Notwithstanding some larger deficiencies, the quality of individual gags is reasonably high -- high-spirited, high-strung. There are several larger deficiencies to withstand, however. Gene Wilder, who seems understandably hard-pressed by the multiple chores of acting, writing, and directing, tends to chase after the closest laugh; and the plot and characters, …
Kubrick's adaptation of the William Makepeace Thackeray novel -- the spiritual voyage of a naive Irish lad into face powder, lipstick, and ruination -- is after something quite far from Tony Richardson's adapatation of Tom Jones, low-born, crass, rowdy. Kubrick is after something high-toned, and he puts up numerous high-culture …
Claude Miller, in his first directing assignment, exhibits much sensitivity, restraint, neatness, and thoroughness in dealing with what used to be spoken of as a Gide-ian relationship in a summer boys' camp. It's a relief that the focus of attention in such a locale is on the counselors rather than …
To provide a big finish, the villain steps in the path of an airplane propeller and bursts apart like a firecracker. This startler, which must certainly look foolish in slow motion, arouses a general desire for Instant Replay and sends the audience home buzzing. But it doesn't redeem a prison …
A no-holds-barred Upton Sinclair-ish expose of social injustices in the Netherlands of the 1880s, and none too soon. The titular character, a strong-boned but sensitive farm girl uprooted to urban Amsterdam, encounters her first rude shock midway through the credits when she discovers her older sister in the ship's hold, …
Rolando Klein, a Chilean moviemaker routed through the UCLA film department, fabricates a Mayan myth about a mountain-top mystic who is enlisted by drought-plagued Indians to make an appeal to the rain god, Chac. The plot exposition is done ponderously day-by-day and step-by-step. All along, the National Geographic images capture …
Bertrand Tavernier's debut movie is literary perhaps to a fault; his, at this point, uncertain directing style is somewhat in the William Wyler manner of approaching each new scene as a separate strategic problem. The results he gets are uneven, but not devoid of inspiration. His largest success is in …
The age-old struggle of a personal honor code against an imposed social code has been placed in a remote Kipling-esque setting -- a British military outpost in 19th-century India -- so that (a) the issues stand out boldly, (b) we know which side we're supposed to be on, and (c) …
Adding to an already varied and impressive documentary portfolio which ranges from the castles along the Loire River to Cuba to the Vietnam War to the Black Panthers, Agnes Varda tries her hand here at a "neighborhood movie" (wider in scope than a "home movie," but narrower than her other …
Life aboard a rocketship, twenty years in flight, looks pretty much like life in the college dorms, near the end of Winter Quarter, when boredom runs amok. These unbarbered astronauts all drift in wayward directions, dreaming of the summer surf, perusing a comic book called Falling in Love, or playing …
Nathanael West's virulent portrait of the Hollywood he lived in, in the 1930s, and of the hopes that turned to despair there, is converted by John Schlesinger into a display of latter-day Hollywood know-how and wherewithal (a lavish re-creation of period, a couple of spectacular catastrophe production numbers), whose purpose …
There are sufficient amounts of imagination and energy here to fuel a brisk improvisational sketch. But the material -- broad indictments of American hero worship, car cultism, and bloodthirst, plus broad impressions of TV personalities -- is stretched to cover a feature-length, coast-to-coast car race (the territory crossed all looks …
One night, musician Marcus Daly, looking up from the street below, witnesses the brutal axe murder of a woman in her apartment. Racing to the scene, Marcus just manages to miss the perpetrator… or does he? As he takes on the role of amateur sleuth, Marcus finds himself ensnared in …
Sidney Lumet's three-ring-circus staging of a bungled bank stickup, Brooklyn, 1972, that turned into a hot summer day standoff between the robbers and their hostages, inside the bank, and the N.Y.P.D. and F.B.I. outside. An exemplary New York street movie, rich in incident of the Oh-God-what-next variety. Also an exemplary …
Jean-François Davy's cinema-verite portrait of the French porno actress, Claudine Beccarie, can boast of appearances at the New York and Los Angeles film festivals. Its intentions, indeed, seem serious enough, but its course of action is basically, brainlessly, to encourage this tough-looking and glib-talking actress to sound off freely on …