Brudnoy's Film Index
Brudnoy, David
"Brudnoy's Film Index" The Marx Brothers—all four; count 'em—in a 1930s flop, their second film, a warmup for their triumphs later. Well, as Groucho says in response to a bloated industrialist's...
...Harry Belafonte as a high yellow Godfather...
...Harry and Tonto: Art Carney as an old man voyaging to visit his children, with his cat Tonto as companion...
...Escape to Nowhere: A gripping French chase film, with the Reds after the good guy, who's far from good, but better than bad...
...The Tamarind Seed: Omar Sharif, he of flashing fertile crescent eyes, and Julie Andrews, about whom it will in time be said, as of the late sainted Calvin Coolidge, that she was weaned on a pickle, engaged in a, uh, well, shall we call it a sophisticated international romance...
...Flip Wilson as da preacher...
...he didn't act there, but then, he doesn't really act here...
...He scowls and growls and huffs and puffs and wise audiences will break the doors down to get away...
...Otherwise, zilch...
...Plot banal, performances super, especially Joan Goodfellow's Billie and Jan-Michael Vincent flexing as Buster...
...That's Entertainment: The very nicest mishmash of old musical scenes from MGM, a feast for lovers of old films, good film comedy, and musicals that were . . musical...
...Flesh Gordon: A rip-off of the old Flash Gordon adventure strip, with enough limp sex gags to deplete the population through sheer impotence...
...Death Wish: Vigilantism in a fantasy vision of today's New York, with Charles Bronson avenging all the innocent muggees against the vicious muggers...
...The Longest Yard: Burt Reynolds as a prisoner, having a hell of a time adjusting...
...It does not exactly move, but then, if it did it might be worse...
...He was better in Cosmopolitan...
...Richard Strauss never had it so popular...
...California Split: George Segal and Elliott Gould as two gambling freaks, devoted to the tables night and day...
...From France...
...On the way he falls in with a wacky cast of characters, visits his first flame, now a senile old lady in a rest home, and confronts his daughter and two sons with some realities they've not bothered to consider...
...predictable in spots, but elsewhere intensely compelling...
...Chinatown: Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway in a Roman Polanski film dissecting political and business corruption in L.A...
...Buster is BMOC...
...The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz: A young Jewish go-getter getting going in Montreal in the '40s...
...For connoisseurs of flesh, there are moments...
...drivel in high gear, a manic conception of how we shall overcome...
...A tad mushy, but Carney is splendid...
...2001: A Space Odyssey: The breakthrough 1968 sci-fi film going the rounds again and pulling 'em into the theatres in droves...
...Roscoe Lee Browne vamping as a pompous congresshuman, and much, much more...
...Well, as Groucho says in response to a bloated industrialist's declaration of his travel plans ("I'm going to Uruguay"): "You go Uruguay and I'll go mine...
...S*P*Y*S: D*n*ld S*th*rl*nd and *11**t G**ld as C** agents chased by the R*ds as well as by the *m*r*c*ns in the unfunniest spy spoof imaginable, short of the one I'm about to begin filming: The Mad Adventures of G. Gordon Liddy...
...a schizoid film, not quite comedy, not quite tragedy, but with some painfully sharp insights into Semitic American life, the wheat with the chaff...
...Margie is his girlfriend, and she won't let him make it with her, so he goes after Billie, and they fall in love, but his friends remember Billie when, and tragedy ensues...
...during the '30s...
...Going Places: In the genre of Easy Rider and Badlands, unpleasant youngsters off on a spree, this time encompassing mayhem, the suicide of Jeanne Moreau, and at times a frightening depiction of the contemporary malaise...
...Robert Altman's film captures the compulsive spirit of gambling (so I've been told by those who indulge . . .) and the off-hand ease of the dialogue is at times superlative...
...Animal Crackers: The Marx Brothers—all four...
...Rootlessness and a minor (but costly) mania come alive...
...An obvious contender for those year-end awards lists...
...It limps along at that level...
...Uptown Saturday Night: A funky Negro comedy with Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby as two average Joes hot on the trail of a lost winning lottery ticket...
...Pamela Sue Martin's Margie brings back too many memories of those high school "nice girls" who drove us all to distraction and into the arms of those high school Billies...
...Buster and Billie: 19 & 48 in rural Georgia, and Billie's the high school whore, but with heart of [cliche deleted...
...Nicholson's portrayal of a zealous detective at times overwhelms Dunaway's mystery lady, and the City of Angels nearly overwhelms them both...
...for film-lovers, best to buy a dirty book...
Vol. 8 • November 1974 • No. 2
