Taking It All in

As Quentin Tarantino once said, the reviews of Pauline Kael should be studied in a film-schools. But her specific taste for the movies and also for the stories and the scripts is, I assume, in deep colision with what producers have in mind when they invest money. Reviews are filled with facts and humor enveloped in "in-depth" and "to the spot" comments. Good reading, and re-reading,also. Four 1/2 stars.

This is Pauline Kael's 7th collection of film reviews for The New Yorker magazine covering the period June 1980 to June 1983. I think it's also the only one of her books to feature her picture on the cover - if we saw her before, she was always on the back. Kael had taken a year off the magazine to work in Hollywood and her essay Why are movies so bad? sums up her expereince. This collection is remarkable for the wealth of good movies she writes about. Her picks include E.T., Tootsie, Dressed to Kill and Blow Out, Atlantic City, My Dinner with Andre, Shoot the Moon, Diva, The Stunt Man, Pennies from Heaven, The Elephant Man, The Devil's Playground, Melvin and Howard, Personal Best, Diner, The Night of the Shooting Stars, Local Hero, Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean, Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest, and Fanny and Alexander. As always, Kael is fearless and not afraid to go after industry heavyweights like Scorsese, Woody Allen, and Meryl Streep. Her pans here include The Shining ("Jack Nicholson is so grinningly rabid that he seems to have stumbled in from an old A.I.P. picture), Ordinary People ("It's not likely that Mary Tyler Moore turns into a hot pixie at night: there are military-looking stripes on her bathrobe"), Stardust Memories ("If Woody Allen finds success very upsetting and wishes the public would go away, this picture should help him stop worrying"), Raging Bull, Heaven's Gate ("I thought it was easy to see what to cut, but when I tried to think of what to keep, my mind went blank"), Altered States, Nine to Five, On Golden Pond, Reds, One from the Heart, Meryl Streep in The French Lieutenant's Woman, Still of the Night, Sophie's Choice, Gandhi, The King of Comedy, and Return of the Jedi. There is a long essay on Abel Gance's Napoleon. Some quotes. Deathtrap felt like one to me. In The Competition Amy Irving and Richard Dreyfuss have acquired ebough bad acting habits for a different kind of competition. In Bladerunner Rutger Hauer seems a shoo-in for the Klaus Kinski Scenery Chewing Award. Ben Gazarra could be the survivor of an ancient (and untrustworthy) race. When Jack Lemmon puts his finger under his stiff collar and twists his neck - that familiar tic of his which he uses to show that the character he's playing is writhing in discomfort - he puts me in mourning for the lost evening. When homosexuals were despised, there was a compensatory myth that they had better taste than anybody else. Their enthusiasm for Victor/Victoria should help debunk that myth. When Talia Shire is displayed in Rocky III she's an icon, so heavily made up she looks like a wax prop. After a few more of these Rocky movies, will the cheering audience get the same glazed look?