Ostensibly a takeoff on television, this collection of Ken Shapiro skits, transferred to film from underground TV, strays way beyond the actual and the probable in search of laughs (a kiddie show with storytime pornography readings, sports coverage of the Tijuana Sex Olympics, etc.). So, what it has to do …
The odyssey of a senior citizen and his pet cat, evicted from a condemned New York apartment house and drifting calmly and philosophically through a lucky succession of piquant events and characters, becomes a sort of Easy Rider or Five Easy Pieces for the geriatric crowd. As handled by Paul …
Peter Davis's elaborate diagram and diagnosis of the American involvement in Vietnam — its history, its rationalizations, and its repercussions. In striving after comprehensiveness, Davis has put his fingers onto many points of interest (film clips from WWII Hollywood movies suggest the molded shape of American patriotism; the melodrama drummed …
The title of the Christopher Frank novel on which this film was based is the same as that of the François Truffaut film, Day for Night (La Nuit Américaine), but the vision of show people contained herein, and of humanity as a whole, is decidedly darker than Truffaut's. In this …
Cold-blooded murder, dug up from the files of True Crime and transformed into black comedy, directed (by Francis Girod) and acted (by Michel Piccoli and Romy Schneider) with elegant deadpan equanimity. Because of that, it's a little unexciting; but the gory climax, also because of that, is rewarding in a …
Louis Malle's initial contribution to the collection of films, growing by leaps and bounds in the years after The Sorrow and the Pity, about Europe under Fascism: a studiously cool and unsentimental portrait of a French peasant who, rejected by the Resistance because of his youth, is diverted into collaboration …
Dustin Hoffman's diligent mimicry creates a superficially believable, but otherwise unlikely Lenny Bruce -- innocent, uncalculating, imperceptive. And, odd for a former dancer-choreographer, Bob Fosse, the director, robs his actors of movement and body. Instead, in arty Bergmanesque black-and-white, he headlocks them in tight closeups that bluntly underscore the crassness …
Aimless, almost effortless rock documentary, shot at a moldie-oldie concert in New York (Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, the Shirelles, etc.) and riddled with small doses of unidentified Fifties data (newsclips, TV shows, movies). It constantly reminds you of pleasurable entertainments you would rather be watching than this one; and the …
The promotional campaign was predictably geared to suggest a spinoff of American Graffiti, which does a disservice to this humble, frugal re-creation of Brooklyn, late-1950s. Indulging in much less wing-flapping and crowing, it is not at all guaranteed to appeal to the same crowd. The first feature of Stephen Verona …
Political low comedy, by Lina Wertmuller, about a bumpkin-ish, anti-Fascist assassin who takes extended refuge and relaxation at a bordello in Mussolini's Italy. The dominant point of view appears to be that of a thoroughly disgusted dermatologist, drawn irresistibly to facial quirks -- freckles, moles, warts, freakish Fellini-esque makeup. The …
Customary good work by John Barry, in the music department, and Ted Moore, in cinematography. But the customary scriptwriters, Richard Maibaum and Tom Mankiewicz, seem to have squeezed their salaciousness to the last drip. For the first time, secret agent James Bland (again acted by the ho-hum and rather clumsy …
A movie mystery with accoutrements of the finest quality (an all-star cast, photography by Geoffrey Unsworth, production design by Tony Walton, title and montage sequences by Richard Williams) but with the soul of a Charlie Chan-ish, B-grade, grindhouse product. It comes from an Agatha Christie story, and she knows only …
George Peppard's thick-tongued disgust seems well suited to the role of an Honest Cop at work in (needless to say) a Corrupt System. The plot is confusing in a teasing, not-uninteresting way; the action is vigorous; the District Attorney is a Kennedy lookalike; the gangsters are overconfident; the odds get …
Frederic Forsyth's paranoiac plot deserves a special Fritz Lang Citation for sniffing out a vast network of ex-S.S. officers who are shielded now by new identities and are placed so strategically in the New Germany as to be able to squelch any investigation into their activities and also to be …
Wading into the stream of Seven Days in May and The Manchurian Candidate, Alan Pakula contributes to feverish political fantasies a thriller about a hypothetical organization for the recruitment of paid assassins. This stuff gets out of hand quite readily. The incredible premise -- which feigns an attitude of frantic …