True Confessions, directed by Ulu Grosbard, written by John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion, with Robert Duvall and Robert DeNiro.
I approached this picture with apprehension, set on edge by critical...
Defense of Dirty Harry. Andrew Sarris, in a review of The Enforcer in the Village Voice (Jan. 24), presents a fine, insightful defense of Clint Eastwood and his Dirty Harry persona. Sarris asks how it...
The Front, dir. by Martin Ritt, with Woody Allen and Zero Mostel.
I went perfectly prepared to like The Front: Woody Allen has always been funny, and the HUAC persecution of Hollywood Communists...
Two current hit movies, of very different genres, both identify the prime evil as resting in government, and they do so with excitement and panache; hence, they deserve to be seen by every libertarian....
The Oscars. About the TV show, the less said the better. It was dull, grim, boring, ugly, the least cinematic of the Oscar award programs. One longed for good old Bob Hope and his repetitious oneliners....
Nashville. dir. by Robert Altman
Several friends of mine, one of them a professor of film, reacted to this picture with almost identical words: “I know this picture is significant, but I’m damned...
Bogdanovich’s Nickelodeon, dir. by Peter Bogdanovich, with Ryan and Tatum O’Neal and Burt Reynolds. Movie critics tend to run in packs, and critical approval or hostility in cycles. His personal arrogance,...
The Man Who Would Be King. dir. by John Huston. With Sean Connery and Michael Caine. This is the great Huston’s best movie in years, a real “movie movie”, a joyous romp artfully combining humor and...
The Oscars. From the beginning, it was clear that the Oscar race for best picture of 1974 was between two films: “Godfather, Part II” and “Chinatown.” As pointed out in these pages, (Lib. Forum,...
Jaws. dir. by Steven Spielberg, with Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfus, and Roy Scheider.
Jaws is a good, scary movie, no doubt about that. But it is hardly the best movie of all time, or even the scariest....
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. dir. by Michael Cimino. With Clint Eastwood. First, I have to report, as a dyed-in-the-wool Clint Eastwood fan, that this picture is a total disaster. It is not Clint Eastwood’s...
The Oscars. Most of the comment on the Oscars has been devoted to the always boring, bumbling, but somehow lovable Academy Awards dinner that ran an hour over on nationwide television. Far more important,...
The destruction of the Broadway musical can be dated as precisely as the advent of the late Wagnerian operas, and indeed the course of their decline unconsciously recapitulated the post-Wagnerian decay...
The Godfather—Part II. dir. by Francis Ford Coppola, with Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro. Sequels, of course, are never quite touched with the glory of the originals, and Godfather II does not enjoy the...
The appearance of what is unquestionably the funniest movie of the last several years (Blazing Saddles, dir. by and with Mel Brooks, and with Gene Wilder, Cleavon Little and Madeline Kahn), offers a welcome...
John Wayne moves into the role of tough cop hero in McQ, dir. by John Sturges. There is no such thing as a bad John Wayne picture, and it is good to have Big John, or Lt. McQ, on hand to carry on a one-man...
A Touch of Class. dir. by Melvin Frank, with George Segal and Glenda Jackson. One of the great movie genres was the sophisticated comedy of the 1930s, usually starring Cary Grant. Katherine Hepburn, or...
Death Wish. with Charles Bronson. dir. by Michael Winner.
Death Wish is a superb movie, the best hero-and-vengeance picture since Dirty Harry. Bronson, an architect whose young family has been destroyed...
Badge 373. dir. by Howard W. Koch, with Robert Duvall; written by Pete Hamill. Badge 373 is a rough, exciting touch-cop picture, which could easily be named Son of French Connection. It is far inferior...
Deliverance. dir. by John Boorman, written by James Dickey. With Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight. Several libertarians have touted James Dickey’s Deliverance as one of the great libertarian novels of our...
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