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Crossfire
(1947)
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Manny Farber
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[Crossfire] has the neatness of a Chiclet, the tone of a nickel, and the speed of a hiccup.
Posted Nov 17, 2021
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The Macomber Affair
(1947)
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Manny Farber
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This movie suffocates you with Hemingway's puerile notions about what makes men heroes and cowards, and it will probably sell only the five-year-old yeggs in the audience.
Posted Nov 17, 2021
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Lonelyhearts
(1958)
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Manny Farber
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Lonelyhearts turns a revered novel of pessimism into a semi-optimistic newspaper story, confused in casting. rigid in story-telling, but mildly gripping because of its TV-style intimacy and drive.
Posted Sep 15, 2021
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The Sound and the Fury
(1959)
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Manny Farber
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In many ways, "Sound" is a bad joke... However, everything outside the story is sharply etched and fairly gripping for an opulent movie.
Posted Sep 15, 2021
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Rio Bravo
(1959)
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Manny Farber
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Rio Bravo is a soft, slack, not very rousing Western by a man (Howard Hawks) who knows better, having supervised a nearly endless chain of masterful journey films.
Posted Sep 15, 2021
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The Hustler
(1961)
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Manny Farber
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The Hustler is cut down to almost nothing by tons of pompous elegance (Paul Newman and male associates), and then intermittently saved by Miss Laurie's grace on top of inferiority, slackness and a willed driving towards self-destruction.
Posted Sep 15, 2021
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Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
(1960)
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Manny Farber
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There is one mannerism, a somber, time-devouring stare which [Albert Finney] wedges into each seduction, that destroys the credible surface of his characterization. It gives the role an inexplicable theatricality.
Posted Sep 15, 2021
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Wild Strawberries
(1957)
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Manny Farber
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An eerie, felicitous opportunism steered this film -- just enough Freudian bitters, modern marriage, supernatural overcast, and "smashingly beautiful" postcards to provide a full matinee of culture for the expanding middlebrow-highbrow audience.
Posted Sep 15, 2021
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The Sun's Burial
(1960)
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Manny Farber
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With the resilience missing, the flip motions only accentuate the supineness of the actors who, while trying for the shrill terror of a Goya drawing, resemble a subway vendor's jiggling dolls.
Posted Sep 15, 2021
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Splendor in the Grass
(1961)
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Manny Farber
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Having finally ditched the boxed-in theatrical form, Kazan hurls his shrieking restlessness directly at the audience in what seems a last ditch effort to summon up the memorializing grandeur of latter-day George Stevens direction.
Posted Sep 15, 2021
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The 400 Blows
(1959)
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Manny Farber
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Truffaut has a knack for communicating the uneasiness of life about him, of the fussy and despoiled, though too often he achieves it by diddling his people and situations annoyingly like a piano player stoically hitting the same sour note.
Posted Sep 15, 2021
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My Son John
(1952)
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Manny Farber
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It is done with such earnestness as to be slow-moving, but the actors are masters of intricate timing and intonation and have the easy spontaneity and control to put across a story that is mostly talk in parlor, bedroom, and bath.
Posted Sep 15, 2021
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The Horse Soldiers
(1959)
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Manny Farber
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The Horse Soldiers is the disaster of the month, an uneventful canter in which Ford, without any plot to speak of, falls back on boyish Irish playfulness to fill a several-million-dollar investment.
Posted Sep 14, 2021
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Middle of the Night
(1959)
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Manny Farber
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The director, Delbert Mann, does a clichéd grim realism with backgrounds, weather, faces. The two miscast leads, Frederic March and Kim Novak, are a sometimes effective but generally square approximation of garment district miserables.
Posted Sep 14, 2021
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The Nun's Story
(1959)
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Manny Farber
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When the plot turns up, Zinnemann reduces each heroism to kernel size and then resumes his tasteful but rather insipid documentation.
Posted Sep 14, 2021
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Some Like It Hot
(1959)
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Manny Farber
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Some Like It Hot is a real weirdie: Wilder gets no laughs at all out of his sizzling, fast wedding of female impersonation to 1929 thrills, but, from a non-entertainment angle, his movie has a not-quite-real surface that is worth examining.
Posted Sep 14, 2021
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Compulsion
(1959)
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Manny Farber
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Compulsion has surprising power, the feeling of a new intellectualism being poured into the handsomely mounted "liberal" juggernauts Sam Goldwyn once produced.
Posted Sep 14, 2021
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Room at the Top
(1959)
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Manny Farber
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Room has a tricked-up impressiveness that holds the spectator's mind long after the movie's windup.
Posted Sep 14, 2021
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Waiting Women
(1952)
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Manny Farber
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With no editing rhythm and only amateurish composition, Bergman keeps action to an all-time minimum.
Posted Sep 14, 2021
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Odds Against Tomorrow
(1959)
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Manny Farber
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The result is a tricky but tough movie about a bank robbery that has a lot of insights into the decrepit, nearly hopeless life, and, like all Wise films, needs only a good story.
Posted Sep 14, 2021
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The Black Orchid
(1959)
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Manny Farber
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Sailing wham into a bocce-balled-up production by the Girosi-Ponti team, the movie presents a mismatched crew of non-conformist actors given complete freedom to exploit their flair for neuroses.
Posted Sep 14, 2021
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He Who Must Die
(1957)
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Manny Farber
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Pleasant to look at, with a delicate, if stale artistry, but, nevertheless, not much to think about.
Posted Sep 14, 2021
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The Devil Strikes at Night
(1958)
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Manny Farber
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This ghoulish portrait accomplishes a feat that is rare in current mixed-goodies film... Siodmak's best moments, flexibly relaxed or tight, seem comfortably inventive.
Posted Sep 14, 2021
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Back to the Wall
(1958)
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Manny Farber
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Molinaro's Back to the Wall is a dully inactive throwback to the last days of Hollywood "B" crime films.
Posted Sep 14, 2021
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Look Back in Anger
(1958)
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Manny Farber
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Despite every golden impurity, Richardson's film is somewhat of a spell-binder, thanks mostly to its solid pictorial "memories" of the archaic Warner Brothers clutter style... [the film] bulges with a good deal of marred but interesting visual detail.
Posted Sep 14, 2021
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Monsieur Verdoux
(1947)
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Manny Farber
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The beauty of this characterization is that it shows so effectively what an awful mess man gets into by his genius for rationalizing any act as long as it suits his immediate gain.
Posted Sep 14, 2021
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