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Monthly Film Bulletin

Tomatometer-approved publication.

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Rating Title | Year Author Quote
Bite the Bullet (1975) Richard Combs Both visually and dramatically the film is constantly receding, since Brooks seems to doubt that he can convey what he means except by making sleeve-tugging speeches.
Posted Jan 15, 2026  Edit critic review
The Princess Bride (1987) Anne Billson Miraculously, and unlike other recent fantasies such as Legend, the film manages to get by with only the most rudimentary of special effects... Goldman and his director, Rob Reiner, concentrate instead on the characters, all of whom are well-rounded.
Posted Jan 07, 2026  Edit critic review
Death Race 2000 (1975) Richard Combs Paul Bartel's comic conceits and the general parodying of the super hype and/hushed awe of sports commentating, are themselves too shakey to hold the movie together.
Posted Dec 22, 2025  Edit critic review
The Running Man (1987) Julian Petley The Running Man is efficient enough as a violent action movie if hardly a very original addition to the already well-worn 'apocalyptic city' genre.
Posted Nov 07, 2025  Edit critic review
Re-Animator (1985) Kim Newman This is a film whose excess is its most oddly charming quality.
Posted Oct 16, 2025  Edit critic review
Tron (1982) Philip Strick For those who would have favoured less spectacle and more substance, the saving grace of Tron is its humour. Lisberger's script carries a mocking edge that trims away most of the pretensions and just leaves the fun.
Posted Oct 06, 2025  Edit critic review
Hard Times (1975) Richard Combs Hill's own dull direction and Charles Bronson's familiar demonstration of a kind of bone-weary invincibility effectively reduce the film to a monolithic star portrait.
Posted Sep 27, 2025  Edit critic review
The Return of the Living Dead (1985) Julian Petley O'Bannon keeps the action moving along smartly, aided by Jules Brenner's face-paced camerawork.
Posted Aug 13, 2025  Edit critic review
Explorers (1985) Pam Cook If Explorers lacks a certain bite, it is arguably both a coherent development of Dante's ideas and an attempt to making something more of the s-f pre-teen pic than action-drama bolstered by set-piece special effects.
Posted Jul 10, 2025  Edit critic review
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) Anne Billson The story suffers from a fatal lack of narrative structure, degenerating into a series of virtually disconnected sketches.
Posted Jul 03, 2025  Edit critic review
Return to Oz (1985) Tom Milne On the whole, a perhaps surprisingly worthy successor to The Wizard of Oz, mercifully avoiding the Disney stock-in-trade of whimsy to stick to much the same vein of sturdily colourful fantasy as the earlier film.
Posted Jun 20, 2025  Edit critic review
Fandango (1985) Kim Newman There are a few patches of arch dialogue, but for the most part the interactions between the young men are convincingly abrasive and witty.
Posted May 19, 2025  Edit critic review
Brannigan (1975) Richard Combs When not making tiresome, overstated work of his sight-seeing, Douglas Hickox directs in a busy but characterless style.
Posted Apr 12, 2025  Edit critic review
Sheba, Baby (1975) Scott Meek All in all, a rather shoddy assembly-lined product based, it would seem, on poorly devised comic strips.
Posted Apr 09, 2025  Edit critic review
Withnail and I (1987) Julian Petley For all its restricted scale, "Withnail" is distinguished by some first-rate performances.
Posted Apr 04, 2025  Edit critic review
Rancho Deluxe (1975) Geoff Brown The movie isn't completely without pleasures... but on the whole, Rancho Deluxe remains stridently unattractive.
Posted Mar 27, 2025  Edit critic review
At Long Last Love (1975) Richard Combs It may have been Bogdanovich's intention to produce something with the lightness and whimsicality of Minnelli, but the end results looks peculiarly as if a very Altman-esque conceit had been buried within a William Wyler epic.
Posted Mar 25, 2025  Edit critic review
Escape to Witch Mountain (1975) Geoff Brown Given a strong story line... the Disney team seem content to fritter it away with silly comedy and footling displays of magic.
Posted Mar 19, 2025  Edit critic review
My Pleasure Is My Business (1974) Jonathan Rosenbaum Despite a reasonable amount of high spirits, the shrill ugliness and witlessness of the Gestalt cabinet scenes are sufficient to sink this shaky vehicle without a trace.
Posted Mar 11, 2025  Edit critic review
The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975) David McGillivray Simon delivers his customary quote of searingly funny lines.
Posted Mar 07, 2025  Edit critic review
Shampoo (1975) Richard Combs The principal sophistication of Shampoo -- indeed the major play round which its casual jigsaw of social comedy is built -- is never to allow its general and personal themes too intertwine to obviously.
Posted Mar 03, 2025  Edit critic review
The Yakuza (1974) Tony Rayns Just when the film appears irretrievably stuck in a morass of explications and local colour, though, it escalates into its action phase and takes on something of the energy and character of the genre it discusses.
Posted Mar 03, 2025  Edit critic review
The Great Waldo Pepper (1975) Tom Milne One can't really complain, as one could in Butch Cassidy, that serious perspectives are opened up only to be ignored; nor has none to mutter, as with The Sting, that the absence of any real content at all had to be papered over by decorative exotica.
Posted Mar 03, 2025  Edit critic review
Nashville (1975) Philip Strick Characteristic of Altman's work, Nashville swings unpredictably between a certain kind of overkill and, at the other extreme, scenes of quite appealing delicacy, mostly derived from the beautiful performances of a whole range of unfamiliar faces.
Posted Feb 26, 2025  Edit critic review
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) Tom Milne About midway through the film, two things happen, transforming a facile tract about the repressive society into an honest polemic.
