Brudnoy's Film Index
Brudnoy, David
"Brudnoy's Film Index" Amarcord: Fellini's magnificent reminiscence of his 1930s boyhood. A lusty, loving, wry, and tender ramble through the four seasons and the many conditions of humankind. No sloppy sentimentality,...
...The dialogue is as if meant for chiseling in stone, the fire do go on, man, and on, and on, and it's a pity that they all didn't fry in the first reel...
...Freebie and the Bean: Absolutely the worst cop film in years, give or take Busting...
...Sanctimoniousness envelopes the film, Tom Laughlin and Delores Taylor are all dewy-eyed and idealism personified, and those adorable kids, oh those adorable kids: how wonderful the current generation is...
...Plus an added delight—the destruction of Los Angeles...
...Hoffman is superb, and so is Valerie Perrine as his wife, Honey...
...After the tenth incinerated victim plunges to his death, the plot wears thin...
...No holds barred, yet without the excesses of retrospective of his most recent film before this, Roma...
...Fred Astaire, Robert Wagner, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Faye Dunaway, and just everybody who's anybody...
...Earthquake: Number 38 of the current crop of disaster films, full of outrageous special effects and a cast of zillions...
...Over three hours long, but worth every minute...
...They're flocking to this like salmon up the stream...
...No sloppy sentimentality, but much sentiment...
...Wanna shine...
...Lacombe, Lucien: An absolute triumph from Louis Malle, the story of a young French peasant who becomes a collaborator in -1944, finds happiness doing the Nazis' dirty work and more happiness with a Jewish girl, then...
...Alan Arkin and-James Caan as the oddly-named "heroes," Valerie Harper ("Rhoda") as a Chicano housewife!, blood, guts, mayhem, madness, viciousness, and inanity: this is called a comedy...
...The Trial of Billy Jack: How much treacle can the counterculture stomach...
...Peter Boyle as the monster...
...But since every Bailie] film is an extended dig at the bourgeoisie, this must be too...
...Everything turned upside down, every convention shattered, all connective tissue severed, until at the end one suddenly realizes that one hasn't understood a bit of it...
...Much fun with lines like this: "Pardon me, boy, is this the Transylvania station...
...A Woman under the Influence: The finest American film of 1974, John Cassavetes' unnerving, devastating examination of a wife distraught beyond repair, with Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands...
...Delicious...
...Some horrifying effects, moments of breathtakingly original music, and many scenes that simply collapse of their own ponderousness...
...The ultimate send-off of the enduring old classic, with enough In jokes to keep the film history buff happy, and enough broad humor for everyone...
...Somewhere deep inside there's an important message: don't stifle your eccentrics...
...The acting is as heavy as the falling buildings, but the buildings falling are the real stars...
...The Phantom of the Paradise: A devastating, if bungled, reworking of the Faust tale with elements of the phantom of the opera horror story, attempting a dissection of the squalidness of the rock 'n' roll industry...
...The Phantom of Liberty: Another extended dig at the bourgeoisie, from Luis BuZuel...
...let 'em be...
...Not for those whose marriages are on the rocks, this is a sophisticated, chilling, phenomenally fine work...
...Young Frankenstein: Mel Brooks' latest mad comedy, starring Gene Wilder as the Frankenstein's grandson ("I pronounce it Fronkensteen...
...Terrific detail, ambience, dialogue, cinema analysis...
...my grandfather was doo-doo...
...Serves 'em right, too...
...Some of the material is well transposed directly from Bruce's routines to the film, though much of it is too chopped up to retain its power...
...A sequel to treasure...
...Lenny is but a part of the real Bruce, and that not the least attractive, though it's grim enough...
...Ja, Mein Herr...
...Marty Feldman as good servant Igor (pronounced Eye-gore), with a movable hump...
...But the film buries Lenny under the weight of its own reverence, showing us only a bit of the Lenny who skewered every convention, who made fun of everybody and everything, who rewrote the book on bad taste...
...probably the best examination of syndicate crime in the movies...
...Heroism, knavery, courage, fear, love, lust, hate, nice clothes, and simply magnificent special effects...
...It comes in "sensurround," a sort of feelie technique, so expect to quake a bit in your seat...
...Madeline Kahn as Frankenstein's girl friend...
...Cloris Leachman as the mad Frau Blucher, the very mention of whose name frightens the horses...
...The Towering Inferno: When the tallest building on earth catches fire, all your favorite stars are caught within...
...The Godfather, Part II: Surpasses the original by a mile, with Al Pacino as the young Don, and Robert De Niro in flashback as the original godfather—the Brando role in the first movie...
...Lenny: Dustin Hoffman as the liberals' scourge, Lenny Bruce, here transformed into a liberal saint...
...Beautifully done, not preachy, powerfully communicating its message by example, subtly, brilliantly...
...At least I didn't...
...A joy throughout...
...Scenes from a Marriage: Ingmar Bergman's investigation of a modern alliance gone sour, distilled from a lengthy six-part TV series into an awesomely jarring movie starring Liv Ullmann...
Vol. 8 • March 1975 • No. 6
