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LIFE

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Rating Title | Year Author Quote
Gaslight (1944) LIFE Staff Besides is scariness, Gaslight has the fine, disciplined performances of Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman in the leading roles to recommend it.
Posted Jan 12, 2026  Edit critic review
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Maurice Rapf I'm not so sure many of us in the audience knew what Kubrick's enigmatic tableaux were all about, but I do know that few of us would ever look into the night sky again without a new sense of wonder about man and the universe.
Posted Apr 09, 2025  Edit critic review
Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) Bruce Williamson In Thoroughly Modern Millie, mediocrity is dolled up in one of the season's nicest surprises, for this grab-bag musical spoof of the '20s rediscovers Julie Andrews.
Posted May 13, 2024  Edit critic review
Hotel (1967) Bruce Williamson [It's] Hollywood formula but premium grade. Here, the play's the thing that keeps the viewer glued to his chair, and the shallowness of the characters encountered seems precisely analogous to the differences between dinner for two and drinks for 20.
Posted May 13, 2024  Edit critic review
Planet of the Apes (1968) Richard Schickel The best American movie I have seen so far this year. Considering the competition, that is, perhaps, faint praise, but the movie is at least alive. By this I mean that it is alive to -- and delighted with -- its own possibilities.
Posted May 02, 2024  Edit critic review
Lady Sings the Blues (1972) Richard Schickel It is Diana Ross in the title role, however, who carries the whole thing on her skinny shoulders, makes us believe, makes us care.
Posted Apr 04, 2024  Edit critic review
National Velvet (1944) LIFE Staff There are fine performances in National Velvet by 7-year-old Jackie Jenkins, and Mickey Rooney. Best of all is 12-year-old Elizabeth Taylor as velvet.
Posted Mar 26, 2024  Edit critic review
Sherlock, Jr. (1924) Robert E. Sherwood Like all Keaton comedies Sherlock, Jr., is constructed with amazing ingenuity.
Posted Feb 23, 2024  Edit critic review
Captain January (1924) Robert E. Sherwood I have always gone well out of my way to dodge Baby Peggy's pictures. Not that I have any particular grudge against this "little wonder lady of the cinema"... But the films in which she appears are always terrible. [Captain January] is no exception.
Posted Dec 21, 2023  Edit critic review
The Devil Dancer (1927) Robert E. Sherwood Aside from Miss Gray and a few spectacular scenes, it isn’t worth so much as a look.
Posted Dec 05, 2023  Edit critic review
Little Big Man (1970) Richard Schickel Although the movie is not quite the first in which the Indians are allowed to win a battle, it is surely the first in which they get most of the good lines.
Posted Nov 10, 2023  Edit critic review
State Fair (1933) Harry Evans Convincing home-and-fireside atmosphere in an excellently acted and directed picture.
Posted Nov 10, 2023  Edit critic review
Bringing Up Baby (1938) LIFE Staff Cary Grant handles the role of the paleontologist with his usual comic skill but the real surprise of the picture is Katharine Hepburn.
Posted Jul 25, 2023  Edit critic review
Coming Apart (1969) Richard Schickel The film's effect is powerful, not least because of Rip Torn's brilliant performance as he transforms himself from a man making a half-serious experiment in living to a creature ensnared in a trap of his own devising.
Posted Jul 18, 2023  Edit critic review
Castle Keep (1969) Richard Schickel Well worth seeing, not because perfection has been achieved, but because a good serious film response has been made to a good serious book.
Posted Jul 18, 2023  Edit critic review
The Garden of Delights (1970) Richard Schickel A well-acted study in psychological violence that tears at our consciousness with clever, velvet claws.
Posted Jul 18, 2023  Edit critic review
Bad Company (1972) Richard Schickel It's a hard movie to summarize and a hard movie to forget -- soft-spoken, hard-headed, stylistically singular. Bad Company is good company, the best I have found at the movies in a long time.
Posted Jul 18, 2023  Edit critic review
Fiddler on the Roof (1971) Richard Schickel Topol is all shrugs and sweet ingratiation. He even gets along with Cossacks. As a result the movie is soft and sugary right at its center and, excepting Leonard Frey... all performances struck me as rather gingerly.
Posted May 16, 2023  Edit critic review
The Black Pirate (1926) Robert E. Sherwood The Black Pirate stands at the top of all the movies that I have seen in point of rich, glamourous beauty.
Posted Mar 23, 2023  Edit critic review
The Devil Horse (1926) Robert E. Sherwood Exceptionally pleasant entertainment.
Posted Mar 21, 2023  Edit critic review
The Dark Angel (1935) Don Herold It is done quietly and sincerely and smashingly Merle Oberon.
Posted Mar 10, 2023  Edit critic review
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) LIFE Staff Marilyn [Monroe] sings and dances with a surprising technical competence.
Posted Mar 07, 2023  Edit critic review
Safety Last (1923) Robert E. Sherwood [Safety Last] lacks the usual spontaneity and buoyancy of a Harold Lloyd comedy. Nevertheless, it is marvellously ingenious. It is brimming with tricks that are calculated to tickle the ribs and chill the spine at one and the same instant.
Posted Feb 22, 2023  Edit critic review
Frankenstein (1931) LIFE Staff Excellent performances by Clive, Karloff and Van Sloan. James Whale's direction shows fine imagination.
Posted Jan 12, 2023  Edit critic review
Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) LIFE Staff This simple story gives Judy Garland an opportunity to sing the current hit, The Trolley Song... To Margaret O'Brien it gives a chance to enact with naturalness and enchantment the experiences of childhood in a friendly city.
Posted Nov 10, 2022  Edit critic review
King Kong (1933) Harry Evans The hell of it is that it's pretty good fun. Why should we object if the Rockefellers want to build a stage 140 feet wide and 75 feet high, and then provide a 50-foot monkey to perform for us on screen?
