, done in a few basic colors — black and white and flesh and blood — in constant swarming motion. As ridiculous as can be, but too repulsive to be laughable. Oliver Reed.
Kurosawa, working for the first time in color (not counting the single dash of pink in the otherwise black-and-white High and Low), constructs an audaciously colored mosaic of a Japanese shanty-town — a basically muddy gray landscape brightened here and there by the gaudy hues of the slum dwellers' costumes, …
Jacques Demy cannot stifle the urge to infiltrate Charles Perrault's Medieval fairytale with his own sophisticated witticisms (the magic donkey of the tale produces jewels from its rear, rather than its ear; the women at a costume ball are dressed as birds and the men as cats), as well as …