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The Retro Set

The Retro Set is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer® when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): Nathanael Hood.

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Rating Title | Year Author Quote
10/10
Tokyo Olympiad (1965) Nathanael Hood [Kon Ichikawa is] equally concerned with defeat as he is with victory, finding a compassionate nobility in the losers and their need to compete and struggle in the face of impossible odds.
Posted Jun 23, 2020  Edit critic review
10/10
War and Peace (1966) Nathanael Hood ...an essential masterpiece.
Posted Jun 23, 2020  Edit critic review
3/10
Supernatural (1933) Nathanael Hood A big fat goose egg.
Posted Jun 23, 2020  Edit critic review
2/10
Connecting Rooms (1969) Nathanael Hood A painful failure.
Posted Jun 23, 2020  Edit critic review
9/10
Salesman (1969) Nathanael Hood It's so detached from the outside world that it might as well be from a different planet.
Posted Jun 23, 2020  Edit critic review
7/10
Antonio Gaudi (1984) Nathanael Hood [Hiroshi Teshigahara attempts] to grapple with the Catalan architect's legacy, traversing his work in a state of raptured reverie like a shell-shocked museum guide.
Posted Jun 23, 2020  Edit critic review
7/10
Holiday (1938) Nathanael Hood Even at his most self-reflexive, Grant's Case is effused with a certain detached aloofness as if he knows that life is one big game and his unexpected betrothal into Manhattan royalty a bizarre plot twist.
Posted Jun 23, 2020  Edit critic review
7/10
Teorema (1968) Nathanael Hood There are many ways to react towards Teorema, and barring the harassment of cast and crew, none are wrong.
Posted Jun 23, 2020  Edit critic review
7/10
The Song of Songs (1933) Nathanael Hood The main pleasure in the film is Dietrich's performance.
Posted Jun 23, 2020  Edit critic review
5/10
A Man Called Peter (1955) Nathanael Hood There's beauty, meaning, and truth here, but precious little lifeblood.
Posted Jun 23, 2020  Edit critic review
9/10
The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1961) Nathanael Hood [It's the] insistence on the presence, validity, and importance of science amidst the Baron's fantastical proto-Looney Tunes madness that makes the film distinctly [Karel] Zeman's own.
Posted May 14, 2020  Edit critic review
8/10
The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (1958) Nathanael Hood One of the most superbly realized pieces of visual art to grace 1950s cinema.
Posted May 14, 2020  Edit critic review
8/10
Journey to the Beginning of Time (1955) Nathanael Hood There's not a drop of sarcasm or insincerity anywhere, merely wide-eyed wonder.
Posted May 14, 2020  Edit critic review
5/10
The Wilby Conspiracy (1975) Nathanael Hood The film is a confused mishmash of genres and inexplicable character moments that fail to coalesce into something greater.
Posted Jan 09, 2020  Edit critic review
7/10
Klute (1971) Nathanael Hood But Klute feels vibrantly alive in a way that betrays its subdued chilliness.
Posted Jan 09, 2020  Edit critic review
9/10
Now, Voyager (1942) Nathanael Hood Davis' performance anchors [the story], preventing it from flying off into the realm of camp, turning an outlandish story into one painfully human and universal.
Posted Jan 09, 2020  Edit critic review
7/10
Tunes of Glory (1960) Nathanael Hood A marvelous indictment of institutional machismo and performative masculinity that saw two of England's best actors...play against type and deliver two of their finest performances.
Posted Jan 09, 2020  Edit critic review
3/10
Joan of Arc (1948) Nathanael Hood ...an unequivocal bore and slog.
Posted Jan 09, 2020  Edit critic review
7/10
The Story of Temple Drake (1933) Nathanael Hood Essential Pre-code cinema? Yes.
Posted Jan 09, 2020  Edit critic review
7/10
Trigger Jr. (1950) Nathanael Hood The film is patented nostalgia, cinematic comfort food meant for sick days home from school or visits to relative's houses that smelled vaguely of mothballs.
Posted Jan 09, 2020  Edit critic review
8/10
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001) Nathanael Hood The film hums with the plasticine kineticism of Terry Gilliam as the camera tilts and moves with all the abandon of one of Hedwig's shows.
Posted Jan 09, 2020  Edit critic review
8/10
Blackmail (1929) Nathanael Hood ...crackles with the energy of a genius reckoning with a new toy-box.
Posted Jan 09, 2020  Edit critic review
9/10
The Circus (1928) Nathanael Hood ...one of [Chaplin's] most unforgettable and melancholy films, one filled to the brim with unforgettable gags and set pieces.
Posted Jan 09, 2020  Edit critic review
6/10
Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (1952) Nathanael Hood ...a gentle satire among a sea of [Ozu's] family dramas and tragedies.
Posted Jan 09, 2020  Edit critic review
7/10
Cluny Brown (1946) Nathanael Hood Cluny Brown is a late, minor [Lubitsch] film, but nonetheless enjoyable.
