The Mothers of Invention, Theodore Bikel, and Ringo Starr in a video-taped rock fantasy. It looks a lot like a television variety show, with a flat, oddly colored image, and with studio sets and skits and musical numbers, but it is several lengths raunchier, and longer, than Dean Martin's weekly.
Gaudily, cheesily baroque Vincent Price vehicle, with some woozily far-fetched assassination schemes. Directed by Robert Fuest.
A microbiological invasion from outer space gets off to an immediately gripping start: a walkie-talkie transmission from a small New Mexico town chokes off, an elaborate defense mechanism clicks into operation, and four civilian scientists are rousted from their homes and speeded to a top-secret, cylinder-shaped laboratory sunken in the …
In the context of a powder-puff parody of Thirties musicals, Ken Russell's harsh, unflattering, ghoulish lighting becomes interesting for its abrasive, corrosive effect. And Twiggy's movie debut is almost as notable as her publicity made claim -- delicate, halting, sweet, charming, and utterly unspoiled by the efforts of her director. …
Robert Redford's childlike sulkiness and reluctance do not add credibility to this political fairy tale about a nice quiet boy becoming an overnight big-time bigwig. Along the campaign trail, there are some peripheral amusements, but there is the sense that the filmmakers know more than they are telling us about …
A series of set pieces dedicated to proving the unworkability of sexual relationships. So premeditated and predictable are the moves of actors and camera that the supposed human fickleness comes across more as a kind of conspiracy. The script is by Jules Feiffer, which is not hard to tell, and …
Bill Norton's elegy on the L.A. counterculture seems to be in the right place at the right time, but lets the opportunity slip right between its legs. Some sidelong glances at the business of dope sales; some intense star-gazing at the twitches of Gene Hackman and the slouches of Kris …
Anthony Burgess's vision of the ultraviolent future (the novelist's linguistic inventions are carefully preserved and provide the movie with its strongest prop) becomes, in film form, wholly a pander to the youth market. Stanley Kubrick's frost-bitten, arm-waving, gimmicky direction seems very nearly distraught, willing to try almost anything, just so …
Luchino Visconti's beautifully cadenced rendition of the Thomas Mann novella. In slow zooms and panning shots, it scrutinizes the deterioration, amid wilting heat and epidemic, of a prissy musical composer, lingering too long at a deluxe hotel, held there by the physical magnetism and riveting gaze of an aesthetic-erotic ideal …
Sean Connery returns to action, if not quite to form, after a much-needed, one-movie hiatus from the James Bond series. Almost all of the breeding and individuality have evaporated from this series, and in their stead is a vulgar vaudeville gagsterism, homosexual gags, dumb-broad gags, Keystone Kop gags, etc. The …
Clint Eastwood and his favorite director, Don Siegel, took over this project from Frank Sinatra and Irvin Kershner, and the result is yet another halfway sharp, halfway shoddy Siegel cop movie, with vast stretches of barely motivated and barely connected dashing around, punching and gouging, shooting and dying. The grudge …
Alejandro Jodorowsky's name-making cult item, with a legend-toned Quest story and a hero (Jodorowsky himself) who begins as an Italian-western figure in black leather and ends as a shaven-headed anchorite. It's a mess of symbols and religiosity and Arrabalian surrealism and Peckinpahian violence, and the worst it can do is …
Jan Troell's tribute to the Swedish peasants of mid-19th Century who took all the misery they could take in their homeland and then ventured to America, taking more misery all along the way. It has, shall we say, an unwavering sense of purpose. Live Ullman and Max von Sydow.
Ludicrous depiction of the homosexual problem in men's prison as something nearly equivalent to the vampire problem in Transylvania. Wendell Burton is credible enough as a wimp, but his sudden turnaround at the finish is sheer bluff. With Michael Greer; directed by Harvey Hart.