Posted Feb 25, 2025  Edit critic review
Barry Lyndon (1975) Richard Combs Barry Lyndon emerges as perhaps Kubrick's most intensely human spectacle, comparable to Paths of Glory in its tragic confrontations that seem to throw whole worlds into the balance with individual lives.
Posted Feb 25, 2025  Edit critic review
Jaws (1975) Tom Milne Though it hardly merits its meteoric rise to the status of No. 1 box-office attraction of all time, Jaws is a perfectly acceptable, and sometimes genuinely exciting, entry in the disaster stakes.
Posted Jul 02, 2024  Edit critic review
Spaceballs (1987) Tom Milne The pity of it is that either half-obscured beneath the thick debris of waste matter or half-buried by Brooks’ seeming inability to pace his gags properly, there are some genuine inspirations.
Posted Apr 03, 2024  Edit critic review
The Legend of Billie Jean (1985) Tim Pulleine Robbins’ handling is a satisfying combination of precision and dynamism. The end result... offers a cheering reminder that Hollywood is still capable of elevating formula material without inflating it.
Posted Nov 17, 2023  Edit critic review
Raging Bull (1980) Steve Jenkins Raging Bull may prove to be Scorsese's finest achievement to date. Certainly the visceral intelligence on display, the radical awareness and use of his own cinephilia... make it a powerful contender.
Posted Oct 11, 2023  Edit critic review
Taxi Driver (1976) Richard Combs Its method is to construct a series of steel traps for its hero, all of which have firmly shut before the film is half over, though Scorsese's grandstanding and Schrader's Bressonian pretensions continue to push for moments of religious transcendence.
Posted Oct 05, 2023  Edit critic review
Back to the Future (1985) Kim Newman Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover and Thomas F. Wilson as the 50s people are exactly in the movie image of that decade, and do a lot to give life to the film’s picture of an era when the very idea of having two television sets is science-fictional.
Posted Jun 27, 2023  Edit critic review
The Color Purple (1985) Tom Milne It is really Whoopi Goldberg’s truly remarkable performance which carries the film.
Posted May 30, 2023  Edit critic review
Funny Lady (1975) Geoff Brown The movie's plot-line is as slackly handled as the characters' milieu.
Posted Feb 10, 2023  Edit critic review
Every Afternoon (1972) Jonathan Rosenbaum Apart from some competent character-acting by Diana Dors, Swedish Wildcats is strictly a routine example of the current trend in sexploitation to 'go straight' and aim for the Love Story market.
Posted Nov 10, 2021  Edit critic review
W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings (1975) Jonathan Rosenbaum W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings conveys an unmistakable affection for its title characters, milieu and period that is as unexpected as it is refreshing in this branch of semi-computerised cinema.
Posted Nov 10, 2021  Edit critic review
Nickelodeon (1976) Jonathan Rosenbaum The virtually total rejection by Bogdanovich of anything that exists beyond the boundaries of certified (and ossified) movie myth may help to explain the curious sterility of Nickelodeon in relation to its fascinating subject and sources.
Posted Nov 10, 2021  Edit critic review
The Great Ecstasy of the Woodcarver Steiner (1974) Jonathan Rosenbaum The true subject of this otherwise unexceptional documentary, the real object of its spectacle, is not simply Steiner himself but also the director's own interest in him; and both, in turn, are presented as a kind of sensationalism.
Posted Nov 10, 2021  Edit critic review
Squadron Leader X (1943) MFB Critics An exciting story, well scripted and produced with tremendous attention to detail. The direction is admirable, the pace deftly adjusted and the photography and lighting noticeably good.
Posted May 14, 2021  Edit critic review
Old Bones of the River (1938) MFB Critics This is a roaring farce which gets steadily more and more funny as it proceeds.
Posted Oct 12, 2020  Edit critic review
60 Glorious Years (1938) MFB Critics The treatment is necessarily and inevitably episodic, but the incidents are admirably chosen, and the balance is skilfully kept between pageantry and human interest.
Posted Oct 12, 2020  Edit critic review
Windbag the Sailor (1936) MFB Critics The story though not strong and rather slowly developed is an excellent vehicle -- and a new one -- for Will Hay's particular kind of humour and fooling and he is in good form.
Posted Oct 12, 2020  Edit critic review
Elephant Gun (1958) MFB Critics It is sad that such resources should have been squandered on material of pulp magazine level, in which neither character nor incident nor theme has any coherence or interest.
Posted Oct 04, 2020  Edit critic review
Piccadilly Incident (1946) MFB Critics It remains quite an entertaining film... but it certainly seems a pity that so promising a beginning should have tailed off to such an unsatisfactory ending.
Posted Oct 04, 2020  Edit critic review
The Secret Place (1958) MFB Critics The Secret Place is a modest production, but it develops conventional material with an encouraging sense of enterprise.
Posted Oct 04, 2020  Edit critic review
Trottie True (1949) MFB Critics The film hovers on the edge of a charm, humour and style which it never quite attains.
Posted Oct 04, 2020  Edit critic review
Turned Out Nice Again (1941) MFB Critics Admirers of George Formby will find little for complaint in this film, though it differs from his previous comedies in that the story is less improbable than usual and contains very little slapstick.
Posted Oct 04, 2020  Edit critic review
2,000 Women (1944) MFB Critics Though the balance of humour and dramatic suspense is good, the film is lacking in realism. However, taken solely from an entertainment angle, it may be enjoyed for its snappy dialogue and good comedy angles.
Posted Oct 04, 2020  Edit critic review
The Winds of Change (1960) MFB Critics The film, as its pretentious title implies, takes too much upon itself.
Posted Oct 04, 2020  Edit critic review
The Square Peg (1958) MFB Critics Norman Wisdom is too unrelaxed, too self-conscious as yet, to be one of the great screen comedians.
Posted Sep 27, 2020  Edit critic review
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