Posted Nov 09, 2022  Edit critic review
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) LIFE Staff In this, [Capra] has joined melodrama and background, Hollywood and Washington, fiction and fact, with spectacular success.
Posted Nov 08, 2022  Edit critic review
Stalag 17 (1953) LIFE Staff Raucous and tense, heartless and sentimental, [and] always fast paced.
Posted Nov 04, 2022  Edit critic review
The Thief of Bagdad (1924) Robert E. Sherwood The Thief of Bagdad has a marvelous fairy tale quality -- a romantic sweep lifts the audience and vaporizes it into pink, fluffy clouds. It also has much beauty and much solidity of dramatic construction.
Posted Oct 22, 2022  Edit critic review
Shanghai Express (1932) Harry Evans Authentic atmosphere on train and in Chinese settings, with Dietrich’s quiet, penetrating glamour, makes this film interesting far beyond the potential merit of the story and dialog.
Posted Oct 20, 2022  Edit critic review
Limehouse Blues (1934) Don Herold I simply can't take Raft recitations.
Posted Oct 20, 2022  Edit critic review
Peter Pan (1924) Robert E. Sherwood Peter Pan is so extraordinarily beautiful, so utterly true to the childish spirit in which it was originally written, that I have no choice in the matter: I must fall down and blubber.
Posted Oct 20, 2022  Edit critic review
The Toll of the Sea (1922) Robert E. Sherwood Miss Wong, I may say, is a remarkable pantomimist... with a quality of quiet sadness which is reminiscent of Lillian Gish.
Posted Oct 18, 2022  Edit critic review
The Cat and the Canary (1927) Robert E. Sherwood The Cat and the Canary may be written down as an exceptionally effective chiller.
Posted Sep 28, 2022  Edit critic review
A Man for All Seasons (1966) LIFE Staff In an era of muddled motives and nihilism, Sir Thomas satisfies our nostalgia not only for nobility but also for an age when a man, if he dared risk his head, knew exactly what he was risking it for.
Posted Sep 08, 2022  Edit critic review
The Deer Hunter (1978) LIFE Staff Robert De Niro reclaims his title as our finest young dramatic male star in a devastating anti-war epic.
Posted Aug 30, 2022  Edit critic review
Gentleman's Agreement (1947) LIFE Staff To "say" something and still be entertaining is a most difficult accomplishment. Gentleman's Agreement runs this tricky course well enough to rate as an adult screen success and also to stand a good chance for the Academy.
Posted Aug 17, 2022  Edit critic review
The Life of Emile Zola (1937) LIFE Staff When Warner Bros. made The Story of Louis Pasteur in 1935, they pioneered a new kind of serious cinema biography... [Now] the Warners have made The Life of Emile Zola. It is fully up to the standard of its predecessor.
Posted Aug 02, 2022  Edit critic review
How Green Was My Valley (1941) LIFE Staff [How Green Was My Valley] is not conventional movie fodder. But director John Ford has converted it into one of the year's most beautiful and stirring films.
Posted Jul 26, 2022  Edit critic review
Up the Down Staircase (1967) Richard Schickel Up the Down Staircase is one of those rare films in which all the important talents mesh to form a wonderfully coherent, humane and sensitive vision of an aspect of our reality.
Posted Jul 06, 2022  Edit critic review
The Rogue Song (1930) Harry Evans Life recommends The Rogue Song because of Mr. Tibbett’s magnificent rendition of the music by Franz Lehr and Herbert Stothart.
Posted Jun 29, 2022  Edit critic review
Ten Modern Commandments (1927) Robert E. Sherwood Ten Modern Commandments, as I remember it, was a pretty punk picture.
Posted Jun 25, 2022  Edit critic review
Neptune's Daughter (1914) James Stetson Metcalfe Neptune’s Daughter is a hodge-podge in the way of a complicated story in which the real and the crudely fanciful are jumbled up with cheap melodrama to the point where the most attentive watcher is at a loss to know what it is all about.
Posted Jun 24, 2022  Edit critic review
The Sandpiper (1965) Eleanor Perry The people involved in The Sandpiper manufactured a motion picture -- they didn't rob a bank. So what's the crime? The crime is that a truly great actor has indeed danced to the tune of petty pipers.
Posted Jun 21, 2022  Edit critic review
Boy of Mine (1923) Robert E. Sherwood Boy of Mine contains much good stuff -- comedy and sentiment -- but it also contains several elements that are not so good.
Posted Jun 21, 2022  Edit critic review
Man, Woman and Sin (1927) Robert E. Sherwood John Gilbert is the guileless, bewildered youth -- a distinct departure from his usual style and an effective one. Jeanne Eagels, as the predatory Society editor, is excellent when she has the chance to cut loose.
Posted Jun 21, 2022  Edit critic review
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) Richard Schickel To put the matter simply, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice is as sweet and charming and funny and, above all, human as any comedy that has been made in the United States in this decade. Indeed, one has to delve deeper in move history to find apt comparisons.
Posted Jun 15, 2022  Edit critic review
Barefoot in the Park (1967) Richard Schickel In short, Simon is a crafty operator and so are his principal principals, Robert Redford and Jane Fonda.
Posted May 02, 2022  Edit critic review
The Loved One (1965) Pauline Kael So far off its satirical target that it's stupid when trying to be clever.
Posted Apr 19, 2022  Edit critic review
The Moment of Truth (1965) Pauline Kael [Rosi's] intentions were overwhelmingly achieved, and the savagery of his view of that bullfighting culture was so strong that several times I grabbed the arm of my companion -- a film director -- for support.
Posted Apr 19, 2022  Edit critic review
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