I had a Pauline Keal book of movie reviews that I adored. I remember two things about this book I had a couple of decades ago.
The review for ‘The French Lieutenants Woman’ called the acting, directing, and writing excellent but then in Kael’s terminology kind of said that the movie sucked.
Another one I remember was the review for ‘Billy Jack’ she talked about the massive suckage of Billy Jack, the script, the acting, the absurdity, the half-hatched socio-political advocacy, etc,. Then she said she liked it.
I’ve not seen ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’ yet. I did see Billy Jack as a pre-teen on late night TV with lots of commercials. I did like ‘Billy Jack’ to spite massive suckage. It had this butt-hurt hippy not wanting to be a force of vengeance but someone was raped and people are disrespecting native Americans thing going on.
It has Howard Hesseman doing guerrilla street theater. Most people will not like it.
Back to my thing, Pauline’s reviews were a bit confounding but I loved them and all these years later I still have the 'French Lieutenant’s Woman conundrum yet to solve.
Apparently Quentin Tarrantino was influenced to some extent by Kael’s ideas about cinema.
If you love reviews and you find a Kael collection in your local used bookstore I’d recommend you go for it.
Agreed. My favorite reviews to read are those that combine 1 and 3, as they increase my appreciation for something I already like.
I sometimes like reading customer reviews on “foreign” sites like amazon.co.uk to see how well an American TV show or whatever translates to another country.
I loved Judith Crist. I still have a falling-apart paperback of reviews of movies on TV during the 70’s and they are still hilarious and witty. She admired actors (like Elvis) unfortunately caught up in utter bilge, but told it as she saw it re: those awful made for tv movies and also ‘big’ overblown movies. “Lovely So-and-So looks scrumptious, sadly flailing about, direction-less, in this inexplicable 1970 Irving Wallace blockbuster. With Roger Moore, and beautiful Swiss scenery. Fans of such, have at it. Others feel free to turn the channel.”
Finally threw out my 1997 copy of Roger Ebert’s movie review book. I almost hated to part with it, but was sooo thick! I kept his “I Hated Hated HATED this Movie” just to make sure I eventually see all of them. No one has really replaced him.
I go to avclub.com to read TV show reviews after watching them, partly to see what details I missed on the first viewing. I’ll leave some shows on my DVR until I read the review so I can re-watch them.