Posted Jan 09, 2020  Edit critic review
6/10
Captain From Castile (1947) Nathanael Hood ...suffers from many of the same problems Hollywood epics from that era faced: an interminable length hampered by poor pacing...and a certain deadening heaviness.
Posted Jan 09, 2020  Edit critic review
6/10
A Fistful of Dollars (1964) Nathanael Hood Eastwood's magnetic presence and Ennio Morricone's unforgettable soundtrack blending flamenco guitar with haunting whistling elevates the film above its pilfered story.
Posted Jan 09, 2020  Edit critic review
9/10
A Face in the Crowd (1957) Nathanael Hood Consider this [film] an essential one for these equally essential times.
Posted Jan 09, 2020  Edit critic review
7/10
The Baker's Wife (1938) Nathanael Hood The film's a time capsule of pre-war French cinema, flawed yet charming, problematic yet inviting.
Posted Jan 09, 2020  Edit critic review
6/10
Call Northside 777 (1948) Nathanael Hood ...the film is more than just a stylistic curio, it's a portent of things to come.
Posted Nov 15, 2019  Edit critic review
7/10
The Escape Artist (1982) Nathanael Hood The Escape Artist doesn't always make sense, but the ultimate magic trick is that we don't care.
Posted Sep 10, 2019  Edit critic review
10/10
Police Story (1985) Nathanael Hood ...a bona fide masterpiece of action cinema.
Posted Jun 03, 2019  Edit critic review
5/10
Jackie Chan's Police Story 2 (1988) Nathanael Hood The film's paralytic self-seriousness fails to mesh with its outlandish characters and scenarios.
Posted Jun 03, 2019  Edit critic review
7/10
My Cousin Rachel (1952) Nathanael Hood ...a delicious romantic melodrama ruthlessly dissecting the fragility of the male ego that's remembered less for its own merit than the notedness of its cast and crew.
Posted Jun 03, 2019  Edit critic review
8/10
The Magic Flute (1975) Nathanael Hood If anything, The Magic Flute gives viewers the clearest window into Bergman's fascination with the otherworldly, as the project allowed him to realize his childhood dream of filming his favorite opera.
Posted Jun 03, 2019  Edit critic review
7/10
The Kid Brother (1927) Nathanael Hood The Kid Brother demonstrates some of the best and most moving of Lloyd's acting...
Posted Jun 03, 2019  Edit critic review
6/10
Forever Amber (1947) Nathanael Hood However, the adaptation's studio-mandated propriety keeps it from truly transcending the tired strains of soap opera melodrama.
Posted Jun 03, 2019  Edit critic review
5/10
No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1948) Nathanael Hood ...one of the most inexplicable, poorly conceived, and even more poorly executed genre exercises of its time.
Posted Mar 24, 2019  Edit critic review
True Stories (1986) Nathanael Hood Byrne brings [his] big-hearted love of the nakedly quotidian to his first directorial effort.
Posted Mar 11, 2019  Edit critic review
Shame (1968) Nathanael Hood One of [Bergman's] most unfairly overlooked films of the 1960s.
Posted Mar 11, 2019  Edit critic review
Chikamatsu Monogatari (1954) Nathanael Hood Here is the rare Japanese period film of its era that also explicitly recognizes the double standards of sexual morality between the sexes.
Posted Mar 11, 2019  Edit critic review
Shampoo (1975) Nathanael Hood The film rumbles with precious little momentum, drowned in a super-seriousness at odds with the occasional laugh-out-loud line or screwball scenario.
Posted Mar 11, 2019  Edit critic review
Cold Water (1994) Nathanael Hood Autobiographical influences aside, the film feels a decidedly minor work
Posted Mar 11, 2019  Edit critic review
9/10
The Princess Bride (1987) Nathanael Hood A lavish studio spectacle.
Posted Dec 29, 2018  Edit critic review
9/10
Andrei Rublev (1966) Nathanael Hood ...a sprawling historical biography that sought to connect a godless society with the medieval monasticism that defined them as a separate ethnocultural entity.
Posted Dec 29, 2018  Edit critic review
6/10
Nostalghia (1983) Nathanael Hood ...the film seems positively out of place compared with the two decades long string of challenging masterworks that preceded it.
Posted Dec 29, 2018  Edit critic review
8/10
The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez (1983) Nathanael Hood ...an indie godfather of Chicano cinema...
Posted Dec 29, 2018  Edit critic review
9/10
Dragon Inn (1967) Nathanael Hood ...the rare coalescing of disparate artistic modes into something so new, so bold, so defiantly different that the history of a genre can be demarcated into eras before it and after it.
Posted Dec 29, 2018  Edit critic review
9/10
Dead Man (1995) Nathanael Hood If not the best American Western of the 1990s, then certainly the most original and unusual.
Posted Dec 29, 2018  Edit critic review
4/10
Wild Bill (1995) Nathanael Hood The main problem in Wild Bill is that it seeks-and fails-to balance New Hollywood introspection with B-movie theatrics and action.
Posted Dec 29, 2018  Edit critic review
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