Pieces of a Woman (2020) Film Review C+
How can an actress who is pushing ninety be the mother of an actress in her late twenties or early thirties? Not impossible, but implausible.
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Category: Ratings: Movies and Television
Asteroid City (2023) Film Review C
“Asteroid City” takes on too much and leaves us with too little. However, there are some funny inventions by our Junior Stargazers and other pleasures.
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The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) Film Review A+
“Ripley”, Minghella’s masterpiece, boasts Matt Damon’s best performance plus stunning turns by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jude Law.
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Suspiria (1976) Dario Argento’s Cabal of Lesbian Witches A-
Italian director Dario Argento’s supernatural horror sensation! Jessica Harper is a ballet student whose school is a front for a coven of lesbian witches.
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Sebastiane (1976) Derek Jarman’s Flaccid Directorial Debut C-
What seemed revolutionary in 1976 seems pretty mediocre today. More a series of tableaux vivants than an actual narrative feature, it wears out its welcome.
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Carrie (1976) Film Review A+
Brian De Palma’s masterpiece and one of the GREAT HORROR MOVIES with tremendous performances from Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie. The unforgettable score is by Pino Donaggio.
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Ode to Billy Joe (1976) Film Review C
Why did Billy Joe McAllister jump off the Tallahassee Bridge? The answer, according to director Max Baer, is because he slept with a man.
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The Eiger Sanction (1975) Cinema’s First Queer Canine D+
When we first meet FAGGOT he is pleasuring himself on Eastwood’s shoe. Who was the dog who played him? His owner, an effete Jack Cassidy, trained the little rascal to do that to every man who stopped by.
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Grey Gardens (1975) Film Review A+
After its release, the film’s high campness – a tragic story set in the faded milieu of New York high society – developed a significant gay following.
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Fox and His Friends (1975) B+ Rated: Seventeen Fassbinder Films.
A fascinating look at gay life in the seventies, it’s one of a dozen great movies Fassbinder wrote and directed in the decade before his untimely death.
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Dog Day Afternoon (1975) Film Review A+
Pacino is magnificent. With Michael Corleone in The Godfather movies, “Dog Day Afternoon” is his defining role.
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Barry Lyndon (1975) Film Review A
In “Barry Lyndon” there is a moment where Ryan O’Neal finds two soldiers naked and holding hands in a pond as they confess their love for one another.
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Jeanne Dielman (1975) Film Review A+
In “Jeanne Dielman”, a feminist masterpiece, the everyday details of a caring mother contrast with her life as a prostitute.
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Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) Film Review A+
Weir, who showed, like Hitchcock, that horror can be visited upon us on the brightest and most beautiful of summer days.
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The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) Rated C (Solo) High Camp at a Midnight Screening.
It is, of course, a GROUP EXPERIENCE with those inspired zingers going back to the screen, composed by a generation of audience members over the years.
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Chinatown (1974) Polanski’s Noir Masterpiece A+
Polanski captured the FEEL of LA better than anyone before or sense. Jack Nicholson gives his greatest performance as private dick J. J. ” Jake” Gittes.
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The Great Gatsby (1974) Film Review B
Directed by Jack Clayton, from an adaptation by Francis Ford Coppola, this was the third film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age masterpiece.
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A Very Natural Thing (1974) Film Review D+
There is massive footage of NYC pride parades that lend nothing to the proceedings. Today, it comes across as a failed curiosity that gets a D+ for effort.
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Freebie and the Bean (1974) Film Review D-
Our heroes, James Caan and Alan Arkin, first encounter Morley in a bathtub. He’s preening and lisping, and you can see that he disgusts them.
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The Last of Sheila (1973) Perkins and Sondheim Have Fun! B
The actors are in good form, with Raquel Welsh being particularly impressive in her one genuinely good film. Dyan Cannon is a thinly disguised Sue Mengers.
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Save the Tiger (1973) Film Review B-
The writer Steve Shagen, an educated Jew, is in the Stone Age when it comes to a human being who has a different sexual preference than himself.
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A Touch of Class (1973) Film Review C+
Jackson’s character works in the garment industry, so we are on fairy alert. And, wouldn’t you know it, one of them does descend on her office just as Segal is visiting.
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The Day of the Jackal (1973) Film Review A
Another example of a gay character whose sole purpose in the movie is to be killed. Still, Zinnemmann and Rodgers treat his character with a modicum of respect.
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Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (1973) Film Review B-
Rita Walden, played beautifully by Joanne Woodward, in what is probably her best performance is about to go through a midlife crisis.
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Play It As It Lays (1972) Film Review C-
Unfortunately, despite a good performance by Weld, the film only comes alive when she is driving endlessly around LA’s spectacular freeways.
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Pete ‘n’ Tillie (1972) Film Review B-
And then there Tillie’s other best friend Jimmy, the film’s token gay guy, played by René Auberjonois, who had one of the most memorable names in cinema.
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The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) A+ Rated: Seventeen Fassbinder Films
A landmark in both New Queer Cinema and the New German Cinema, Fassbinder’s examination of the dynamics of a lesbian love triangle was shot in der wunderkind’s apartment.
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Pink Flamingos (1972) Film Review Trash! Trash! Trash! Rated C (Solo) High Camp at a Midnight Screening
A sick-and-twisted black comedy and the first part of Water’s “Trash Trilogy”, which also includes “Female Trouble” and “Desperate Living.”
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Cabaret (1972) Film Review A+
Based on the 1966 Broadway musical “Cabaret” by Kander and Ebb which was adapted from Christopher Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories” (1945).
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The Anderson Tapes (1971) Film Review D
Hamming it up and mincing all over the place, this is a cringe-worthy performance from Martin Balsam who is not referred to by his given name, just The Fag.
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