Oliver Hyde's Dishcloth Concert

Here are the movies Pauline Kael wrote about in her book REELING: Sounder + The Emigrants, Chloe In The Afternoon + Bad Company, Young Winston + Two English Girls, A Sense Of Loss + Fellini's ROMA, Last Tango In Paris, Lady Sings The Blues, The Discreet Charm of The Bourgeoisie + Play It As It Lays, Savage Messiah, 1776 + The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book, Black Girl + Farewell Uncle Tom, The Heartbreak Kid + The Poseidon Adventure + Child's Play + Traffic, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man In The Moon Marigolds + Sleuth + Man Of La Mancha + The Getaway + Images, Up The Sandbox + Pete n Tillie + Jeremiah Johnson, Cries and Whispers, Cesar and Rosalie Travels With My Aunt + The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, The First Circle, Limbo Lady Caroline Lamb + Trick Baby + Under Milk Wood, Save the Tiger + Steelyard Blues + If I Had A Gun, Payday + The Harder They Come, Ten from Your Show of Shows, Slither + The Thief Who Came To Dinner, Lost Horizon + Days and Nights In The Forest, Ludwig + Two People, Marilyn -- A Biography By Norman Mailer, The Last American Hero, Mean Streets, The Way We Were + Day For Night + The New Land, The Long Goodbye, The Paper Chase + Sisters, The Iceman Cometh + The Inheritor, England Made Me + Charley Varrick, The French Conspiracy + Executive Action, WestWorld + Triple Echo + The HomeComing + The All-American Boy + Some Call It Loving, Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams Serpico, Don't Look Now + Papillon, Sleeper + The Sting + The Day Of The Dolphin + The Glass Menagerie, The Exorcist, Magnum Force, Alfredo Alfredo + Cinderella Liberty + The Laughing Policeman + Bone, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Thieves Like Us, The Last Detail + McQ, Zardoz + Blazing Saddles, Walking Tall, The Mother and The Whore, Conrack + Mame, The Sugarland Express + Badlands, The Night Porter + The Abdication + Juggernaut, The Gambler + The Longest Yard, Law & Disorder + Gold + 11 Harrowhouse, Le Fantome de la Liberte + Airport 1975 + The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three, Phantom Of The Paradise, Lenny, On the Future Of Movies, The Trial of Billy Jack + The Savage is Loose + The Groove Tube, Earthquake + The Little Prince, Murder On The Orient Express + A Woman Under the Influence, The Godfather Part II, Young Frankenstein + The Towering Inferno, Alice Don't Live Here Anymore, Stavisky, Les Vilons Du Bal, The Front Page, Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins + Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York, Report to the Commissioner, Shampoo, The Stepford Wives, Nashville + A Brief Vacation, The Prisoner of Second Avenue, Funny Lady, At Long Last Love + The Great Waldo Pepper + The Yakuza, The Day of The Locust

This is the 5th collection of Pauline Kael's film reviews from the New Yorker magazine covering the period September 1972 to May 1975. In her forward, Kael mentions this time as an opportunity reviewers dream of with the work of "expansionist" directors like Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese, who provide audiences with the "mind-swaying sensation of experiencing several arts - at their highest - combined. We come out reeling". The book covers the end of the Nixon era where titles like Mean Streets, The Godfather Part II, and Nashville have a "new openminded interest in examining American experience, an interest at once skeptical, disenchanted, despairing and lyrical". This book features 2 controversial items - her long prophetic analytical essay that stirred up a storm of contention, On The Future of Movies; and her infamous review of Last Tango in Paris, where she compared the first screening to the night Le Sacre du Printemps was first performed. This latter claim would make Kael's detractors salivate at their perception of her pretention, but it also confirms her passion for her craft. The collection's raves, apart from the previously mentioned Mean Streets, Godfather II, and Nashville, include Sounder, The Heartbreak Kid, Images, The Way We Were, The Long Goodbye, Don't Look Now, Thieves Like Us, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, and Shampoo. Her pans include Sleuth, Lost Horizon, Papillon, The Day of the Dolphin, Mame, Lenny, and Funny Lady. The collection also includes reviews of Arlene Croce's The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book, Norman Mailer's Marilyn, and her essay After Innocence on the Vietnamisation of American movies. Some of Ms Kael's quips: What could be more soul-curdling than a Broadway folk operetta featuring the founding fathers, and double entendres, and national tragedy? The movie version (1776). You can't call Clint Eastwood a bad actor since he'd have to do something before you could consider him bad at it. The Night Porter was directed by a woman, Liliana Cavani, which proves that women can make junk just as well as men. And, in Airport 1975, Karen Black is so archaically helpless as the stewardess who must take over the controls of the plane, that Chalton Heston on the radio telling her what to do, keeps congratulating her if she manages to keep her hand on a lever without hysterics.